Vikings Online Course

Vikings: Raiders, Traders and Settlers 

22 January to 5 April 2014

Vikings: Raiders, Traders and Settlers is an online archaeology course run by the University of Oxford's Department of Continuing Education.

The course runs for ten weeks and successful completion carries an award of ten CATS points. Students write two short assignments as part of the course.

Online forums for each unit enable students to discuss the topic being studied, and help from the online tutor is always available

You can find more details here...

You can find details of other online archaeology courses here...

Double graves with headless slaves

In the Viking era, a number of slaves were beheaded and then buried together with their masters. New methods of skeleton analysis reveal more about the life of the poor more than a thousand years ago.

In 1975, three intact skeletons from the Iron Age were found on the Tommeide farm in Tomma. Naumann interprets this as a family grave. - Despite possible kinship between them, probably as members of the same household, the child nevertheless had a diet that was different from that of the two adults during the last years of their lives. (Photo: Anne Stalsberg, NTNU Vitenskapsmuseet)

How was life for common people in Norway during the period 400–1050 AD? Can we learn more? Yes, according to Elise Naumann, research scholar in archaeology. By using isotope analysis to examine ancient skeletons, she has made several remarkable discoveries. The research results from the analysis of skeletons found at Flakstad in Lofoten have also been reported in the American newspaper USA Today.

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Isotope analysis reveals diet of beheaded Viking slaves

In the Viking era, a number of slaves were beheaded and then buried together with their masters. New methods of skeleton analysis reveal more about the life of the poor more than a thousand years ago.

In 1975, three intact skeletons from the Iron Age were found on the Tommeide farm in Tomma. Naumann interprets this as a family grave. - Despite possible kinship between them, probably as members of the same household, the child nevertheless had a diet that was different from that of the two adults during the last years of their lives [Credit: Anne Stalsberg, NTNU Vitenskapsmuseet]

How was life for common people in Norway during the period 400–1050 AD? Can we learn more? Yes, according to Elise Naumann, research scholar in archaeology. By using isotope analysis to examine ancient skeletons, she has made several remarkable discoveries. The research results from the analysis of skeletons found at Flakstad in Lofoten have also been reported in the American newspaper USA Today.

Read the rest of this article...

Building is underway at The new Wessex Gallery of Archaeology, The Salisbury Museum

Anglo-Saxon satchel mount c.700 AD. Gold and Silver foils with repoussé decoration. 

Found with the burial of an Anglo-Saxon ‘princess’ at Swallowcliffe, Salisbury.

Amesbury Archer Gold Hair Tresses - 2,300 BC. The oldest gold objects found in Britain, 

Copyright Ken Geiger/National Geographic.

Polished macehead made from gneiss found with a cremation burial at Stonehenge,  3,000 – 2,500 BC.

Building is underway at The new Wessex Gallery of Archaeology, 

The Salisbury Museum

Building has begun on the new Wessex Gallery at the Salisbury Museum, which will make it clear for the first time exactly why Salisbury and it’s nearby World Heritage Sites hold a unique place in British history.

The new gallery will be of international importance, telling the story of Salisbury and the surrounding area from prehistoric times to the Norman Conquest. Realm Projects, the Nottinghamshire based builders who worked on the Hepworth Wakefield and The Jewish Museum, have been contracted to complete the works.

“By Christmas this year the major construction work will be complete,” said museum director Adrian Green with a gleam in his eye. “In roughly seven months, the new Wessex Gallery will be ready.”

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Treasure trove reveals Iron Age town

Västra Vång in Blekinge is now a sleepy rural community on Sweden’s southern Baltic coast. It has never been mentioned in ancient or medieval writings. So why are gold figurines and bronze busts turning up there?

Perhaps the locals should have had suspected there was a wealth of history in the soil beneath them. Several discoveries in the past and more recently show that long ago, this spot was out of the ordinary. 

Burial mounds from the Viking Age abound here. In the 1860s residents dug up a six kg Viking treasure consisting of jewellery and over 4,000 silver coins. But archaeologists are now making discoveries that suggest this place was a significant, but unmapped centre.

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