Month: June 2023

Game piece with runic inscription found in Trondheim

Medieval

A round soapstone game piece discovered in an archaeological survey in advance of sewer pipe repair in Trondheim, Norway, is inscribed with runes. This is only the second known game piece with a runic inscription ever discovered in Norway.

The excavation uncovered a sunken pit with archaeological layers dating to the Middle Ages. The deepest part of the pit, more than 12 feet below today’s street surface, has been dated to between 1000 and 1150 A.D. A coal layer above it was only slightly more recent, dating to 1030-1180 A.D. The soapstone game piece was found between the two layers.

Archaeologists first thought the lines incised on the round piece’s surface could be stylized floral motifs, but the geometry was also reminiscent of runic inscriptions albeit laid out in artistic fashion.

The team sent high-resolution images of the piece to runologist Karen Langsholt Holmqvist. She was so intrigued she was compelled to view the object in person. That’s when she conclusively identified the decoration as runic writing.

“When you first look at the playing piece, it may look as if it only has a slightly uneven geometric pattern, perhaps a snow crystal. But when I examined the piece more closely, I saw that the lines were not random patterns, but a carefully planned runic inscription. As the inscription follows the curvature of the playing piece, the inscription is a bit odd and strange, but there is no doubt that these are runes.

“And in the microscope I also discovered that there are guide lines drawn, so there is no doubt that the runic maker has planned well to make the inscription follow the round shape of the piece. There are fields on the playing piece that do not have runic inscriptions, and here the shaker has filled the void with a pattern,” Holmqvist continues.

The runes read “siggsifr.” This is likely a name, which is common in runic inscription on small objects like the game piece. “Sig,” meaning “struggle” in Norse, is a name prefix for both male and female names. The “r” at the end indicates this was a male name. “Sifr” is a poetical metaphor meaning “brother,” so perhaps this name meant “brother in arms.” The name could refer to the person who owned the game piece or the person who inscribed it. It could also be an oblique reference to the piece itself, the name of the role it plays, like the equivalent of a knight or a bishop in chess.

Bronze Age jewelry hoard found in Poland

Ancient, Treasures

A metal detectorist looking for a World War I artifacts near Turobin, eastern Poland, found a hoard of Bronze Age jewelry instead. They were produced by the Lusatian culture in the waning era of their dominance in the region, ca. 550-400 B.C. Lusatian artifacts are extremely rare finds in this part of Poland, and the ones that have been discovered are usually individual pieces or fragments.

Łukasz Jabłoński, armed with a permit from the Provincial Office for the Protection of Monuments in Lublin, scanned the field on January 21, 2023. Digging under the snow, he found 13 bronze artifacts 8-10 inches under the surface of the soil. He immediately reported his discovery to the conservation office in Zamość and turned in the objects.

The 13 pieces include a cloak pin 6 inches long with a large spiral twisted wire terminal 2.8 inches in diameter. The pointed tip of the pin is missing. A second pin is even longer — 6.5 inches — and is intact with its pointed end. The head is a smaller spiral 1.2 inches in diameter with a decorative knob in the center.

Another stand-out piece is a twisted neck torc in penannular shape made from a single piece of bronze wire with tapered ends. The twisting technique was an advanced metalworking skill, especially using bronze because it hardens quickly and must be annealed repeatedly during the twisting process to prevent it from breaking.

There are also eight bracelets in the group: two 4.7 inches in diameter made of thick bronze wire with blunt overlapping ends, two made of single-stranded flat wire (one undecorated, the other incised with herringbone lines), and four massive ones three inches in diameter with overlapping ends.

The hoard is now being conserved and studied at the Museum of the Biłgoraj Land in Biłgoraj. The location of the find site has been kept secret to deter looters while archaeologists excavate it to find out more about the deposit and to look for any additional artifacts that might be in the area.

Oldest drawing in Iceland found carved on sandstone

Medieval

Archaeologists have found what is believed to be the oldest drawing in Iceland at the Stöð farm site in Stöðvarfjörður, east Iceland. A small rounded sandstone engraved with the image of a ship at sail was found in the wall of an early 9th century Viking longhouse. These types of ship carvings on bone, wood and stone are fairly common in Scandinavia, but this is the first one found in Iceland.

The Viking site on the northern shore of the fjord was discovered by accident in 2003. Exploratory digs began in 2015 followed by systematic excavations in 2018 and unearthed the remains of two Viking era longhouses, a newer one built on top of the remains of the older one. They were found under the layer of volcanic tephra that covered Iceland at some point between 869-873 A.D.. This was a momentous find, because it meant longhouses had been built and occupied before the official settlement year of 874 recorded in the written records (the Icelandic sagas the Landnámabók, or Book of Settlements).

