2025/01/02 by Aoife Daly, Justin J.L. Kimball, Jan Bill · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Maritime and Coastal Archaeology #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research
paper · doi:10.1080/00293652.2025.2510920
As part of our research into the Norwegian Viking ship burial tradition, we carried out new dendrochronological analyses of fragments of oak ship timbers from diverse ship burials from Eastern and Western Norway. One tree-ring dating result for one of the planks from the Grønhaug ship burial from Karmøy, Western Norway, was unexpected and lead to a revision of the date of the ship, formerly set to AD 775–801. We date the felling of the tree used to between AD 854–867. Using 14C wiggle-match analysis, we confirmed the new result. In this article, we present the previous research into the dating of the Grønhaug burial, the science of identifying its correct dating, and the revised dating’s implications for our understanding of the grave, the ship, and the wider monumental ship burial tradition in Norway and how it connected the east and west of Norway in the 8th and 9th centuries. Finally, we discuss the implications of the case for dendrochronological practices in the future.