| Summary: | This paper is a case study of the Viking Age ship burial from Oseberg, Norway. The aim of this paper is to use the concept of persona developed within rhetoric’s, and to investigate if it is possible to apply it on archaeological materials such as the Oseberg burial. The concept of persona as developed by Birgitte Mral is to identify strategies used by individuals to change their personality in order to enable themselves as a part of the public sphere. It is argued here that applying persona is a complement method to use in archeological research with a focus on gender. Although gender theory has previously been implemented on the Oseberg find, the history of its interpretations is still deeply influenced by the original interpretations put forward after the excavation in 1904. Therefore, a discussion based on analogies is conducted to evaluate the use of persona in gender archaeology in relation to other archeological interpretations of the Oseberg burial. The case study has introduced persona in an archeological context and used persona as a method and theoretical framework to gain new perspectives on how archaeologists can study the people in a grave rather than larger cultural events. The analysis based on analogies showed how persona can be used as a reflective tool as well as a theoretical framework.
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