Clik here to view.
After four days of rubble removal in trench A, we found the south wall of Stensö Castle’s northern tower. Note how the wall facing (left) ends, and a pale mass of wall core (lower right) emerges out of the tower. This is the castle’s previously unseen western perimeter wall.
Our first week of two at Stensö is over, and already Chris, Fanny and Simon have made trench A answer the question we’ve asked of it. Way back in line with the trench’s top edge on the flank of the northern tower’s ruin mound, they’ve uncovered a neat wall face of dressed ashlar, and out of this tower wall projects an at least 2 m thick piece of perimeter wall. It retains only one facing stone in the bit we can see, but the perimeter wall’s core is of a piece with the tower’s, and the tower’s facing stones pause where the perimeter wall’s core links up. So now we know where the lost western part of the perimeter wall starts and we know that it was laid out in the same building campaign as the northern tower. Since the perimeter wall is secondary to the southern tower, as seen where the eastern part of it joins the tower, we thereby know that the northern tower is later than the southern one. In the 1.5 meter or so that is visible of the northern tower’s wall face, I can’t really tell if it had a circular or rectangular plan.
Clik here to view.
Christian Lovén’s plan of Stensö Castle with our 2014 trenches marked ABC.
Trench B is probably not quite on the line of the western perimeter wall, but Andreas and Malin are getting loads of varied animal bones out of it, and thus contributing to answering questions of the lifestyle at the castle.
Clik here to view.
Trench C. Note the lines of stone blocks forming a right angle, possibly for a house foundation, and the pale remains of a mortar layer.
In trench C we are now rid of the rubble, and so Ethan, Nora and Ola have switched from quick removal digging to painstaking stratigraphical excavation. A line of stone blocks reminiscent of a house-foundation crosses the trench at right angles to the similar line that was visible already before we broke turf. Between the new stone line and the perimeter wall is a layer of caked mortar, similar to one excavated by my colleague Lars Norberg at Nyköpingshus castle, and interpreted by him as traces of a construction or refurbishment event. Lars visited us the other day with a big bag of cookies and gave the students a great impromptu lecture about contract archaeology and the upcoming Cheese Link, Ostlänken, a major railway construction project that I hope will give my students employment opportunities in years to come.
And I have to brag about those students. I was pleased that so many signed up. But I was even more amazed when they told me that every one of my Umeå students from last autumn semester who is still on the programme has signed up. Fanny even came along on the dig despite leaving the archaeology programme for other subjects after the autumn semester. And they all work efficiently and intelligently, they shop for food and cook and do the dishes according to our equitable schedule, and they’re friendly and cheerful all around.
Clik here to view.
Sculpted limestone or stoneware disc, 65 by 5-6 mm, from trench C at Stensö Castle. What was it for?
Anyway, trench C: under the mortar layer is grey clay with bones, and working at it yesterday I flipped up this funny little sculpted brown disc. The material is either limestone or a very fine stoneware. One face is flat and featureless. The abstract relief on the other face forms two concentric volutes around a skewed almond shape. The pattern can’t have been mirrored in the missing part as the bits that are visible reach across the symmetry/diameter line. I have no idea what it is. My friend and Fornvännen colleague Göran Tegnér says it might have been lid for a hypocaust flue only those are usually metal. Project advisor Lotta Feldt of the County Museum suggests that it may be a modified markleka, a calcium concretion common in the post-glacial clays of Östergötland. Any ideas, Dear Reader?
Finally, note the measuring rod in the fieldwork photographs and the scale bar in the find photograph. Both were 2007 gifts from Aard reader Twoflower! Been years since I saw him around the blog. Hope he returns.
Update next day: I’ve written about the Stensö excavations in Swedish for the County Museum’s blog.