Bengt Nordqvist

Born in the year 1955 and my interest of archeology started when I was 7 years old. During my university studies I was working as an archeologist in Schleswig, Germany and for the section of Archeology, Swedish National Heritage Board. I have been working full time with rescue archeology since the year 1980. In the year 2017, I finish my work at the section of Archeology, National Historic Museum and become a full-time researcher working with the Finnestorp Offering Site.

During my 40 years with archeology I have been working with rescue excavations, research and popular publications, exhibitions, films (watch the videos from Offerplats Finnestorp and Grönån), computer games, media etc.

I was the first archeologist in the section of Archeology, Swedish National Heritage Board to make a “research publication” based on rescue excavations. The first one was the publication of “Dösen in Hunnebostrand”. Further on, the publication “Senmesolitikum i centrum” got a lot of attracted attention by the academic institutions. I had been working during 10 years with my Ph d publication, “Coastal Adaptions in the Mesolithic”. The purpose with this publication was to present the artifacts and the extensive research done by generations of scholars from the West Coast of Sweden. The intension was to present the flint objects and organic materials (as bones and harpiks) found at unique sites located along the Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic coastline (see also “The Chronology of the Western Swedish Mesolithic and Late Paleolithic). The oldest site situated in this marine landscape is 13 000 years old (see, “I spåren av de sista mammutjägarna”). The sites with the best preservation conditions were transgressed by the sea. It was Balltorp RAÄ 110 and Huseby Klev (see, “Coastal Adaptions in the Mesolithic and Huseby Klev”. Exclusive artifacts were also found on coastal sites connected to Ahrensburgian and Federmesser culture (see, “A Coastal Ahrensburgian site and A Coastal Federmesser site”). An excavation with fantastic results were also the site with wooden remains from the Iron age (0-700 A.D; see, “Våtmarksfynd från den forna åbädden vid Grönån”). On this site remains from ship repairing was found together with items from the nearby settlement).
I was the first archeologist in the section of Archeology, Swedish National Heritage Board to make a “popular publication” of a rescue excavation (“Världen äldsta tuggummi”). It was produced with my college R. Hernek.

During my 40 years I have done several research projects. But I will only present one of them and that is - Finnestorp Offering Site. It is a “still ongoing” project. The first part of the research project was to excavate the site during the years 2000-2004 and 2008-2012. During this period there were also exhibitions (see, “Drakskatten från Finnestorp”). The second part of the project is dominated by publishing the research results from Finnestorp. The first publication is a presentation of our excavations (see, “Offerplatsen Finnestorp Grävredogörelse över de arkeologiska undersökningarna”). The last article published “Horse tack from the Finnestorp offering site” is published here on Academia. In this article the different artefacts of horse gear (dated to 350-550 AD) is presented and discussed.