En transformation af lerskrammel: Tingenes værdi og potentialet i udefinerede fragmenter

Archaeologists are known to investigate everything, even the most insignificant looking objects. Yet, a hierarchy exists in the world of things, and the destiny for most objects is to end up in an archive box in a storage magazine of a museum, (perhaps) never to see the light of day again. This applies specifically to things that occur in high numbers, or things that unofficially have ended up in the category 'miscellaneous' of vaguely defined objects. Such a material from the Pre-Roman and Early Roman Iron Age is the focus of investigation in this article, which appear in the shape of ‘clay junk’ – secondarily produced spindle whorls of rounded, pierced potsherds. These objects have, to a high extend, been left untouched in the storage rooms of the museums with an uncertain use function as an undesired companion. We investigate these artefacts via technical analyzes and experimental archaeology. The experiment’s focus is to determine if they function as spindle whorls. The analyzes and the experiment prove that spinning in the Early Iron Age very easily could have been performed by using these irregular, disc-shaped spindle whorls. Furthermore, we examine the material from a depositional and manufacturing perspective, in which the interaction between individual and artefact is evident. Additionally, we draw inspiration from the ‘carrier bag theory’. This describes that the bloodless narrative of the needlework of daily life is harder to boost than the hunter’s killer history – but that the narrative of the carrier bag should not be neglected in favor of the tale of the bloody spear. We aim to prove that one can transform a forgotten, bashfully looking material into complex tools, which also contribute to the quiet narrative far away from the mammoth hunt of life and death.