John Owen

McGraw, Ryan M.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-60807-5

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…105 The cultic significance of the site is underscored by the fact that excavations in 2016 produced two gold-foil figures (gullgubber), at Åker: one was found in a layer overlying a great hall and the other at the bottom of a layer of fire-cracked stones/cooking-stones. 106 Large areas of cooking pits at Åker, dated to the Roman Iron Age and Migration Period, further demonstrate that the site was an assembly place, where many people would congregate on a regular basis. 107 All in all, this may well indicate that the farm of Åker played a key role in public ritual in both the earlier-and later Iron Age.…”

Section: A Religious and Political Centrementioning

confidence: 95%

The Åker Assemblage — Fit for a King? A New Account and Discussion of a Collection of Treasure of the Norwegian Merovingian Period

Røstad¹

2020

Medieval Archaeology

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In the second half of the 19th and the early decades of the 20th centuries, an assemblage of stray finds dating to c AD 600 was collected at Åker in south-eastern Norway. The items included a cloisonné-decorated sword-belt buckle of exceptional quality, a pommel from a ring-sword, and various mounts and fittings from a shield, sword belts and hangers. In the early 1990s several metal-detector finds were made at the site, and it was clear that many of those had originally belonged to the same context as the earlier finds. This article presents and discusses the Åker assemblage on the basis of what has been added to the evidence, and of new knowledge about the site of Åker produced by archaeological excavation. The objective is to gain a better understanding of what the assemblage really represents.The Åker assemblage, with its famous buckle (Fig 1), is a collection of unstratified finds made on the farm of Åker, which lies in south-eastern Norway, alongside the country's largest lake, Mjøsa (Fig 2). The findspot is about 400 m north of the farmstead at Åker, on an outcrop of rock named Smørkollen, on which there formerly stood a barrow. The first objects were found as early as the period 1868-1912, when the land at Smørkollen was cleared of trees and turned into a field. Metal-detecting was carried out over Smørkollen in 1992 and 1993, resulting in a number of new finds, including the second half of a birdshaped mount, the first part of which had been delivered to the museum in 1889 (Fig 3). 2 On the basis of these detector finds, and other more recent archaeological discoveries, we can now come to a better understanding of what the Åker assemblage really represents. Archaeological excavations at Åker in the 1980s, the 1990s, and in 2016 and 2017, have also contributed new information about the site in the period between the Roman Iron Age and the Viking period, which in turn provides a basis for new suggestions about the significance of the Åker assemblage. This article features a comprehensive presentation of the Åker assemblage, in which the finds are discussed within the context of recent archaeological finds and research, and a new interpretation of the assemblage itself and of the social significance of the place of the findspot in its period is proposed.

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Section: A Religious and Political Centrementioning

confidence: 95%