Lots! Although I wouldn't imagine an Indiana Jones Temple of Doom type of discovery. We're probably not going to get any more texts, although we're starting to use these in new and different ways. Ian Wood and George Indruszewski have done some interesting recent work on the 8th-century Cosmography of Aethicus Ister, for example. But there's tons left to learn from archaeology.

Some of this is from new sites. Over the past summer, archaeologists at the University of Uppsala returned to the old princely burying ground there. There's three monumental burial mounds there (as well as hundreds of smaller ones) which were excavated in the 1800s. They've long been thought to match up with Adam of Bremen's (writing in the 1070s) description of the "temple" at Uppsala, which was dedicated to the three gods of Odin, Thor, and Freya. But this summer, they found a fourth! Much of what's been excavated at Uppsala actually points to the centuries before the Viking Age (and at the same time as similar burials at Sutton Hoo in England). But a handful of finds (namely, Ribe beads) suggest that this mound was built in the mid-700s, leading right into the Viking Age. Archaeologists lacked the time or funding to break into the burial chamber itself (a monumental effort of its own!), so there's still much to be learned from this site. It has the potential to radically readjust our understanding of how religion and kingship played into the early period of viking attacks.

Not only are there new sites to be dug, there's new ways for understanding the artifacts we've already recovered. I'm most excited about a huge grant recently awarded to Neil Price. Ten years of funding to the tune of $5 million (USD), with John Ljungkvist and Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson on board as researchers. They'll be focusing on boat burials at Valsgärde (Sweden) and Salme (Estonia), further developing our understanding of the centuries leading into the Viking Age. It seems that the underlying premise is that "the viking phenomenon" (vikingafenomenet) was early, Swedish, and eastward. They'll be able to analyze materials to the utmost rigor of modern archaeological analysis. This will hopefully include testing human remains for isotopes of oxygen, strontium, carbon, and other elements to determine where individuals grew up and what kinds of diets they ate at various points in their lives. It may likewise include testing glass for trace chemicals that can point to where glass beads and ornaments came from (e.g. major production centers in Egypt or Syria) or whether they were recycled (e.g. made from glass recovered from an old Roman mosaic).

In short, we'll probably get some beautifully analyzed and published information out of the materials previously excavated at Valsgärde and much more recently at Salme (2008-2012). This Swedish work has the potential to change our understanding of the early Viking Age. Instead of relying on texts to show how viking violence arose from competing chieftains in the backwater fjords of Norway, this archaeological research may place the origin of the viking phenomenon in the 7th- and 8th-century raids of the Swedish Baltic. Moreover, it will lay the groundwork for future excavation of the fourth mound at Uppsala, which has the potential to connect this violence to the rise of Swedish kingship and the decline of a religious cult practice (monumental burials). So it has the ability to dramatically revise our understanding of how violence connected to state-building and religion during the Viking Age—which is a timely mirror for reflecting on predatory states and religious violence today.