Antwerp (Belgium) – a ninth-century Viking town? From Early Medieval trading place to Ottonian power centre

In Antwerp, the Department of Archaeology of the City of Antwerp, supported by the developer of the site, Immpact, as well as the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Flemish Heritage Institute were able to develop large-scale excavations in the oldest centre of the town in 2008-2009. This oldest centre is the so-called "Burg" of Antwerp, a D-shaped fortress that goes back to at least the Ottonian period (FIG 1). Already in the 1950s and 1960s, the Antwerp burg was subject to archaeological research, notably with excavations by A.L.J. Van de Walle (1961). The 2008-2009 campaign spanned nearly two years and was combined with several interdisciplinary projects, amongst which a micromorphological analysis of the early medieval stratigraphy on site (Wouters 2011; Devos et al. 2013), and further research is still taking place on various aspects of the excavation (Bellens et al 2012). The well-dated sequence, structures and finds of the site have allowed to re-evaluate the origins of Antwerp thoroughly and to reconsider the historic origins of the town, relating it to 9th- and 10th-century trade and struggles for social, economic and political power in the Schelde estuary.