Aldwark Viking Camp: Illustrated Artefact Catalogue, 2024

This archive presents the Aldwark finds catalogue, which includes finds from a site, initially known as Ainsbrook. A major Viking camp was identified by metal-detecting in North Yorkshire, and first reported in 2003. It may have been first occupied when the Viking Great Army was reportedly in York in 866-7 and 868-9, but the coinage demonstrates it was still in use in the later 870s. The site was initially known as Ainsbrook, a portmanteau of the surnames of the metal detectorists who discovered it, Mark Ainsley and Geoff Bambrook, and subsequently published as 'A Riverine site near York' (Hall and Williams 2020). It is located to the north of the village of Aldwark, c.20 km northwest of York, where the River Ouse becomes the Ure. The Viking assemblage at Aldwark can be compared with that from Torksey https://doi.org/10.5284/1115932 and together they provide an opportunity to study the activities of the Great Army. The results of the research have been published in Dawn M Hadley and Julian D Richards, with Dave Haldenby, Gareth Perry, and Mark Randerson (2024). The Viking Great Army: Tents to Towns. Oxford University Press. This catalogue and the equivalent catalogue for Torksey provides the underpinning data for that monograph but has it has also been released so that it can also be reused for further research projects on the material culture of the Viking Great Army.