House - Viking/Hiberno-Norse

The National Monuments Service's description

Excavations between 1977-9on the eastern part of the Viking banks south of the old city wall and on the 11th-century house and properties exposed aseries of trapezoidal plots, demarcated by post-and-wattle boundary fences was identified. These plots narrowed towards the waterfront and had their widest ends along Fishamble Street from which the property lines radiate. Finds include a variety of pottery especially Saxon cooking-wares, wheel-stamped pottery, rouletted stamped grey wares as well as two Hiberno-Norse coins, a carved openwork finial consisting of two birds heads in the Ringerike style, a scored bucket stave with an elaborate Ringerike design, a carved wood figurine, a carved bone deity (Thor?) and a sword pommel. A coin of Eadgar minted at Chester Ca. AD.965 was also found. About thirty houses or parts of houses were excavated, all rectangular in plan and most divided into three aisles - a wide central aisle flanked by a narrower chamber at each side of an aisle-board. The hearths were placed at the centre of the middle aisle. In single door homes the door was usually at the west end, but in the rare instances of two doors they were at each end. The 10th-century houses had a single wall of post-and-wattle and 8-12 roof supports. They averaged about 9m. by 6m. in size, with larger areas of flat stone paving in contrast to the 11th-century houses which only rarely had small areas of stone cobbling. Outhouses were found in association with some of the residences. These tended to be smaller in area and were not provided with hearths and had not the three-fold internal division universally associated with the dwellings. Access to the houses was by means of pathways which usually consisted of flat horizontal screens (occasionally under paving stones) laid along the boundary fences. Tools and implements included iron knives, hinges, staples. tongs and axes; wooden shovels, handles, bowls, plates, stave-built barrels and kegs; stone whorls and net sinkers; textile fragments; bone and antler combs, whorls and gaming pieces; leather straps and shoes. Also found were wooden artifacts richly carved in the Ringerike style (a crozier-like finial and a stylus handle), a series of Hiberno-Norse coins minted in Dublin in the early 11th century, a coin of Aethelread minted at Exeter, a stave bearing a scored Runic alphabet on either side, antler with a runic inscription and a decorative toy (?) in the shape of a horse. Antler and glass beads were found as well as evidence of amber working and iron working. Animal bone and botanical identification was undertaken on site (Wallace ).