The ancient gate in the walls of Guding slott
In mid-July I finally had an opportunity to take part in an archaeological excavation. I spent four days on a dig by the Gotland Archaeological Field School at a place called Gudings slott, near Eke in southeastern Gotland.
Deir el-Medina, Photo: Steve Cameron, Creative Commons
This is the paper I wrote for Archaeology B, describing how the Egyptian New Kingdom workers’ village of Deir el-Medina, the desert home of the men who built the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, was provided with water. Basically, it was all carried in on donkey back (although an attempt was made to dig a well):
Stockby Burial Mound, Lidingö 6:1
After visiting the Stockby burial mound Lidingö 6:1 recently, I wrote to the Stockholm County Administrative Board,to point out that the sign describing the site was gone and that cement blocks had been dumped on the side of the mound. They replied last week that they’d check it out.
I visited the mound today, and the while the sign is still missing, the cement blocks have been removed!
Not far from Stockby is Långängens gård, a farmstead that apparently dates back to the Viking period. Today a popular cafe, the hill behind the current farm buildings was the cemetary (Lidingö 9:1) for the farmstead during the Late Iron Age (ca 800-1050 AD).
Just a couple of hundred meters from the Stockby burial mound is an unexcavated gravefield with five stone-setting mounds. The graves are believed to date from the Viking Age (the Late Iron Age ca 800-1050 AD). According to the sign, it served as the cemetary for the nearby Stockby farmstead.
Burial mound Lidingö 6:1
In connection with my Archeology course from Uppsala University, I have been visiting burial mounds and grave fields here on Lidingö. I was very surprised to discover a Bronze or Iron Age burial mound less than a 20 minute walk from home, right next to our new recycling station. Sadly, the sign marking the site has been vandalized, and someone has dumped a bunch of cement blocks on the edge of the mound.