2015-01-27

The 2010 excavation at the Royal demesne area

Finally, here are the report from the 2010 excavations at Gamla Uppsala Kungsgård (the Royal demesne area). You can find the report here or at the right side of this page, under Archaeological Papers and Reports, 2013. Report 4 (language swedish but with an english summary). The following is a short resume of the report.

In 2010 an archaeological survey was conducted. Overall objective of the survey were:
- Investigate and concretize the abundant but largely undated settlement remains detected 1957-58 west of the southern Kungsgården plateau.
- Investigate the remains in the vast but hitherto unexplored northern Kungsgården plateau.
- Further investigate the nature of the settlement remains in the farmland north of the Kungsgården plateaus.

The trench west of the southern Kungsgården plateau was placed over and alongside one of the 1957-58 trenches in order to relate to possible grubenhauser (SFB). Under the turf and the tilled soil, appeared a very dense presence of features consisting mostly of postholes but also two possible grubenhausers, pits and a large hearth. The dates of the features (14C) and the artefacts ranged from the 5th to the 20th centuries, but with a strong emphasis on the 5th -13th century. The artefacts consisted of wattle and daub, pottery, fragments of molds and a crucible as well as an large quantity of unusually well-preserved animal bones including fishbones from the 5/6th century. The large hearth was 14C-dated to the 12th  century and contained slag and pieces from an oven.

The trenches on the north Kungsgården plateau revealed a complex stratigraphy reflecting a range of building phases with 14C-datings from late the 4th to the 10th century and artefacts from the 13/14th century. The find material consisted of animal bones, beads, clasp, comb, pottery, slag, spur and wattle and daub.

In the farmland north of the Kungsgården plateaus five test trenches were excavated. The results showed that there were preserved cultural layers and features from the Iron Age. They complement earlier results from metal detector surveys and a recent GPR survey. They stress that the arable land holds some well preserved settlement remains that stretches from late 4th -11th century.

/Per F

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