Overview

Torksey is widely known as a Viking winter camp from an entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for AD872. A growing body of archaeological evidence offers the potential of placing the site in its broader chronological and spatial context. Previous work has focussed on the pottery industry associated with an Anglo-Scandinavian town or burh. Recent metal detector finds have also suggested Torksey may be an Anglo-Saxon ‘productive site’, implying that Viking occupation must be seen in the context of pre-existing Saxon inhabitation. ‎‌‎ 

The aim of the project is to understand the role and significance of Torksey by plotting the chronological and spatial development of the various centres of activity, which have been tentatively identified through metal detecting.  These include a putative Anglo-Saxon riverine ‘beach market’, the Viking winter encampment and wider trading site, the Anglo-Scandinavian burh and the Torksey ware kilns. The project has major implications for wider understanding of the Viking Great Army and its interaction with local populations, the development of Anglo-Saxon burhs, and the evolving nature of trade and industry in the early medieval period, and its connections with power and ideology.

Funding has been provided by the British Academy and the Society of Antiquaries of London.

People

Project Researchers

University of York

• Julian Richards: Co-Investigator
• Soren Sindbaek
• Steve Ashby
• Hannah Brown, Geophysicist
• Andrew Marriott, Site Assistant

University of Sheffield

• Dawn Hadley, Co-Investigator
• Gareth Perry, Research student 
• Samantha Stein, Research student

External Collaborators

• Gareth Williams, British Museum, Co-Investigator
• Andy Woods, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
• Jane Young, freelance pottery specialist, Lincolnshire
• Rachel Atherton, Derby Museum
• Adam Daubney, PAS Finds Liaison Officer, Lincoln Museum

Reports

Interim reports

Link to Society of Antiquaries research page

Torksey Test Pits 2011 (PDF , 3,515kb): Reports on Five Test Pits Excavated in Torksey, Lincolnshire, 4th-8th July 2011, by Gareth Perry, with Jane Young and Samantha Stein

Viking at Torksey: a fieldwalking adventure of a first year archaeology student, by Julian D. Richards and Daria Wiercigroch, The Post Hole 27, February 2013

Presentations

International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 12 July 2012

• J.D. Richards: "The Viking Winter Camp at Torskey"
• A. Woods: "Metalwork from the Torksey Viking Site"
• G.Perry & J.Young: "The Anglo-Scandinavian Pottery Industry at Torksey, Lincolnshire"
• D.Hadley: "Burial Practices in Viking-Age Torksey"
• H.Brown & S.Stein: "Surveying the Landscape of the Viking Winter Camp"
• S.Sindbaek: "Ringfenced Vikings: Scandinavian army camps and defensive tactics from Torksey to Trelleborg"

East Midlands Heritage: conference to mark the publication of the Updated Research Agenda and Strategy for the Historic Environment of the East Midlands, Derby, 15 Sept 2012

• D.M. Hadley: "Recent investigations of the Viking winter camp and Anglo-Scandinavian town at Torksey, Lincolnshire"

48th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 9 May 2013

• D.M. Hadley: "Viking Winter Camps in England: New Archaeological Evidence"

17th Viking Congress, Shetland, 2-10 August 2013

• J.D. Richards: "Torksey: Winter Camp of the Viking Great Army"
• D. Hadley: "Torksey: The Anglo-Scandinavian burh and Late Saxon town"

Society of Antiquaries, London, 28 Nov 2013

• D.M.Hadley and J.D.Richards

Upper Wharfedale Field Society, Grassington, 24 March 2014

• J.D. Richards: "Camp followers of the Viking Great Army"