Excavations at Konserthusparken in Linköping; summery week two

From the left; Christer, Hanna, me and Lena

Another week has passed and on Monday we move on to the final week of excavations at Konserthusparken. This week has been dedicated to the constructions in the northen part of the shaft. We have dug down through the floor of one of the buildings and found several postholes and the delimitation of the structures, in the second “house” we more or less found the delimitations but we still need to dig through the floor.

We’ve found several finds that helps us to date the buildings to the 18^th century hence we do believe that they were erected for the purpose of the construction of either the bishops mansion, ca 1730, or in connection with work on the dome in the mid and late 18^th century. The finds constitutes of ceramic shards, animal bones, clay pipes and molten iron and glass slag. The iron slag indicates some kind of iron production or refinement though we have not found any further evidence for this except the slag.

My favourite find this week is this part of a bone flute, I’ve found it at the bottom the floor layer and I think it is really cool.

There is one more week of excavation then it seems as I might get a few extra days working with the finds, cleaning, washing, sorting and on top of that make a small osteological review of the findings.

Next week I will attend a walk through of the medieval cellars of Linköping, very exacting and I hope for some great pictures, and I will visit the ruins of the 12^th century church St Lars that actually are preserved under the floor of the present St Lars church, how cool isn’t that.

I’ll get back to you with pictures, excavation results and more!

For you who happens to read Swedish this article in the local paper was published on the dig.

The excavation is being carried out by Östergötlands County museum.

Bw

Magnus Reuterdahl