AD 960 · Jorvik — York · In research
Welcome to AD 960.
A crowded trading city with waterlogged ground that preserved almost everything.
Arrival mode
Who are you?
You are a child. Age 9. Living at A tenement plot on Coppergate.
You wake under a shared woollen blanket in a single room, with the smell of the workshop next door already in the air.
Now explore your day
- Morning — fetch water, feed the pigs, avoid the pit.
- Midday — errands between workshops; watch the antler comb-maker.
- Afternoon — help on the riverfront when a boat unloads.
- Evening — one hearth, one pot, one room.
Everyday life · historical layers
What we know, what was written, what we think
Homes
Post-and-wattle tenements at Coppergate, sunken floors, central hearths, timber-lined pits.
Health
Parasite eggs in cesspit deposits, tooth wear, healed and unhealed injury.
Work
Antler and bone offcuts, leather scraps, amber, textile tools, coin dies.
Food
Fish bone, cereal grain, apple pips, hazelnut shell, cattle and pig bone.
Living museum
Walk through it
Tenement
Workshop
Harbour
Time compare
The achievements and the limitations of each era, side by side.
Cesspit
↓ Sewer system
The single greatest change in urban survival.
Workshop frontage
↓ Online shop
Making and selling in the same place.
Soundscape
Environmental sound only. No music unless it would have been heard.
Historical garden
What was growing
Leek
Everyday food
Widely grown in the period.
Flax
Linen and oil
Seed and fibre both recovered.
Hemp
Rope and sailcloth
Essential to a river city.
A day in the life