Indiana Jones tells you archeology is about wild chases and getting your whip out, but it’s really about dredging in the muck. RIA Novosti takes you to the Smolensk Region’s Gnyozdovo dig in Russia, the biggest Viking burial ground in the world.
1/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
The dig in Gnyozdovo outside Smolensk has been active since 1949, but with some 20 hectares and more than 4,000 burial mounds to be sifted through for metal tools, beads and pottery shards, it really stands a chance of lasting for generations.
2/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
Bucket after bucket of dirt is dumped on a sieve where the dirt is washed through leaving the larger pieces to be investigated.
3/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
Students from Moscow State University and volunteers work together, creating a kind of conveyor belt where some are digging, others are rinsing and sifting, and the more experienced look for archeological finds.
4/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
Removing the soil layer by layer is long and tedious work and the archeologists need to be careful when scraping so as not to damage anything of cultural value.
5/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
This is backbreaking work as they work for hours over one small square of the dig.
6/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
Several digs dot the meadow, each spanning a dozen square meters, sometimes a few meters deep.
7/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
A ceramic shard from the 10th century found at the site.
8/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
It takes a sharp eye and experience to be able to spot small finds, but each of these small fragments is just another small part of a bigger puzzle.
9/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
Another brigade is digging outside the “community proper” near where the Dnieper used to run before changing its course.
10/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
Sometimes the plots are very deep because of sediment in the area from the nearby Dnieper. Not far from this spot a large stash of pitch was found, which was used back then to coat the bottom of boats.
11/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
Each of the small sites has their own sifting equipment…
12/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
…and the experienced eye can define immediately what is a piece of junk and what has value. Here the sifter finds a small animal bone, which tells part of the story of the people’s diet at that time.
13/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
All of the finds are labeled according to the sector they were taken from, the depth, and registered later in the lab.
14/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
Surveys are conducted constantly. Gnyozdovo was an important urban settlement, housing between 800 and 1,000 people at its peak – on par with such centers of medieval civilization as Sweden’s Birka and Hedeby.
15/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
Precise measurements of everything removed from the soil are made…
16/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
…and then are charted on a map so it gives a full picture of how that particular site is laid out.
17/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
The archeological sites here not only study how people lived, but how they died as well. Most people were cremated and their ashes buried in everyday pots used in the household. More important people were buried in a full outfit, including weapons, and leaders were buried alongside three companions to the netherworld: a horse, dog and a rooster. The bigger the hill, the more important the individual was.
18/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
Working under the hot sun takes its toll. A history student taking a rest from digging, still clinging to his shovel.
19/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
A small brass element for clothing.
20/20
© Photo : Alexey Eremenko
Norsemen – mostly Swedes, as Danes and Norwegians were focused on pillaging Western Europe – settled here in the 10th and early 11th century, mixing with Slavs incoming from Central Europe and the region’s indigenous inhabitants, the Balts.
Nobody quite knows why the settlement died out, with theories ranging from war to a change in silver flows in Eurasia, but there is still plenty of material evidence to be uncovered a millennium later.
Nobody quite knows why the settlement died out, with theories ranging from war to a change in silver flows in Eurasia, but there is still plenty of material evidence to be uncovered a millennium later.
