Depositions and butchering waste

One of the primary aims of the project, is to collect a much bones as possible from good contexts. During last years trial excavations we found that the preservation conditions for bones were very good. Ostheological analyses from royal manor areas in Sweden have been made before, but the statistics are not always satisfactory and water sieving has often not been used as a method for recovering fish bones and other small bones.

The bone material from the kitchen/workshop area needs to be analysed further during this autumn and winter. We can however already see some interesting tendencies. The bones do in a high degree seem to be chopped up into small fragments. Butchery remains are not very common and occasionally there seems to be high concentations of burnt bones. They seem to represent either intensive cooking aktitivities or perhaps they were chopped up in order to be used as fuel. The latter pattern has previously been noticed on another locality in Gamla Uppsala.

A more ritually related thing is the prescence of deposited lower jaws. On the plateau are unburnt bones very rare from the phase of the burnt down hall building. If there had been large amounts of bones, they would probably have been affected the great fire. When we did find bones, they tended to be lower jaws from cattle and horse. They are most likely deposited after the fire and it is very tempting to connect them with rituals belonging to a "closure" of the house. Almost all the iron spirals are also placed in the wall line or in post holes.

Teeth from a horse jaw lying in the wall line of the hall.