Finds

2015-12-11

A Fragmented Whole

The ceramic material found at the pile dwelling is fragmented. Most of the time I am working with and trying to understand small fragments that weigh around 5-10g. It is common to work with smaller sherds when studying the Pitted Ware pottery due to the fact that the vessels were intentionally broken during the Neolithic. ...

2015-12-02

Two unique scrapers from the middle Neolithic?

Hafted scrapers are typically unifacial (flaked on one side),made from flakes or blades of flint, that were then fixed or ”hafted” to a handle and used to scrape excess fat and flesh from animal hides as a part of the tanning process. I came across one such hafted scraper with an unusual form which triggered ...

2015-11-26

Fishing at Alvastra

Accession number 34984:x221y425, F6 (Fid 1188532) Fishing hook of boar tusk Photo: Gabriel Hildebrand, SHMM The picture shows an exquisitely preserved and previously unpublished object from the 1976-1980 excavations at the Alvastra pile dwelling. It was found in Mats Malmer’s eastern trench. Like several other fishing hooks from the older excavations, it is made of ...

2015-11-20

A Miniature Vessel Found in the Storeroom

As we are progressing with our work with registering the material from the recent excavations at Alvastra pile dwelling we also have to study earlier research concerning the materials found during the excavations in 1909-1930. When we recently discussed the literature we became interested in a few sherds that were mentioned in Browall 2011. “One ...

2015-11-11

Flint axes were used as lithic cores at Alvastra pile dwelling?

The pile dwelling is a site that has left evidence of many interesting cultural activities. One such activity that has become very evident whilst cataloguing the flint material is the destruction and/or re-use of apparently fully functional tools, such as thick and thin-butted axes as cores for the production of smaller tools, flakes and debitage ...

2015-11-02

Impressive Impressions

I would like to draw attention to an interesting décor that I recently found on a sherd. It is something that I have never seen on Neolithic pottery before. The specific sherd is presented above. It is a flat rimmed sherd. The colour is light (yellow-grey) and the ware is well homogenized and well burned ...

2015-10-26

Projectile points in the Pile dwelling

There are two dominant types of projectile points that have been found in and around the pile dwelling at Alvastra. These are commonly referred to as tanged arrowheads and traverse arrowheads. Tanged arrowhead with fire damage from Alvastra pile dwelling. SHM 34984:x219/y425 F30 (photo: Greg Tanner, SHM) Tanged arrowheads are probably closest related to the Pitted Ware ...

2015-10-13

Interim translations

If you search our database under accession number 34984 you will be greeted by a cascade of Swedish. This is not how we would like it to be but at the moment we are restricted by the confines of our database. Eventually it will be possible to conduct a search in English of the following ...

2015-10-09

Et voilà! A vessel is made

In my recent post I described the differences within the ceramic material found at Alvastra pile dwelling where the so called pile dwelling pottery (PBK) is singled out from the rest of the material partly through choices made during production. In my work it has therefore become important to evaluate how the different materials were ...

2015-10-01

Lithic material in the pile dwelling

There are literally thousands of pieces of flint in the material collected in the 1976-1980 investigations. These range in size from whole cores or pieces of cores and raw material to the smallest micro flakes, and debitage less than 1mm across. So the big question is when is a piece of flint not just a ...