It’s been a busy couple of days with a lot of publicity. Monday morning a paper I’ve co-authored with my friend, geophysics specialist Andreas Viberg, was published in the on-line version of Archaeological Prospection. For reasons of scientific priority (which I myself like to establish by spilling everything I do onto the blog immediately) I’ve been sitting on this since April of 2013, so it feels real good to finally blog about it. Here’s a brief summary.
There’s a huge weird barrow at Aska in Hagebyhöga near Vadstena in Östergötland. It’s oval and flat instead of round and domed.
My old teacher Anders Carlsson has suggested that this may not be a grave mound but a Late Iron Age building platform like the ones in Old Uppsala.
Andreas and I drove down with a ground-penetrating radar device and surveyed the thing. We found the floor plan of an almost 50-metres-long mead-hall, very similar to one of the royal halls excavated at Old Uppsala.
This lends added support to the interpretation I advanced in my 2011 book Mead-halls of the Eastern Geats: Aska in Hagebyhöga was the residence of a Viking Period petty-royal dynasty in Östergötland that has left no trace in the written record.
Anyone who wants the (sadly pay-walled) paper, please email me!