Our favourite thing about the summer holiday isn’t just children’s trails and sunshine! Each year we welcome students from universities around the country, to take part in an experimental archaeology project for around five weeks. This year we have welcomed Ollie and Lewis from Cardiff University, who are working with our residential archaeologist Ryan to build an expanded log boat.The boat is based on a small Germanic vessel dating back to 400AD, excavated to the north of Stockholm in Sweden. Archaeologists think it would have seen use in the Viking Age. The boat they are building is based on the Björk boat, a replica recreation by Hanus Jensen and Rasmus Budde Jensen on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark. Its bottom was an expanded lime tree with added boards of pine wood, its frame spruce wood, and the added boards were fastened with iron nails. From this experiment, the Jensens learnt that lime wood is likely to split when cut very thinly, as it is a soft wood.During this experiment, the team will be using authentic tools from the era such as axes and adzes, to find out if tool marks remain and/or change the log boat after its expansion. Feel free to visit them on their working site this summer, which is in between the Saxon house and the pig pen, and see how the boat is developing!
