
Gamla Uppsala – Work in October 2013
The Site Under Excavation – all images from Swedish National Heritage Board
(click on the images to enlarge)
The excavation revealed two rows of wooden pillars – one of the rows was c. 1,000 m long, the other c. 500 m.
Archaeologist Lena Beronius-Jorpeland said that the colonnade appeared to date from the 5th century AD and was the largest Iron Age construction in Sweden.
She said: “It is a completely straight line and they have dug postholes every 20 feet (6 meters). They have had an idea of exactly where this line is going and where to build it. It is a fairly modern way of thinking and we don’t have many traces of these sorts of constructions from that time.”
The massive post holes seem to have held pillars c. 7 m high, and some of the post holes contained bones – possibly from animal sacrifices.
Beronius-Jorpeland said that there may be further colonnades in the area and that excavation would continue.