A renewed interpretation of old data: research of a farmstead site at Het Wold, near Peize.

In the spring of 1930, Van Giffen was the first to excavate a farmstead site in the peatland of northern Drenthe. The excavation took place in the valley of the river Eelderdiep, north of Peize. Despite the interesting discoveries that were made, the excavation was never fully published. It was no less than 86 years before the excavated features and finds were analyzed in detail and (newly) interpreted inthe context of late-medieval peat reclamation, as part of a BA thesis by the author. Van Giffen refers to the site as an artificially raised dwelling mound or ‘terp’, built on a surface of natural peat. Although the excavated area was small, it revealed the postholes of two buildings, succeeding each other: an older building with slightly curved walls, and a younger one of a more rectangularshape. Of a third building only the fireplace could be traced, as well as the rectangular ‘foundation’ that consisted of a layer of loam on which a turf wall may have been present. The floors of the second and third structures consisted of yellowish loam. On the basis of the excavated ceramics, Van Giffen dated the start of the habitation to the 9th century AD. Besides the native globular pot (in Dutch: kogelpot), imported Pingsdorf ware and some fragments of braziers (in Dutch: komforen) were found. The presence of medieval brick suggests that the site remained inhabited into the 13th century. Based on the new analysis of features and finds, three different settlement phases can now be distinguished.The first habitation dates from the 10th-11th century. It is characterized by a house plan that belongs to a larger group of boat-shaped houses, typical of the peat and clay areas of the northern Netherlands (Wijnjeterp type). In the second phase, dated to the 11th-12th century, the rectangular building was constructed. It bears similarities to contemporary buildings in the (clay-on-)peat area of the western Netherlands (Assendelft type). The third and final phase, dated to the 13th-14th century, only left floor/foundation and hearth remains of yet another building. Like one of the houses in the Matsloot-Roderwolde peatlands, this building probably had turf walls. Habitation may have started on the flat peat surface around AD 1000, but over a period of 200-300 years the site was raised with extraneous soil and loam floors – resulting in what indeed was a (low) dwelling mound