Landscapes of death: GIS modelling of a dated sequence of prehistoric cemeteries in V¨ astmanland, Sweden Daniel L¨ owenborg ∗ We will never be able to excavate everything – nor should we – but it would be good to know how to make the best use of what is visible in the landscape to write social prehistories. In this project the author creates a set of parameters for the 1000 mound-cemeteries seen north of Lake M¨ alaren and clusters them by period, using 51 examples that have been excavated and dated. The result is that 1000 cemeteries can now be allocated to period, with that special kind of confidence in which statisticians rejoice. Keywords: Sweden, V¨ astmanland, Bronze Age, Iron Age, cemeteries, monuments, GIS, discriminant analysis, SPSS Introduction The M¨ alaren Valley in central Sweden (Figure 1) has had a long history of social analysis based on more than 10 000 prehistoric cemeteries, the remains of which are often visible above ground as mounds or monuments (e.g. Ambrosiani 1964; Hyenstrand 1974). The descriptions and locations of these cemeteries are recorded in the Swedish monuments record, which has now been digitised and made available online in both ESRI Shapefile and MapInfo TAB format by the Swedish National Heritage Agency (Riksantikvarie¨ ambetet), through FMIS, the information system for archaeological sites and monuments (Blomqvist & G´ entay-Lindholm 2002; Haskiya 2002). To make use of this information to map social change, it is necessary to establish a chronology for the burial grounds. An ambitious attempt in the late 1970s employed descriptions of the sites and their location in the landscape to suggest an estimated date of use (Gustavsson & Lid´ en 1980). Since then there have been new surveys and a large number of rescue excavations. This suggests that it might be time for a new study, making use of the technology available today. This article presents a renewed attempt at relating the location of cemeteries to their date, choosing the district of V¨ astmanland as a case study. In this study 1034 burial grounds and 3649 features registered as single graves were analysed using GIS and compared with the chronological information from excavated burial grounds in the same area. Variables were collected from both the monuments record, such as type and shape of the graves, as well as from the landscape, such as topographical features and soil type at each site. A statistical ∗ Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Box 626, 751 26 Uppsala, Sweden Received: 4 November 2008; Accepted: 30 January 2009; Revised: 16 March 2009 ANTIQUITY 83 (2009): 1134–1143 1134