A December greeting from the Borgund Kaupang Project

Some very busy weeks have passed since the Borgund Kaupang Project’s KickOff-workshop at Borgund. Here is a short update on our progress.

An important part of the first phase of the Borgund Kaupang Project is the scientific curation of the finds and the documentation from the Borgund excavations. The aim is to establish a research platform for the archaeological primary data. One of the main tasks is to date the site through different archaeological and natural scientific methods. Gitte has been working with the complete set of raw data from the excavations. This consists of reports from 20 field seasons, field diaries, over thousand plan drawings, and context information on the ca. 90.000 archaeological and osteological finds. Based on the complete set of data Gitte has established a first version of a matrix that shows us where we lack finds that can be dated through archaeological typological methods, and thus where we need to get samples for C14-dating. We have taken 63 samples for C14-dating from different organic materials (mainly leather and textiles of wool, but also some wood). We finished sampling the day before the Christmas holiday! This will be our first ‘batch’ of samples – and more will be sent in the beginning of 2020. 

NTNU University Museum National laboratory for dating (external link) in Trondheim will analyze the samples. We are very happy for this collaboration, and very much look forward to the results!

Also, check out our Facebook-page (external link) for more pictures!

In addition, after the KickOff, Michèle and Alan visited the Medieval Collections at the University Museum of Bergen to study textiles, which also is a part of Michéle’s sub-study for the Borgund Kaupang Project.  

Merry Christmas from the Borgund Kaupang Project, and a happy new year!