Hairdo

Today I went to the archeological excavations near where I live. They are half way through their three week period before having to cover it all up again. The group gave a public guiding to why they are here and what they are finding. In the maps the area is called "old Skogsby", just another area with "stone age finds" around the island.

Last year, a young professor in archeology at the university in Kalmar, decided he wanted his archeology students to have the challenge of digging in a place that hadn't been excavated before. He knew old Skogsby had a large area of remains from the iron age and that it had been run by one of the islands more important leaders. The area contains the remains of the largest hall on the island and at the end of it he knew that there was another house, probably a small, square storage house that could be a good starting point for his students.

The findings from that excavation revealed a lot more than they ever expected. The small house of about four square metres proved to continue far longer than they had time to examine and they found that the house must have been much more than just a storage building. It might have been a house for producing fabric, food, ceramics and so on and they decided to continue another three weeks period this year. 

During the winter and spring they learned so many things from studying their finds and from 3D photography and GPS markings that they now can be sure that this area was the largest known settlement on the island at the time (about 300 years AD) and was probably extremely powerful. At the time the island was split between many different chiefs but this one was by far the most powerful. This years excavations was aiming to find out how big this house was but so far they have dug out 25 metres and still haven't found the end of it. 

Time is running out and they have already made findings that are unique in Sweden so they will continue another year finishing this house and maybe raise money to excavate more houses in the area, the main hall for instance. The main blip shows a fragment of a comb probably made of an elks horn. The extra shows the GPS that marks the find down to one cm accuracy, and the teacher, with his brow in his hand, discussing the shapes of rock they have in front of them. A very exciting afternoon giving perspectives way out of the normal. A year ago I was here for the  excavation, read more here if you like. Or watch this Youtube clip from Sandby borg on the island, one of the big mystery massacres, that might have something to do with the excavation of Old Skogsby.