Archaeological Finds

Photo: Toril Andreassen Directly east of the Bull Museum, below the courtyard of the old parsonage, archaeologists recently found signs of settlement from the Iron Age on the very first day of their exploratory excavation. Because the land-use plan for the museum was to be changed, it was necessary to determine whether the area might contain ancient cultural artifacts. The archaeologists began at the top near the Bull Museum, where they thought the area was most interesting, and used an excavator to remove the layer of plowed, cultivated land in a two-meter-wide path down from the museum courtyard. Within ten minutes, the excavator had uncovered the first of what would soon become several cooking pits, and then there appeared finds that the archaeologists are currently interpreting as bone remains of humans or animals, postholes, layers of old cultivation soil, and remnants of a chalk pipe.