Archeology

The  archeological excavating site is active again for the fourth season. Archeological students from the university in Kalmar are using an iron-age village as a practice ground for their third year students to get practical hands on insight in what a real live excavation can be like. Their teacher has long wanted to do some investigation into the daily life of the village ant thought about choosing one of the smaller buildings near the main hall as a suitable project for his student. What had the house been used for, 1500 years ago? They soon found out that the small house actually was bigger than they thought (about 10 square metres). After the second and third year of digging, they still hadn't found the other gable-wall and realised that this was more like a huge hall than a small storage building. This year they actually found the wall and the house proved to be 35 metres long and 5- 6 m wide. A huge challenge for the students but one that has lead to a growing interest for this period on Öland and has resulted in a rather huge pot of money from the government to be used for excavating several of the many strongholds on the island from the same period, the viking era.