This series of publications look like little books, each containing articles on various investigations at Birka. My partner managed to get hold of a set 8 by contacting a Swedish uni and having a workmate's partner pay for them whilst on a holiday, after many attempts at online payments failed. They were absolutely worth the trouble.
I've been scanning and skipping the text to find any references that will help build my understanding and support my theories about mould making for fine metal manufacturing. Only problem, 3 sessions and I'm only half way through the first book. There is so much info that I am finding it hard to skim, and am actually re-reading the entire text. Combined with flicking back to previous pages and making notes, it is certainly building upon my prior knowledge. My concept maps with clouds for major factors and lines to droplets of references have become stormy scenes. In an effort to avoid chaotic presentation and keep my notes clear enough to find points by flicking through my note book, there seem to be new concept cloud maps on every page. One is not enough. What a great set of articles!
Short version of new info from memory:
Metal finds - weights (60 examples in one harbour). Merchant finds on Birka only account for 1.4% of items, but so many weights found here that Birka has significantly bumped up the incidence for the whole of Sweden. Finds in sheet, ingot and wire, as well as manufacturing waste and finished items. Bronze, silver, gold, iron, lead listed so far.
Slag - 3 kinds found on island and 1 points to fine metal work
Rock - 3 types (soapstone all fragmentary, suggestive of broken items, not working of raw stone)
Clay - Stolpe lists a couple of stratographies and the more recent digs in the 1990s show a couple of different types of clay on the island anywhere from 5ft above water level (on the surface) to 9ft underground below charcoally black earth, sand ashy soil, gravelly gravel and various combinations of black/charcoally and light grey ashy layers. Used for spindle whorls, loom weights, finemetal moulds, clay and wattle housing and for driving defensive harbour spikes into.
Crucibles - 60 fragments, all open type, indicating use in the typical Birka period of 9-10thC, not the prior Vendel or Migration lidded kinds.
Moulds - 35 fragments of moulds. 2 oval brooch styles (p51 and p37 type oval brooches) and
Ljones type equal-armed brooches may have been made on Birka. Got to check this out. Arrhenius studied this in 1973.
Pottery - 4 kinds found. Imported from Western Europe, Slavonic and Finnish regions. Local ware also found. Bucket shaped with inturned lip and nail incising. Not super relevant but may set up precedence for use of local clay in some handicrafts.
And some interesting rune sticks/bones with messages. One author suggests the burning on one end is from intentionally placing them in fire, since nothing around them is charred. Since the message on one says the woman is a laughing stock for doing something, maybe they were designed to erase the deed they record. Relevant because there was a silver foil pendant with 4 rows of runic inscriptions also found, linking runic inscriptions to the trade of fine metal working, and the use of bone as a carving medium links to the practice patterns carved into bones found in Dublin and elsewhere that I have yet to discover. Hoping to find enough evidence that I can produce a series of bone carvings as a sort of sample card of available designs for prospective jewellery customers who come to our workshop.
The picture is being slowly filled in.
I'm still curious: Would the craftsman have worked seated on a stool, seating on a raised section of the workshop, standing?
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