My friend Lars at Arkland always comes through with ace photographs when I ask for them. Here's a pic he took in 1995 when a landowner at Vittene in Västergötland had come forth with an Early Iron Age gold torque he had kept in a closet for many years. In this picture, our late colleague Ulf Viking is wearing a makeshift rain coat made of a black plastic garbage bag, ready to search for more parts of the hoard. Read more here!
Dear Reader, feel free to follow Lars example and send me archaeopix! Just tell me a few words about what's in the pic to aid my dull understanding.
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As the first reader-submitted pic, my buddy Lars Lundqvist has sent me a snap of himself taken by Klas Höglund in October 1995. Lars is happy in this picture, the reason being that he's just found the object he's holding. It's a large plough-mangled Continental gold neck ring of the first few…
Linnea, one of the Salto sobrius regulars, asked two questions today on the Swedish archaeology mailing list that would be in my archaeology FAQ if I had one.
Who owns an archaeological find made by a member of the public?Is it legal to sell archaeological finds?
Here's how things work in Sweden,…
Dear Reader, let me tell you about my on-going research.
Written history begins late in Scandinavia. The 1st Millennium AD is an almost entirely prehistoric period here. Still, Scandinavian archaeologists have long had a pretty good general idea about late 1st Millennium political geography. The…
In 1995 a gold hoard was found at Vittene in Norra Björke parish, Västergötland. Its contents had been amassed over two centuries, and it was committed to the earth in the 3rd century AD. A fine book on the find and subsequent settlement excavations has recently been published and is available…
Is not the the torque in the picture very similar to the one from Havor on Gotland, which was stolen from a museum at least 20 years ago? In that case it seems so that at least two of this kind of objects were imported to Scandinavia.
Indeed, very similar. Both made in the final century BC, one soon buried in a Campanian situla on Gotland, the other kept above ground until buried in Västergötland in the 4th or 5th century.
Not necessarily "Kept" (curated, heirloomed) above ground, eh? Could it not have been found and adopted some time after initial burial/loss? Is there evidence of extensive wear (polishing, attrition, use damage) that would indicate several centuries of active use? Is there in general evidence of ancient cache-retrieval or mound-robbing, or intentional desacration of such sites?
Okey, sorry, should have read the whole article first.