This project aims to uncover the use of spaces in the very earliest urban towns in Denmark, focusing on the 2017-2018 excavation of Viking-Age Ribe. The project will use a scientific approach, using geochemical analyses of soil samples from different interesting contexts. A lot of work will be put into the spatial distribution of houses at the Viking-Age marketplace in Ribe. This is done to uncover the daily life in and around houses in an urban setting. Since the stratigraphy in an urban setting, such as Ribe, is often complex and very finely laminated, and thus, it can be difficult to detangle different contexts from each other by eye alone. In such cases, microscopic approaches such as geochemistry can be of great help, since this helps us to understand what is not straight forward and visible in the field.

The main focus of the project will be to develop a better methodology for the geochemical approach in archaeological urban contexts. This will be done by using a large amount of samples to create a higher resolution of the geochemical analyses than usual and also incorporate new and faster methods for analyses. The analyses is mainly based on grid sampling of house floors and activity layers, but samples from profiles and other interesting contexts will also be included whenever there is an interesting question which cannot be solved based on archaeological approaches alone. The preservation of material in Ribe is of very good quality, thus, this is one of the best places in the world to work on improving the methodology in the interdisciplinary field of geoarchaeology. 

PI: Pernille Lærke Krantz Trant

The Northern Emporium project is an archaeological research project funded by the Carlsberg Foundation (Semper Ardens Fellowship). The project is affiliated to Centre of Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet) at Aarhus University and carried out in close collaboration with Museum of Southwest Jutland.

Project website: http://projects.au.dk/northernemporium