Hot take on that Viking burial ship in Norway - I think the dating is off

Everyone's hyped about the Gjellestad ship being from 800 AD, but I spent 3 months looking at the soil samples from the excavation report and I'm not buying it. The stratigraphy shows a clear mixing layer that could mess up carbon dating by 50 to 100 years. I learned from a geoarchaeology workshop in Denver last spring that root disturbance in sandy soils like that can pull older organic material down. Nobody in the forums wants to hear it because the 800 AD date makes for a better headline. Has anyone else checked the pollen analysis from the burial mound base versus the ship trench?

3 comments

3 Comments

abby3082mo ago

Oh man, that root disturbance thing is wild, totally messes with the timeline.

abby3081mo ago

messes with the timeline" is kinda dramatic if you ask me. Like yeah roots getting disturbed is annoying but is it really some universe breaking thing? Plants get bumped around all the time in nature, animals dig stuff up, weather happens. Most of them bounce back just fine unless you really go ham on them. I just feel like people get way too worked up over stuff that's really not that big of a deal in the long run.

dakotacraig2mo ago

@abby308 reminds me of that time my friend's garden grew upside down, roots on top.