A garnet workshop:)

As normal has the final week of the field work been very intense and unfortunately have we not updated the blog as much a we really want. A summary of the results will come shortly. Here comes an announcement of the perhaps most surprising finds this year.


It all began when Robert was digging inside the burnt down house on the northern plateau. It was barely a 3 sqm surface surrounded by the trench walls, the house wall and a large stone slab beloning to the stove foundation of a far younger house. Robert found layer after layer of thin sand horizons separated by equally thin, dark culture layers. They all seem to represent floor layers that periodically have been refreshed with new layers of sand. Quite early, when digging and sieving the soil, Robert found some red stones, some still embedded in schist. It was quickly decided to pick out the 2 mm sieve and soon "loads" of garnets were turning up. Within this small area has over 500 garnets been found. We have not counted them exactly or done any more thorough analysis. But it seems like we have stumbled upon a garnet workshop. Some garnets, mostly belonging to larger category, are still embedded in what seems to be schist. The majority is far smaller, more pure, and some definately seems to have been retouched.

We have no idea about how large the area with garnets (and smithing, probably bead making etc) really is. We have barely touched it.

Garnets in a find bag. The darker stuff is mostly thin flakes of schist, probably related to the garnets.