Finds of the Past Week

This week, in addition to several kilos of animal bone—ubiquitous on medieval sites, and useful for understanding past subsistence—we made some special finds.

An iron crossbow bolt and arrowhead uncovered in Trench F inside the tower, testaments to the martial nature of castles like Stensö.

In Trench F, inside the tower, we found two weapons, both projectiles. The first, above on the left, is the bolt from a crossbow. Skulls with wounds from bolts such as this have been found in the mass grave on the site of the great battle between Valdemar Atterdag’s Danish armies and the people of Gotland. Crossbows were a truly horrific weapon.

The smaller find beside the crossbow bolt is a normal arrow head, still quite deadly.

An annular brooch uncovered in Trench D.

In Trench D, one of the students uncovered a silver or copper alloy brooch (we wont be certain until it is restored). An exact correlate in type to this brooch was recovered from a hoard that was dated very precisely using coins in the hoard, giving us a very exact idea of when brooches such as this would have been extant in circulation. Much like the brooch we found last year at Stensö, it’s a great find. When we find possessions like these, I always wonder how they came to be lost. Was it swept out with the rushes by mistake? Did it fall from someone’s cloak while riding? In any case, brooches are great for establishing dates.

The wealth of ceramic sherds we have recovered this week, although not as photogenic as some of the special finds, are also very useful for dating the layers in which they occur. Ceramic from this period provides a 100 to 200 year window for dating, and this can be refined even further if larger, diagnostic sherds are excavated. These finds, such as the rims of a particular pot or vessel, can narrow dating to as little as 25 years—exceptional.

Thus far, we have still not found any coins, the ultimate diagnostic for dating. However, with the living floor identified inside the tower, we should rectify this soon if we are lucky. Finds such as these—although they can be deposited or lost long after they have gone out of circulation—are even better than getting a radio-carbon date. Cross your fingers for us…

A runic inscription in the mortar of the castle, situated behind, but probably not related to, a pile of bricks someone scavenged after the abandonment of the castle.

However, above is the most special find of the week. It is a runic inscription, once written in the still-wet mortar of the castle, which phonetically reads “HELK(I),” a man’s name. Individuals are rarely visible in the archaeological record—though they commonly occur in the historical record. But in this case, we can see and identify a reference to a person who once lived. We can surmise, though not definitely, that Helgi worked on the castle during a repair phase and wrote his name into his work. It is unusual that he chose to use runes which had largely passed out of fashion except in churches by the time the castle was in use. If he had skill as a building craftsman, it is not out of the question that he also worked on other buildings in the area, including churches.