Unwraping the christmas presents.

This week started with a rainy, windy and cold monday. It rained from 8.30 in the morning until the afternoon. It quickly became impossible to excavate, we fixed that easily by putting makeshift tents over the areas that we were excavating.

Arne taking photos of the western part of the heart, known as structure 31. This is the heart that is inside the hutstructure that I mentioned on September the 11th.

It quickly became nice and cozy in the tents, and the conversations kept our spirits high.

Joen, one of the guys that excavated with us last year joined us for a day of fun in the muck. He had been missing Rönneholm a lot and just could not stay away.

 
 Today on tuesday, the bog greated us with a warm smile and sunshine. We started to excavate the stakes. I´ve been waiting like a kid waiting for the christmas presents, to excavate these mesolithic stakes. It´s such a special feeling to unwrap a wooden stake that could be as old as 7000-8000 years old. I will probably never get the opportunity, to do this on any other site in my whole life again. The best part is getting to the bottom of the stake, to see if it´s been sharpened or not.

Paul excavating a wooden stake.

The wooden stake (sharpened).

A closer look at the stake. Notice how well preserved the bark is.

Two days of excavating.

The three first days of the week where spent on fixing the totalstaion, so we only got two days of excavating this week. Although we only excavated two days, we still got a lot done because the crew really worked hard.

During the days that we did not excavate we had visitors on site. Some persons with an healthy interest in archaeology had been on site. They had probably found some loose flints on site or on the way to the site and left them in a nice little pile on a board for us to find. I know these persons did this with good intentions, but it´s not something we recommend. Because it could completely mess up our site if these finds are brougth from another context into our context. Things such as dating and other interpretations could go horribly wrong. And since we get the finds out of context they loose a lot of the scientific value. We appreciate the thought and the shown interest.

On thursday we finished the square meter that Egis started. It had some complicated stratigraphy and some nice finds.

Arne and I defining the stratigraphy in Egis square.

Paul did the drawing.

This is the result. It´s al the four sides of the square drawn in one long sequence.

I´m sorry Egis, afterwards we had to backfill the square. I know you loved that hole, but this is whats left of her.

Some reporters from the newspaper Skånska Dagbladet came to make a story on the ornated bonepoint that Anna found. It must be the find of the season. I made a quick sketch from memory, of the bonepoint to give you a view of the ornamentation.

The bonpoint was found without any microblades but i drew some on the left side, just to give an idea of what it migth have looked like. The microblades are small super sharp little pieces of flint hefted to the sides with resin, to give a cuting edge. As you can see the ornamentation consists of hexagons. The hexagons have probably been worn out in the tipp, only leaving vertical lines.

This is a microblade found on site. The black stuff on the side is resin, wich suggests that this microblade has been hefted to something like a bonepoint.

Not all finds are sensational, but they can still be just amazing, such as this mesolithic torch.

We think that these torches are closely connected to the leisterpoints that we find. They where utilized during night fishing where the leisters where used.

Frustration with the totalstation.

As I´ve mentioned earlier, the totalstation is, by far the most important tool on our site. Our whole excavation, and our interpretations depend on the measurments that we take with the totalstation. So we had to quickly replace the totalstation that we lost. We found an old Leica wild, and an even older yellow Topcon at the institution of archaeology in Lund. The Leica was Arnes private one, but it had not been used for a long time.

The Topcon, Patrik and the Leica.

These machines are anchient creationes belonging to a long lost time. We spent monday and tuesday trying to figure them out. Patrik and Arne are a bit more technical than I am, so I was´nt much help, but I kept them company. The main problem was that we could´nt get the totalstation to transfer the measuring data to the computer. We spent many hours reading the instructions and trying to figure out the technical terminology.

Patrik looking a bit confused.

Patrik thinks they have solved the problem.....

...only to look just as confused the second later.

We gave up on the topcon, because the batterys where far past their expiration date. Finally we took the Leica to the boys at Leica geosystems in Malmö. The main problem was that the machines where so ancient that they could not function with a modern computer. We dugg up an old computer and the problems where solved...I hope.

Tomorrow, we will be back at the peatbog, braving the weather, scratching our heads over the totalstation and exploring the mesolithic.

Highlights and a summary of the last three weeks at the excavations at Rönneholm peat bog.

Our names are Anna Landström and Sara Gustavsson and we are archaeology and osteology students from Gotland University.  During the last three weeks we have been excavating at Rönneholm peat bog.

We have decided to write about our experiences from these weeks, here are a short summary and all the highlights!

To start with, we must say that it’s a big difference between digging on Gotland compared to a peat bog. Neither of us had experience from excavating a peat bog before.
Apart from the differences in the excavation, there were a few things we did not expect. One thing was the occasional "peat-dust-storms".  Peat-dust in the nose, ears and mouth...

Another was that the bog liked to steal shoes...

 Clara got stuck in the peat, luckily Emma was there to rescue her.

The first week served up some different weather, from soaking rain and strong winds to bright blue skies and sunshine.

At the first day we almost felt a little bit lost, standing on the dark peat watching the hundreds of nails marking finds. Almost like a bed of nails.

All the nails marking finds.

However, we quickly managed to get hold of the excavation tactics.

The first finds of flint, hazelnut shells and charcoal were so exiting! And not to speak of the first flint blades, those were exquisite!

                                                                                   Hazelnut shell, Flint blade.

Later in the week the weather decided to make things slightly harder for us. Strong winds blew away the big tent and we all rushed after it and grabed a hold on it. That was quite an experience!

 

Iohannes and Andreas in the rain.

