Archaeology News Online

Archaeologists excavating the Viking round fortress “Borgring” close to Køge in Denmark, have made a new discovery, a set of wheel tracks near the north gate of the fortress. The wheel tracks, found at the north gate of the fortress are littered with pebbles to prevent Viking carts  becoming stuck in the ground [Credit: Nanna Holm] “During the excavations we suddenly found long tracks full of small stones. The stones are pressed down into the soil, so we can see that carts have been driven over the top of them. Stones don’t occur naturally in the layers, but are laid down by the Vikings to avoid the carts sinking,” says archaeologist Jonas Christensen. Archaeologists have so far revealed five metres of the small stone-filled tracks, which are approximately 90 centimetres apart. The stones measure approximately five centimetres across, but some are bigger. “The ruts were probably made by four-wheeled carts, which we’ve also found tracks of at other locations from the Viking Age. It ...

Archaeologists working at Dysnes, a recently discovered Viking age burial site in Eyjafjörður fjord in North Iceland are still busy excavating invaluable treasures. Hundreds of items have been found at the site, among them two swords, three spears and three shields. The second sword : Both swords were badly damaged by rust  [Credit: Hildur Gestsdóttir, Twitter] A total of six Viking age graves have been found at the site, including two confirmed boat burials. Only two of the burials have been fully excavated and archaeologists are currently exploring the third burial. The site is unusual for many reasons, not least that two boat burials have been discovered: Viking age boat burials are very rare in Iceland. The site has been badly damaged by erosion. Almost half of one of the burials already excavated had been washed away by the sea. Hildur Gestsdóttir, who is in charge of the dig, told the local news site Vísir that despite the erosion the site had already yielded so many items th...

In 2014 archaeologists from the Museum of South East Denmark and Aarhus University discovered the previously unknown Viking fortess at Borgring south of Copenhagen. Since then the search has been on to uncover the life, function, destruction and, not least, the precise dating of the Viking fortress. Now a new find has produced a break-through in the investigation. Archaeologists digging in northern gate Borg Rings main entrance  [Credit: Charlotte Price Persson] In the period 2016-18 a programme of new excavations is made possible by a grant from the A.P. Moller Foundation. The team from the Museum of South East Denmark and Aarhus University are joind by leading experts from the Environmental Archeology and Materials Research at the Danish National Museum and the National Police Department's Section for arson investigation. Prior to this year's excavations it was only known that the massive, 150m wide fortress dated to the tenth century. Experts suspected that it was built in t...

Archaeologists excavating the Viking round fortress “Borgring” close to Køge in Denmark, have made a new discovery, a set of wheel tracks near the north gate of the fortress. The wheel tracks, found at the north gate of the fortress are littered with pebbles to prevent Viking carts  becoming stuck in the ground [Credit: Nanna Holm] “During the excavations we suddenly found long tracks full of small stones. The stones are pressed down into the soil, so we can see that carts have been driven over the top of them. Stones don’t occur naturally in the layers, but are laid down by the Vikings to avoid the carts sinking,” says archaeologist Jonas Christensen. Archaeologists have so far revealed five metres of the small stone-filled tracks, which are approximately 90 centimetres apart. The stones measure approximately five centimetres across, but some are bigger. “The ruts were probably made by four-wheeled carts, which we’ve also found tracks of at other locations from the Viking Age. It ...