(ORDO NEWS) — It is far from the Norwegian coast, and there is no clay for making pottery. However, someone was making a lot of pottery at Kirchelleren in Tren, thousands of years ago.
Only once in Norway was a similar place found, used for the production of ceramics several thousand years ago.
It was located near Kristiansand in Southern Norway. Archaeologists know of several other possible similar structures.
Why, perhaps as early as 2,000 years ago, did someone build in Kirchelleren in Tren – far out to sea off the coast of Helgeland – what could be called a ceramic factory? Archaeologists do not yet have a clear answer.
Trena is located 50 kilometers from the mainland in Northern Norway.
The island has a population of just under 500 and is known in particular for hosting the Træna festival.
It is also one of the first settlements in Norway, and apparently the place where good pottery could be obtained a couple of thousand years ago.
Large ceramic production
“We found a structure that was clearly damaged by the heat. It is insulated from the bottom and lined with limpet shells.
There is a lot of baked clay inside,” says archaeologist Erlend Jorgensen. “We believe that this facility should have been made for a fairly extensive production of ceramics.”
He claims that it is not like the ceramic oven we can find today.
It is unlikely that Tren has clay suitable for making pottery. Perhaps people had to deliver clay from the mainland and far out to sea.
An archaeologist from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research points out that dating around 2,000 years old remains uncertain.
Found a lot of pottery
The last major archaeological excavation at Kirchelleren am Tren was carried out in the 1930s. Then the archaeologist Guthorm Gjessing and his colleagues unearthed the inside of the cave.
There they found a large number of pottery remains.
Now archaeologists have begun excavations of other parts of the cave. Their new find is connected with the remains of pottery found by Gjessing almost 90 years ago.
“Ceramic production still isn’t big in places like this unless there’s a special reason for it,” Jorgensen told sciencenorway.no. “That’s why I find it very strange.”
To store seals?
When he is asked to speculate a little, the archaeologist points to seal and fish catching, which no doubt took place on Tren about 2,000 years ago.
“Inside the Kirchelleren, we found a huge amount of bones and other slaughter waste. Mostly these are the remains of seals and fish.
Probably, large-scale seal hunting took place here on Tren,” he notes. “It seems that whole animals were brought into the cave and cooked in special pits along with shells, birds and fish.”
Archaeologists have also discovered the remains of a large cod and several sheep in the layers inside the Kirchelleren. They also found the remains of an elk.
“If you speculate, then you can assume that this ceramic production could be associated with the mass capture of seals and other animals.
It is possible that the ceramics were created for cooking. However, we do not know for sure,” says Jorgensen.
People lived here 9,000 years ago
Kirchelleren is a popular tourist site on the coast of Helgeland and the excavations now underway are geared towards the public.
Last summer, during the busiest period, several hundred people a day visited the cave and watched the work of archaeologists. Among the visitors was Queen Sonya.
During excavations last year, researchers came across bones and charcoal that are believed to be about 9,000 years old. That is, from the ancient stone age in Norway.
Jorgensen does not exclude that even more ancient remains of people can be found on Trena.
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