New research using computer technology to unpick overlapping layers of rock art has shed light on how the ideas and interests of prehistoric communities changed. Between c.4500-3000 BC, early artists at Nämforsen in Sweden, and Zalavruga in Russia, tended to carve elks in silhouette, Cambridge University archaeologist Mark Sapwell said. But by 2000 BC these [...]
Fishing first
Södertörn University archaeologists have found 9,000-year-old fishing traps in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Sweden, making them the oldest yet discovered anywhere in the world. The team say this evidence shows that people were fishing in fixed spots long before the development of permanent agricultural settlements in the region. This article is an [...]
Book Review: Settlement and Lordship in Viking and Early Medieval Scandinavia
Bjørn Poulsen and Søren Michael Sinbaek (eds.) Brepols, £79.00 ISBN 978-2503531311 Recent advances in settlement archaeology have uncovered a treasure trove of new information about social power in Early Medieval Scandinavia, and this comprehensive work brings together 17 papers, ranging from landholding and the changing influence of royal and Church authorities, to insights into all levels [...]
Viking silver – Gotland, Sweden
Archaeologists have unearthed several thousand silver objects, buried 1,000 years ago in Gotland, Sweden. This is the second substantial hoard to have been found at the site: in 1838, almost 6,000 coins were found in the same field. Museum of Gotland archaeologists Jonas Paulsson and Per Widerström made the discovery on the final day of [...]
Sweden: A plague on all your houses
Excavation of a Swedish plague pit has revealed how a small village responded to an invisible killer. Caroline Ahlström Arcini pieces together an archaeology of crisis.
Swedish Bocksten Man Brought to Life
Doll maker enlisted to help reconstruct the head of Bocksten Man
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