The Shindig - An Archaeology Podcast

The Galloway Hoard is one of the most spectacular Viking-Age hoards ever discovered, its multiple packages and layers containing not only a huge volume of remarkable silver and gold jewellery and a stunning lidded silver vessel, but also an astonishingly rare collection of the organic materials - in this case, silk, leather, wool, animal gut, wood, and some very special dirt - that almost never survive from the early medieval world.

In this episode, join National Museum of Scotland Galloway Hoard Researcher Dr. Adrián Maldonado as he interweaves the archaeology and history of a magnificent treasure trove deposited in c. AD 900 by unknown hands in a turbulent and vivid area of south-west Scotland.

The Galloway region in which the hoard was deposited was a blurry mix of cultures and languages, ranging from Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon to Irish, Scottish and British. Reflecting this multicultural environment, the hoard's contents, which seem to come from as far apart as Central Asia and Ireland, raise more fascinating questions than they answer about who was living, fighting and dying in this most dramatic and mutable part of the Viking world. As we learn, the project to unwrap the Galloway Hoard is only just beginning, with multiple agencies and experts called to Scotland to delve deeper and deeper into both the hoard and its secrets!

Who, then, buried this most eclectic and remarkable of hoards? It was once presumed that it was a band of Vikings, but the answer, as Adrián tells presenter Dr. Tom Horne and Producer Luke Barry, may very well surprise you...

#viking #vikings #archaeology #history #britain #ireland #scandinavia #vikingage

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An almost incredible discovery has been made in Scotland’s stunning Western Isles: human-made islets in lochs, known in Scotland and Ireland as crannogs, were being constructed by Neolithic communities. Previously, these remarkable sites, phenomena both of waterside habitation and ritual activity, had been thought to be a development of the Late Bronze Age or early Iron Age, but new archaeological research is showing far earlier origins, in a revelation with major ramifications for how we view not only the Scottish but also the European Neolithic periods.

Join us for this Dig It! special as we chat with Professor Duncan Garrow of the Islands of Stone project and the University of Reading to hear about the amazing survivals of Neolithic pottery and organic artefacts that are changing the way we look at these wonderful feats of house engineering and ritual practice.

Islands of Stone: https://crannogs.soton.ac.uk/

A note from our wonderful Dig It! partners:

Dig It! is coordinated by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and primarily funded by Historic Environment Scotland.

Dig It! is a hub for Scottish archaeology coordinated by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Our mission is to increase understanding of and engagement with archaeology for Scotland-based audiences by providing promotion and support to the heritage sector and enabling other sectors and excluded communities to connect with archaeology. One example of this is our annual Scotland Digs summer fieldwork campaigns and for 2023, we’re excited to be working with the Red River Archaeology Group to produce special episodes of The Shindig podcast to showcase a few of the fantastic archaeological projects taking place across the country.

Dig It! website: https://www.digitscotland.com/

Dig It! Digest: https://www.digitscotland.com/contact-us/newsletter/

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By Mapping the Vikings, archaeology PhD student Tenaya Jorgensen has developed a fascinating new narrative about what was happening in the 9th-century North Sea and Atlantic Viking world: two distinct Viking groups - one centered on the Irish Sea and Scottish region(s), and the other in England, Frankia and the Channel Area - were raiding, trading and settling in the early Viking Age, with the former dominated by groups from western Norway and the latter from southern Scandinavia.

Tenaya asks us to move away from Anglo-centric ideas of the 'Great Army', reimagining it as a 'Channel Army' influential not only in England, but also in its apparent area of origin in that coastal area between the Danish territories in southern Scandinavia and western France. While there are (later) political connections between Dublin and York, this is more a 10th-century development.

Ultimately, it is - as Tenaya states - 'all politics', with the biggest developments relating to the massive 'ripples of power' set off by a Frankish (Carolingian) state with designs on Danish possessions, that then included large parts of southern Norway and south-west Sweden.

Click the link to see Tenaya's Open Access interactive map: https://www.tenayajorgensen.com/vikingagemap

#Vikings #archaeology #history #Viking

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In this episode, Dr. Tom talks with Kenneth and Kirsty from the Caithness Broch Project, a pioneering scheme to build a ‘broch’ – massive Iron-Age drystone towers concentrated in Caithness, northern Scotland – for the first time in 2,000 years.

Brochs are the tallest prehistoric structures found in Britain or Ireland, with these ‘pinnacles of prehistoric Scottish architecture’ potentially reaching over 15m in height! Their use is not certain – community-centred domestic use seems most likely – but the monumental scale suggests they were built to impress and act as highly-visible centres of their farming communities.

The challenge of building a broch in the modern day is huge, but the Project has now selected the perfect site for the Big Broch Build and its mission to ensure heritage-based regeneration of Caithness, a region facing massive depopulation and job losses, can now continue apace!

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We enter the world of the 7th-century Anglo-Saxon Trumpington Cross burial, from the vanishingly rare - and stunning - gold and garnet pectoral cross found on the teenager's chest and the bed on which she was buried, to this young woman's distant origins in central Europe. Drs. Leggett, Rose and Brownlee talk about a fascinating range of topics, including potential cultural links between early medieval England and Southern Germany, the significance of pectoral crosses found in high-status female burials, the role of women in the Christianization of England, isotopic and aDNA analysis in archaeology, diet and mobility in the past, and the bed burial phenomenon in 7th-century Germany and England. We also talk about the ongoing exhibition, Beneath Our Feet: Archaeology of the Cambridge Region, 'a new exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology explores the traces of where people have lived, worked and died for thousands of years in Cambridgeshire', which features the Trumpington Cross burial.

Read the University of Cambridge web story about the burial and the exhibition here: https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/trumpington-cross-burial-facial-reconstruction-new-evidence-revealed

The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology - MAA: https://maa.cam.ac.uk/ | https://www.museums.cam.ac.uk/events/beneath-our-feet-archaeology-cambridge-region

Our thanks to Tom Almeroth-Williams, Communications Manager (Research) of the University of Cambridge Office of External Affairs for use of copyright images and all other help with this episode.

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