Radiocarbon dating of the oldest longhouse dated it to around 800 A.D., indicating that the eastern fjords, at least, were occupied by Norse settlers 75 years before Ingólfur Arnarson left Norway and sailed to Iceland, founding Reykjavík as Iceland’s first permanent settlement. Archaeologists believe the Stöð site was a seasonal camp, used in the summer to fish, hunt, process whale blubber into oil and collect bog iron, rather than a permanent settlement.

Excavations have continued every summer. An enormous quantity of artifacts and remains have been found attesting to a large-scale operation of whaling and fish processing. That is confirmed by the sheer size of the longhouse — 103 feet long — which is twice the length of the earliest longhouses in Reykjavík. It is the richest longhouse ever excavated in Iceland, with 92 beads and 29 silver artifacts (including Roman and Arabic coins) unearthed.

A geophysical survey of the site performed this spring before the dig season began found evidence of more buildings and boats underground, the latter likely ship burials rather than wrecks. The boats and structures have yet to be excavated.

Bronze Age octagonal sword found in Bavaria

Ancient

incredible condition

Archaeologists in Nördlingen, western Bavaria, have unearthed a Bronze Age sword in extraordinarily good condition. The hilt is octagonal and made entirely of bronze. It dates to the late 14th century B.C., the Middle Bronze Age, but it is in such good condition that it retains its shine.

The age, shape, material and condition of the sword make it an extremely rare find, all the more so because it was discovered in its original context: an intact burial mound. Most of the mounds from this era were looted for their valuable grave goods long ago, and many of the known swords from this era were pillaged from mounds destroyed in the 19th century. Others were archaeologically excavated, but were individual finds, likely from ritual depositions.

The sword was unearthed from a grave that held the skeletal remains of three individuals: an adult man, an adult woman and a teenager. They were buried with rich funerary furnishings, but there is as of yet no direct evidence of a familial relationship or some other connection between the three. The hilt is octagonal in shape was manufactured by casting the handle over the blade, a complex process known as overlay casting. It is intricately decorated with incised geometric designs and inlay.

Octagonal-hilted swords are distributed in two regions: southern Germany and northern Germany/southern Denmark. Comparisons of the casting and decoration techniques indicate that the octagonal sword found in the north consist in part of replicas of southern German originals and in part of imports. Some may have been produced by migrant smiths who brought their signature overlay casting method north.

Kallerup Hoard exhibited in new local museum

Ancient, Museums

The hoard of unique Bronze Age artifacts discovered in Kallerup, outside of Thisted, Denmark, in 2019 is heading back home in a landmark exhibition for the opening of the new Thisted Museum.

The Kallerup Hoard is a grouping of four bronze figurines of exceptional craftsmanship and quality discovered during an archaeological survey at a site slated for development. The bronze figure of a double-faced man wearing a horned helmet on each head was first discovered in a field by a metal detectorist working with archaeologists from the Museum Thy. The top of a large ceremonial axe, also bronze, emerged next. A foot in diameter with spiral ends, the axe was removed in a soil block for excavation in laboratory conditions. A CT scan of the block revealed two more double figurines with heads of horses and serpentine bodies.

Thorough excavation and conservation of the grouping took months. The cleaned-up Kallerup Hoard made its debut at Denmark’s National Museum in January 2020. The exhibition emphasized the motif of dualism in the religious art of Bronze Age Denmark, as seen in the double-headed horned helmeted man and the serpentine double horses.

The hoard is owned by the National Museum, but it will be on long-term loan to the Thisted Museum. The loan will have to be renewed every five years, but the expectation is that the renewals will repeat indefinitely so that the hoard can remain within a stone’s throw of its original context. The new museum is much larger than its predecessor with more than 17,000 square feet of exhibition space over three buildings. Seven permanent exhibitions will showcase the area’s history and prehistory going back to the Stone Age with archaeological materials found in the area.

The grand opening is on June 24th, and the Kallerup Hoard will be sharing space with other spectacular local finds, like the Ydby runestone, a gold six-ring bracelet, amber jewelry and grave goods from an Iron Age warrior’s burial, including a wooden pot spoon that is the certainly best-preserved and perhaps the only Iron Age pot spoon found in Denmark. (The other possibilities are too damaged to be conclusively identified as pot spoons.)