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Historical actors are central to the history of knowledge as they are to all historical scholarship. Every country, every era has its biographies of eminent scientists, intellectuals, and educational reformers. Yet the theoretical currents that have left their mark on the historical and sociological study of knowledge since the 1960s have emphasized structures over actors, collectives over individuals.Knowledge Actors instead stresses the importance of historical actors and re-engages with their actions from fresh perspectives. This volume thus fosters a larger discussion among historians about the role of knowledge actors. Do we want individuals and networks to take centre stage in our historical narratives? And if so, which knowledge actors do we want to highlight and how best to conduct our research? What are the potential pitfalls of following an actor-centric path?This is the third of three volumes about the history of knowledge from the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge (LUCK). The two other books are Forms of Knowledge and Circulation of Knowledge.

While eighteenth-century print media in essence rested on the same technical apparatus as previous centuries – letterpress printing, woodcuts, and intaglio prints – the growth in quantity created a media revolution. The effect was a qualitative shift in terms of literacy, growth of newspapers, the spread of images, and distribution of knowledge, but also of misinformation and propaganda. In this volume eight scholars investigate various aspects of media and mediation in the history, culture, and politics of the eighteenth century.

In this paper, we investigate the Scandinavian Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age of Kinnekulle in southwestern Sweden. The above-mentioned periods in the study area are poorly understood and the archaeological record consists of a few stray finds and a concentration of 20 gallery graves. This study focuses on three of the gallery graves where commingled skeletons from successive burials were recovered. The human remains and the artefacts from the graves were used for discussing individual life stories as well as living societies with the aim of gaining new knowledge of the last part of the Neolithic and the beginning of the Early Bronze Age in southwestern Sweden. We focused on questions concerning health and trauma, mobility and exchange networks, and diet and subsistence of the people using the graves. Chronological, bioarchaeological, and biomolecular aspects of the burials were approached through the application of archaeological and osteological studies, as well as stable isotope, strontium isotope, radiocarbon, and mtDNA analyses. The study provides evidence for high mobility and diverse diets, as well as inhumations primarily dated to the transition between the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. We suggest that the mountain plateau of Kinnekulle was mainly reserved for the dead, while the people lived in agriculture-based groups in the surrounding lower lying regions.

Abstract This article investigates the development of rural migration in northern Sweden (1850–1950). During this period, northern Sweden experienced a slower rate of urbanisation than the rest of the country. This study proposes that decentralised industrialisation (i.e., rural-industrial labour, predominantly in the timber industry) introduced inertia to the urbanisation process by lowering the rate of rural-to-urban migration. Using longitudinal, individual-level data from the county of Västerbotten, the development of migration rates and migrant characteristics is explored via descriptive statistics. The rural population’s development and migration patterns closely correlate to the development of decentralised industrialisation. The results, therefore, indicate that decentralised industrialisation is a viable model for explaining the slow rate of urbanisation in northern Sweden.