Archaeology Magazine - September/October 1985 - 39

Archaeologists uncovered this skeleton
at the Viking dig which they dated to
the mid-tenth century.

ubiquitous spinning and weaving.
About a.D. 975, after the last
Viking king, Erik Bloodaxe, had
been expelled and when York was
again under Anglo-Saxon control,
the occupants of Coppergate
changed the style of their buildings.
They constructed houses with semibasements cut into the ground for
up to 1.75 meters. This was in a style
of construction perhaps broadly
comparable to that described in
another, later context by a midseventeenth century secretary of the
colony of New York/New Amsterdam, and discovered by Ivor Noël
Hume at Martin's Hundred, Virginia. The Coppergate buildings
functioned as both houses and
workshops, and a range of different
activities was represented within
them. These included lathe-turning
of wooden bowls and cups which
gave the street its Old Norse name
of Coppergate, meaning "street of
the cup-makers." Not everyone was
employed in this way, however, for
there was also debris from the making of jewelry in amber and jet. As
well as manufacturing, the inhabitants also made money as traders;
a monk writing ca. 1000 described
York as "full of the treasures of
merchants."
The "Viking Dig" has for the
first time demonstrated the wide
range of mercantile and other con-

tacts which reached to North Cape
in the north of Norway (Walrus
ivory) and westward to the Viking
colonies in Ireland (jewelry); embraced a wide sweep of northwest
Europe (wine, jewelry and coinage);
extended south to the Red Sea/Gulf
of Aden (a cowrie shell amulet or
souvenir); reached the Byzantine
world at the east end of the Mediterranean (silks); and even stretched
to Samarkand in the foothills of
the Himalayas (coinage). York was
clearly a great emporium, arguably
at the zenith of its wealth and power
in the tenth and early eleventh centuries. It was a center of stubborn
resistance against William the Conqueror, who arrived in York in A.D.
1067, but after he had finally subdued Northumbrian independence
two years later, burning much of
the city in the process, a program
of rebuilding in the next decades
rapidly changed the city's appearance.
Today only one church tower of
York's Viking Age is visible above
ground. Archaeologists and construction workers alone came face
to face with Jorvik's buried remains.
Now, however, in the Jorvik Viking
Centre on the site of the "Viking
Dig," the York Archaeological TVust
has used the excavated evidence to
recreate a part of Jorvik. The street
and adjoining tenements have been

simulated in modern materials,
based on the excavated remains
which have been conserved and
stand alongside them. All the sights,
sounds (Old Norse) and smells
(pleasant and not so pleasant ) of
Jorvik, firmly based on archaeological and historical evidence, can be
encountered by visitors taking a
trip back through time to the tenth
century, and the visitor also sees the
techniques used to build up this
vivid picture of the past.
Already hailed internationally
as the new face of interpretative
display, the underground Jorvik
Viking Centre has been visited by
over 850,000 visitors in its first year.
The Centre is illuminating the crucial
role of York's Viking settlers in the
development of the modern city.
Meanwhile the York Archaeological
TVust's work of rescue archaeology
and research goes on in the hope of
bridging other gaps in our knowledge of York's distinguished past.
Even for the Viking Age the sample
of York excavated to date is only
about 0.25 percent, and there is
much yet to be found out, from the
palaces of the Viking kings and
Anglo-Scandinavian earls to the
city's workshops and the dwellings
of its poorer occupants. The "Viking
Dig" stands at the head of a continuing rescue and research program
and is only the beginning.
1985 39
September/October
Archaeology Magazine - September/October 1985

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - September/October 1985
