The summer excavation led by Dr. Amara Okonkwo has uncovered the remains of a 10th-century trading post at Skellvik, including a hoard of dirham silver — direct evidence for the North Sea trade routes studied in HI220 Viking Age Scandinavia.
The site, first identified by geophysical survey two summers ago, has now yielded post holes of two longhouses, a jetty foundation, and more than three hundred small finds. The dirham hoard — 41 fragments of Islamic silver coinage — links the settlement to trade networks reaching the Caliphate via the Baltic.
“Textbooks draw these routes as confident arrows on a map,” said Dr. Okonkwo. “A hoard like this is the arrow made real. Our students excavated, catalogued and photographed every fragment themselves.”
Twelve undergraduates from HI330 Archaeological Methods spent two weeks at the site as part of their fieldwork requirement. The finds will be conserved over winter and exhibited in the Old Library next spring.