Wijnaldum is nowadays an unassuming rural village in the north of the province of Friesland, no more than a small dot on the map of the Netherlands. But during the Early Middle Ages, this probably was a lively political centre, a kingdom, with intensive contacts with other kingdoms along the North Sea coasts, and with the Frankish realm to the south. The search for the king that resided at Wijnaldum was the major goal of the excavations that were carried out at the terp Wijnaldum-Tjitsma between 1991 and 1993. These excavations yielded a wealth of information, although tangible remains of the king or a royal residence were not found. What was found was a lot of pottery. The ceramic assemblage from the first Millennium consists of local handmade and imported wheel-thrown pottery, revealing contacts with the wider world. The first results and an overview of the habitation phases were published in 1999, in Volume 1 of The Excavations at Wijnaldum. The ceramic assemblage, and its consequences for the habitation history of Wijnaldum, are the main subjects of this second volume of The Excavations at Wijnaldum.
Reviews
Arno Verhoeven in Medieval Ceramics 42-43 (2021-2022), pp. 87-88: “For any specialist in the field of early medieval ceramics, this volume is a must-read.”
Preface VII
1 Tracing farmers while digging for kings. The history and legacy of the excavations at Wijnaldum in Frisia, 1991-1993 1
Gilles de Langen
2 Introduction to the pottery research of Wijnaldum-Tjitsma 41
Jan de Koning and Annet Nieuwhof
3 Handmade pottery of the Roman Period 47
Ernst Taayke
4 Handmade pottery of the Migration Period and the Merovingian Period 69
Ernst Taayke
5 Wheel-thrown pottery of the Merovingian and Carolingian periods at Wijnaldum 99
Jan de Koning, Danny Gerrets and Annet Nieuwhof
6 Merovingian pottery at Wijnaldum in context 147
Jan de Koning and Annet Nieuwhof
7 Handmade pottery of the Merovingian and Carolingian periods at Wijnaldum 159
Jan de Koning, Annet Nieuwhof and Danny Gerrets
8 Wijnaldum-Tjitsma revisited. Testing the potential value of field-surveying terp sites 193
Angelique Kaspers
9 Digging for kings, finding pottery. Wijnaldum in the first millennium 241
Annet Nieuwhof, Danny Gerrets, Angelique Kaspers, Jan de Koning, Gilles de Langen and Ernst Taayke
List of contributors 263
