Archeologie

In the debate on the economy of the Early Middle Ages, there is a contradictive understanding between the “ruralisation” implying “radical simplification” (Wickham 2005) and the continuation of long-distance trade with high peasant mobility (Theuws 2012; Theuws in press). The argument for putting long-distance trade back on the research agenda to challenge the dominance of the town-hinterland model (Theuws 2012, 30) is picked up in the MA thesis by dating and provenancing the barrels and timbers found in the linings of wells and the revetments excavated at the Oegstgeest-Rijnfront site, an early medieval riverine settlement on the north bank of the Old Rhine near present day Oegstgeest in The Netherlands.
The construction of Leiden’s BioScience Park demanded extensive excavations to document the archaeological record of the settlement ex-situ. Post-excavation analyses are still in process. The main aim of the present study was to compare the settelement's chronology and the socio-economic relations with other riverine settlements along the Old Rhine. Since precise dating can at present not be established by pottery, the thesis focused on the archaeological timber finds. The aim was to determine (i) the felling dates and (ii) the geographical origin of the timber elements from the settlement by means of tree ring research. Results of previous and present tree ring studies were synthesized to get an up-to-date understanding of the settlement's construction activity.
The data-set consists of 527 documented wooden elements recovered during the two campaigns of 2009 and 2014 and excavated from wells and revetments. The dendrochronological study includes the measurement of 152 samples from sixteen archaeological features, which reflect 96 tree series (TS). The TS were grouped into six tree groups (TG). Thirteen of the sixteen features could be dated. In the synthesis of all present data, the estimated felling dates (i.e. presence of sapwood) and exact felling dates (i.e. presence of a bark edge) were markers for establishing absolute dated construction activity in the riverine settlement. To conclude, activity can be plotted absolutely between AD 644 ± 1 to terminus post quem AD 684 ± 8. Still, an earlier starting date should to be taken into consideration based on several earlier terminus post quem dates, of which tpq AD 561 ± 5 is the oldest. The provenance of the timbers from greenwood compare best with the reference chronology that represents timbers that are excavated along the Dutch lower Rhine and Meuse rivers, signifying a 'local' timber source. The Oak trees used of four barrels and seven reused planks (possible reused ship wood) have their geographical origin in the German Rhineland. The features predate the heyday of Dorestad. Ring-width series from Oak barrels excavated at Ribe and Ipswich dating to the second half of the eight century were compared with the Oegstgeest-Rijnfront barrels. The ring-width series strongly correlate with each other. Remarkably, the provenance of the Oak employed for the construction of the barrels at the sites of Oegstgeest-Rijnfront, Ribe and Ipswich is strongly related. This indicates that a distinct geographical origin in German Rhineland provided for over hunderd years the raw material for the production of barrels. The exact location is at present not determined. The dendrochronological study established that long-distance trade can be detected in the Rhine estuary before the rise of Dorestad.

Supervisors:
Prof. Dr F. Theuws (Leiden University) and Prof. Dr E. Jansma (Utrecht University)

Acknowledgements
Leiden University (LU) and Utrecht University (UU) funded the dendrochronological research; LU as part of the post-excavation analyses and UU in the light of the researchproject: The Dark Age of the Lowlands in an interdisciplinary light: people, landscape and climate in the Netherlands between AD 300 and 1000 (NWO, 2012-2017; grant-number 360-60-110). The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE) provided an internship of a year at its Dendrochronology Laboratory where the analyses were performed. The Netherlands Centre for Dendrochronology/RING Foundation shared their tree ring data collection on early medieval material.

The Late Medieval and Early Modern periods in the Netherlands are marked by an upsurge in the production, use and repurposing of casks in cities. This is inextricably linked with the growing marine and riverine trade markets and the increase in artisan production. Casks have been found on shipwrecks, where they were used as containers for merchandise (primary purpose) and in urban areas, where they were repurposed as shafts for wells or cesspits (secondary purpose). As a result, the initial production phase of the lifecycle of casks often remained undetected. This study aims to generate an overview of the dendrochronological studies conducted in the past decades by Dutch dendrochronologists on casks from Dutch archaeological context, in which the felling year of the wood used to construct the casks can be dated from the 12th to 18th centuries, to gain insight into their production by coopers. The first objective is to better understand the diverse provenance areas detected in the co...

THIS PAPER ADDRESSES THE QUESTION, who were the people who were buried at the early medieval North Sea emporia? Conclusions about the mercantile character of the North Sea emporia are often based on portable material culture. In recognition of the fact that it is difficult to draw conclusions about the identities of people based on finds assemblages, two pilot projects have been completed that involved bioarchaeological analyses of cemetery populations associated with these sites. The first of these, the Investigating the Dead in Early Medieval Domburg project, undertook multi-disciplinary analyses of the (very small) surviving burial population from the mostly destroyed sites in the Domburg area (Netherlands), combining isotope analysis, radiocarbon dating, biological anthropology, dendro-chronology, and provenancing and study of previous use of coffin wood. The second, the Medieval Migrants of the North Sea World project, inventoried available isotopic evidence for human remains from emporia sites in England, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, alongside contextual archaeological information. This paper presents both projects, providing the detailed information from Domburg in its wider, international context, and highlighting the need for a comprehensive research agenda to fill current gaps in our understanding of early medieval emporia populations.