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86 The Viking Age in Denmark

provided C¹⁴-dates of the same ccntury. Outsidc the town wali were several ditches, one of which continues to the north of the connection wali, showing this to be latcr than the first town rampart. Towards the south-west an additional outer wali is found, while towards the sca a semicircular submerged palisadę framed the central harbour basin.

To the north of the walled area is a smali and relatively early settlement, and above this, on a steep hill, an undated wali system w^Tith a number of late Iron Age or evcn Viking Age burial mounds. Before the construction of other dcfcnces, the hill may have scrved as a refuge, in the same w^ray as the ‘stronghold’ at Birka, the port in mid-Sweden.⁵¹ Other early cemeteries lie immediately to the west of the northern, the Southern and the central settlement. The Southern cemetery expanded after 900 towards the east and covers, as noted, the site of the early settlement. The central cemetery also continues into the tenth ccntury, but on the other hand is superimposed in part by the expanding settlement around the brook. But before this happens, we record a division by 900 of the gravcs into a large group of simplc east-west skeleton gravcs, fcw of which contain artefacts, though morę frequently in a coffin, and a smali group of uneremated chamber tombs further to the south-west, near the edge of the semicircular wali, possibly contemporary in datę or slightly later. The chamber tombs are morę richly furnished and have parallels in the later part of the Southern graveyard - immediately to the south of which, in-cidentally, is found the well-known ^wShip-chamber Tomb' (‘Boot-kammergrab’) also from the beginning of the tenth century.⁵² Here a ship has been laid on top of the rich chamber. The early part of the Southern graveyard comprises cremations, including urn graves, dating back to the eighth century; but here too the east-west skeleton grave is the rule and is followed in frequency by sonie older north-south orientated inhumations. In generał, the spread of graves is irregular, but the central gravcyard of east-west burials had very little space for use and gave the interments a minimum of room, rather like a town burial ground in early Lund.⁵³ The central chamber grave group lies in parallel rows and may have followed a Street. It is obvious, seen from the settlement itsclf, that the land in the central area was scarce and regulated.

The graves outside the wali do not exceed the tenth century, while sonie of the interments of the common central burial ground, superseding, incidentally, a shrinking settlement area in the finał phase of the history of the town, belong to the eleventh century. Dendro-chronologically no constructions on the site are later than 1020. This corresponds with the fact that at least sonie of the craft activitics of the town seem to have ceased at around the close of the tenth century. For instance, no eleventh-ccntury moulds for jewellery have been found.

The excavated area of the early south settlement consists of a single long-house (probably like the ones on the central site) and a rather largc number of pit-houses, almost all, unlike the pit-houses in the yillages, rectangular and each with a fireplace.⁵⁴ In several of these buildings the manufacture of amber beads has taken place, while near one was found a rnould for the casting of bronze jewellery. In addition, iron has been extracted, or worked, on the site. The imports comprise a west European ‘Sceatta’ coin and fragments of Rhinish millstones and pottery. Although the finds are few, we already have sonie of the facets of the later Hedeby, such for examplc as the manufacture of luxuries and long-distance trade, even to procurc day-to-day articles important for the subsistence economy. On the other hand, there are no definite traces ofa regular laying out of the site suggesting its possible use by both local and foreign groups. Many agrarian sites of the same age —like, for instance, Valleberga in Skane⁵⁵- actually fulfil almost all the criteria set by the south settlement; the absence of long-houses on the Skane site, howevcr, is probably caused by the excavation technique. The important difference is the fireplaces in the corners of the Hedeby pit-houses, indicating, along with the regular construction, their use all the year round as practically the sole dwellings, and workshops too on the site. In addition, almost no other settlement had such a strategie position as Hedeby between the North Sea and the Baltic. Only fifteen kilometres to the west, by following the Trene and Ejder rivers, it was possible to reach western Europę in a sea-going ship. Reloading at Hedeby would have avoided the hazardous navigation around Jylland and left the traffic on the Baltic, as far as Russia or beyond, (to the Islamie and Byzantine worlds), to sailors with local knowledge of this sea; while at the same time the west Europeans would have been restricted to the North Sea and adjoining waters. The Danes, finally, could benefit from knowledge of the navigation on both the eastern and the western seas.

At the lower end of the Hedeby brook, the central settlement, from its initial foundation shortly after 8(X), according to the dendro-chronological datings, presents a very different lay-out.⁵⁶ A number of rectangular houses have been found belonging to successive phases (Fig. 24). The buildings stand in rows on narrow plots whosc fences rernain in the same place over time, suggesting that the site was regulated from the beginning of its history and the plots subordinated to a generał plan. These houses measure on avcragc about ten by five metres and they almost never have inner posts. They were lightly built with only the wali to support the roof; this was madę of wickerwork, or, morę rarely, of planks. Doors were usually at the end of the houses, facing the larger and minor plank-covered and permanent, straight streets, from which they were separated by a smali court with an entrance mat. As a result of the excellent preservation of the organie materiał and the recovery of parts of the supcrstructurc, it has been possible to reconstruct the houses fully. In several cases inner divisions are recorded and fireplaces are usually situated in the larger central