The Alvastra project is currently in its final stages of registration work and we are all working intensely with the registration of these last finds. Greg and I are currently working with the flint finds from the Middle trench where some very nice...
Alvastra pile dwelling
Lithics
The Alvastra finds as 3D-models!
Are you curious about the finds from the Alvastra pile dwelling? Today is going to be a good day for you then, because it is now possible to have a look at some of the finds as 3D-models! Very cool! Through the Swedish History Museum’s...
Burnt and fragmented – an overview of flint from the Western trench
I am happy to announce that my very first task in the Alvastra project is finished! The flint from the Western trench has now been registered and digitalised on the Swedish History Museum’s platform Sök i samlingarna. The total number of flint finds...
A trip to learn from a living legend
In April, I had the opportunity to be able to spend a week in Virginia, USA at the home of Dr. Errett Callahan, a master flint knapper, archaeologist and pioneer of experimental archaeology. Errett has long been one of the people I have looked up to...
Visit to Lund
Recently, the Alvastra team went on a visit to Lund, in Southern Sweden, to take part and present our project for a group of Stone Age archaeologists active in that region of the country. While we were there, Nathalie and I spent a day studying...
Two unique scrapers from the middle Neolithic?
Hafted scrapers are typically unifacial (flaked on one side),made from flakes or blades of flint, that were then fixed or ”hafted” to a handle and used to scrape excess fat and flesh from animal hides as a part of the tanning process. I came across...
Flint axes were used as lithic cores at Alvastra pile dwelling?
The pile dwelling is a site that has left evidence of many interesting cultural activities. One such activity that has become very evident whilst cataloguing the flint material is the destruction and/or re-use of apparently fully functional tools,...
Projectile points in the Pile dwelling
There are two dominant types of projectile points that have been found in and around the pile dwelling at Alvastra. These are commonly referred to as tanged arrowheads and traverse arrowheads. Tanged arrowhead with fire damage from Alvastra pile...
Lithic material in the pile dwelling
There are literally thousands of pieces of flint in the material collected in the 1976-1980 investigations. These range in size from whole cores or pieces of cores and raw material to the smallest micro flakes, and debitage less than 1mm across. So...