Week 27
The excavations of the Viking Age harbour in Fröjel has now begun again.
During the month of May were an archaeological seminar-excavation done with
exiting results. The aim of that excavation was to shed light on the early
Christian phase in the harbour area.
As it already has been mentioned in
earlier reports there we were excavating in the garden at
the schoolmaster's house and all put together were about 40
skeletons found in an area of 10 x 14 metres. Some of the
buried persons had their own personal jewellery with them in
the graves, mostly it was pearls but also as an
animalhead-shaped brooche, a comb, pin of bronze and a
chain-holder. Among the pearls are different material used;
for instance rock-Crystal as well as amethyst which is
rather unusual. The pearls of rock-Crystal are usual found
in the area of Caucasus.
In this new phase of the excavation at
Fröjel the aim is to shed light on the actual area of
trading, it's structure and organisation. To begin with, we
will examine an area about 80m2 that is central located in
the area of high phosphate-results. The excavation is now
done in collaboration with the residential college for adult
education in Hemse. We have now been excavating about four
days and we can observe that the soil is very black and
contains relatively large numbers of slag. We have also
found several amount of late Viking Age artefacts, for
instance a faceted pearl of rock-Crystal, two parts of beam
scales and a part of a Viking Age ring-clasp.
During the next week we will open several
shafts in the northern parts of the settlement area and
thereby get a better grip of the extension of cultural
layers etc. We will also by that attach this year's
excavation with the excavation done about eight years ago.