- Finished the north trench with the high seat & foil figure concentration, started backfilling.
- Emptied the recent refuse pits in the south trench, uncovered and sectioned the south wall line and four buttress postholes outside it.
- Opened a third trench over the hall’s north-east gate.
- Few artefact finds, of which the most interesting is our second 13/1400s crossbow bolt.
- I’ve had an idea about what happened to the platform after the mead hall was torn down in the later 900s. We have wondered why there is no sign of activity or damage between 1000 and 1800. Aska was probably the härad assembly site in the 1000s and 1100s. Was the platform maintained as a thing mound?
Aardvarchaeology - by Dr. Martin Rundkvist 
The word thing (ting) lives on in the apparent meaning of assembly, but I cannot recall when I heard it last.
“Tinga” is derived from it, but means something else.
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I thought that “thing mound” was some strange Scandinavian joke until I looked it up and learned that a thing is a real thing.
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A thing is a real thing, indeed. And multiple things, piled into a mound, would be a different kind of thing mound. As in, “a mound of things”, instead of “a mound for thing”.
Where one thing is an object, and the other a legislative and/or judicial entity. Which lives on in the Swedish “tingsrätten” (the thing court). Which, IIRC, Our Generous Host is, or at least were, in training for becoming a layman for.
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I’ve served in Nacka district court since 2018. Only minor cases that take a day or much less to decide.
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Iceland’s Parliament is known as the Althing. Which, IINM, has a similar derivation to the Swedish tingsrätten.
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