Back in the field!
Sep. 21st, 2018 09:36 pmOne week of this term’s student excavation at Uppåkra has finished – one more to go – and I could easily fall asleep at 8pm. Possibly a combination of a full week of continuous outdoor work and being on a very windy site (with continuous noise from the motorway as a bonus). Extermely windy today, as a storm was moving in. Luckily we had time to cover the trench for the weekend before the downpour hit.
Uppåkra is a very interesting place: inhabited from the Roman Iron Age to the end of the Viking Age, with its heyday as a high-status site in the Migration and Vendel periods. Unfortunately, we’re not digging at the centre of the site, where you would regularly find nice artefacts (even gold!), but at a craft/production area in the periphery. This trench has been excavated for several terms, but now we’re almost at the very bottom, and it will most likely be finished by next term’s students. The finds are less exciting: postholes, two hearths, some animal bone, some flint flakes from the Stone Age, the odd sherd of pottery. On the plus side, this means that the report will be easy to write, and there is almost no extra cost for conservation of metal objects. The students seem to be happy with the excavation, although of course it’s always more fun when you keep finding things…
If you want to know more about Uppåkra, all the articles about the site have been digitised at the department website: http://www.uppakra.lu.se/uppakrastudier/
Uppåkra is a very interesting place: inhabited from the Roman Iron Age to the end of the Viking Age, with its heyday as a high-status site in the Migration and Vendel periods. Unfortunately, we’re not digging at the centre of the site, where you would regularly find nice artefacts (even gold!), but at a craft/production area in the periphery. This trench has been excavated for several terms, but now we’re almost at the very bottom, and it will most likely be finished by next term’s students. The finds are less exciting: postholes, two hearths, some animal bone, some flint flakes from the Stone Age, the odd sherd of pottery. On the plus side, this means that the report will be easy to write, and there is almost no extra cost for conservation of metal objects. The students seem to be happy with the excavation, although of course it’s always more fun when you keep finding things…
If you want to know more about Uppåkra, all the articles about the site have been digitised at the department website: http://www.uppakra.lu.se/uppakrastudier/