Viking Age Pit May Have Been Rural Privy

VORDINGBORG, DENMARK—Science Nordic reports that archaeologists looking for pit houses on the southeast coast of the island of Zealand discovered what may be a Viking Age privy. The pit contained a layer of sediment containing a high concentration of fly pupae and pollen typically found in honey or mead. A lack of airborne pollen indicates that the hole had been covered. “We know about privy buildings inside cities in the latter part of the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages, but not from agrarian settlements and farms,” said Anna Beck of the Museum of Southeast Denmark. Researchers had assumed that people used their waste, along with that of their animals, to fertilize their fields. Beck suggests that many pits found in excavations at rural Viking sites may actually be privies that were overlooked because the human waste had decomposed, which is not always the case in urban privies. Beck also found two postholes on either side of the pit that may have been part of a small building. Critics of the idea think the waste could have landed in the hole through other means. For more, go to “Hoards of the Vikings.”