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Friday, September 09, 2005
Woodstown Viking site gives up more of its secrets
THE release of new information on the Woodstown Viking site, which was made at the Viking Congress recently, has been welcomed by the Save Viking Waterford Action Group.
The 15th Viking Congress, made up of scholars from Denmark, England, Faroe Islands, Greenland, Ireland, Norway, Scotland, Sweden and Wales, spent a day in Waterford recently, visiting the site of Woodstown and hearing a presentation by the senior NRA archaeologist, Ms Dáire O’Rourke.
As a result some new information has emerged into the public eye, including the first information on the geophysical survey of the site. This has shown extensive activity within the large fort. This has been interpreted as an indication of structures and domestic settlement at the northern end of the site. Industrial activity, in contrast, seemed to be concentrated to the south, overlooking the boggy area, which produced hemp and cereal pollen.
Dr Catherine Swift, spokesperson for S.V.W.A.G., “Some very interesting information emerged from this presentation and especially from the discussion afterwards.
The belief that the fort was originally built by local Déise chieftains in the time of St Patrick, for example, seems now to be based entirely on radiocarbon dates from the 2004 excavations. Unfortunately, despite promises from the ACS, the company hired by the NRA to do the dig, there is still no sign of any report from those excavations, a full year after they were completed, and despite several promises from that company that publication as imminent. Specialists who had seen the material pointed out that, contradicting the radiocarbon evidence, there was a silver ingot of Viking style and a comb at the base of the ditch, which produced the early radiocarbon dates.
So the fort may have been first built by the Vikings but, of course, we won’t know until we excavate.” “It also emerged that there is extensive evidence for trading taking place at Woodstown.
Silver processing was taking place on the site and the bulk of the silver objects are ingots, rather than chopped up brooch-pins or arm rings. Many of these ingots are chopped into small pieces, indicating that they have been exchanged for objects of relatively small value”.
“That’s also the evidence of the weights which the merchants used to weigh out the silver. There’s almost as many weights from the 5% of the site examined at Woodstown as from the forty years of excavations at Dublin. Fascinatingly, however, the Woodstown weights are much lighter than those in Dublin and are much closer to the type used at Kaupang, the trading centre from the south coast of Norway, which had extensive trading links with the Carolingian empire and the Baltic countries. Again, though, until we can excavate the site, we won’t be able to figure out what this indicates about the origins of the people who lived and worked at Woodstown”.
“We also think that ship building was taking place at Woodstown. Not only is there large number of ships nails but wood-working tools have now been identified amongst the 5000 artefacts which have come from the settlement.
Unfortunately, these were almost entirely discovered from sieving and metaldetecting the soil which had been dislodged in the initial JCB trenching of the fort so we don’t know which part of the site they come from. All this information is very exciting but raise more questions than answers. ACS must publish all its findings immediately and the plans for the full excavation of the site must be drawn up now”.
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