 During the second week we continued to dig and the finds almost jumped up on us. Some parts were so full of finds that it took ages to dig them, we dug 1 millimeter, and then the area was covered in nails! During the week quite a few wooden poles were excavated.  And when we left after the third week we had found about 25 poles on the site.

One of the wooden poles.

 

Because the organic material was so well preserved it all felt very alive.  For once it wasn't the  absence of a pole that indicated a construction (as in the usual postholes); here were the real poles!
Gradually, when more and more poles came to the surface, it was possible to get a hint of the shape of a hut.

Something we both appreciated was surveying parts of the bog outside the excavation area. We walked off at 10am with Iohannes Sundberg and Anna Klintberger and the four of us were surveying the rest of the day. During our survey a spearpoint and a bonepoint were found. 

During the third and last week we were only a tenfold students that continued to dig (most of the other students' courses had started at the university). We continued to find more flint, hazelnuts and charcoal (the finds seemed never to stop!).

That's all we have to say for now, if the excavation continues next summer, we're hoping to be there again!

Text and photos by Anna Landström and Sara Gustavsson

 

Connecting the dots.

The Classes at the university have started and most of the students have gone back to school, some in Gotland but most of them in Lund. They will be greatly missed and needed, because without them and the international students and researchers from the fieldschool, we could never have examined this site as thoroughly as we do.

As I´ve mentioned before we have about 20-25 wooden stakes, and three hearths in layer three. I like to play around with these in my mind, connecting them in to structures. Connecting the wooden stakes into oval hut formations and then connecting the hearths to the hut formations.

Yesterday we made an interesting discovery, we found a shallow ditch in the southeastern parts of our excavation area. The more we looked at it we suddenly realized that to the north was a row of wooden stakes that connected well with the ditch. And to top it of we have a hearth, partly covered by the profile bench, that also fits in very well. This could be the most clear structure that we have from this site.

I have made a drawing to illustrate it. Please keep in mind that I´ve made this drawing entirely from memory, and my memory is´nt what it used to be. But it gives a good schematic view of what it looks like.

The structure in layer three, Rönneholm 10: The black dots represent wooden stakes. The south and southwestern parts of the ditch is still a bit unclear, so the lines are stippled. In the north part of the structure is a hearth wich is partly covered by the profile bench.

Arne is marking out the ditch. Above him Anna is uncovering the bottom layers from a accumulation of netsinkers. The surface that Arne is standing on dates back to the Villingebaek phase, about 8000 years ago, and the surface wich Anna is excavating is propably from late kongemose.

It´s a bit tricky to see but, in this picture you can see the north end of the ditch connecting with some of the wooden stakes. The wooden stakes are covered with white cups. Behind the bucket is a lighter area wich is the hearth. We use the wooden boards to stand on so that we won´t damage the surface.

Winds of change.

The end of the excavation is approaching faster and faster, wich means we are working faster and harder. Next monday the totalstation will go to the Uppåkra excavation, wich is the coolest and most mindblowing iron age site ever. They have tons of great artefacts and mindtwisting stratigraphy. Imagine the things the totalstation will have seen this year. First of all it has recorded amazing mesolithic artefacts at Rönneholm and then it will move on to record just as amazing iron age artefacts at Uppåkra.

This week we have made a lot of  progress. We have found a grindingstone, two stones for making stone axes and two or three stone axes along with sporadic stone debitage. This is an indicator pointing towards production of this kind of axes on site. we have also found about seven Villingebaek arrowheads, so its pretty safe to say that layer three is from the middle of the Kongemose period. We have also indications of a fourth, lower layer, that could be from the Blak period. Wich is the transsition betwen the Maglemose and the Kongemose period. There is only one way to find out, and that´s to excavate it.

This week the windgods have been really busy, whipping upp thick clouds of peat dust, that gets in to our eyes, ears and mouths. The weather conditions are bad, but our mood is really good. This is the kind of conditions that separate the kids from the big boys, that brings out the worst in some and the best in others. But giving in to the weather is no option, we keep on working. Luckily we have a lot of things that keep our moods upp. Such as all the finds, the possibility of finding something great, and last but not least, Patriks bad jokes.

Sometimes my ears are so filled with dust that I can feel the dust shifting around in my head when i move, and my eyes are glued together with peatdust. My mouth is so dry and full of peat that i can´t even spit, and hunger is tearing a big hole in my stomach. But I love it, it´s archaeology.

Besides from keeping out some of the dust, the goggles also make us look fashionable.

We look like Russian coleminers.

Andreas found this Villingebaek arrowhead just a few minutes after we started work.

Moments later he found this microblade core.

Beauty in the small things

Now we have reached the lower layers of the excavation, and we have about 24 posts and stakes of different sizes, and three hearths. It´s a lot of fun to connect these stakes with the fireplaces into structures such as huts. The stratigraphical layers, the stakes, the hearths and the artefacts connect into a complicated four dimensionall puzzle. Time, being the fourth and most hard to grasp dimension.

We have been sending some of the students out to survey the bog for a second time. The wind and rain has washed up even more artefacts. And each day the students return with a big smile and a small mesolithic treasure in their hands.

The coolest find of the year, must be this flint edged bone spearpoint/dagger. It´s eaven ornated with geometrical figures. On the rigth side you can see the groove where the microblades where attached.

Theis is the worst case of the Rönneholm gold fever, he has found so many nice artefacts that we now call him the "gold digger."

Iohannes, seems to have an eye for bonepoints, I think this is hes fourth bone artefact.

It´s easy to stare yourself blind, searching for all the wonderful artefacts, but sometimes beauty can be found where you least expect it.