'I worked on 1970s dig that changed what we knew about Vikings'

Fifty years ago, Coppergate shopping centre in York looked very different.

The city centre site was the location of one of the most important digs in British archaeological history, as experts and volunteers recovered artefacts that would change our understanding of Viking society.

The 40,000 objects - among them shoes, knives, socks, coins and animal bones - were the largest collection from the Viking era ever found in the country, and the Jorvik Viking Centre attraction was later built to display many of them.

Large crowds lined viewing points to watch the archaeologists at work, and for Dr Julian D Richards, then 20, volunteering in 1977 inspired his career.

He helped to uncover the remains of Viking houses, and still works in the field today at the University of York.

"I'm quite proud to be a part of that discovery," he says.

"It changed my career, in that it made me interested in Vikings after the dig, and I've continued to work on them."

York Archaeological Trust ran the excavation, which was made possible after the demolition of a confectionery factory on the site before the shopping centre was built.

Dr Richards says the dig "rewrote" what historians knew about Viking York.

"We think of them as warriors and raiders, but the Coppergate dig showed us that they were traders and manufacturers.

"It blew apart the popular image of the violent, horn helmet-wearing caricature and humanised them in a way we'd never really seen before."

He says his favourite part of the dig was the memory of opening a 1,000-year-old Viking toilet.

"We'd pack up for the day with the smell of the pit on our clothes and I'd go over to a nearby bakery and people would be turning around saying, 'where's that smell coming from?'

"I didn't have the guts to tell them it was a Viking cesspit as I thought they'd think I'd gone mad!"

The five-year excavation attracted VIP visitors, including a young King Charles and members of the royal families of Norway and Denmark - the homeland of the Vikings who raided Britain.

Jorvik was built three years later and continues to be a popular educational visitor attraction today.

Christine McDonnell from the centre says it was a "game-changer" for archaeology.

"We hadn't seen this type of interaction with archaeology before.

"It made people feel a part of the discovery and Viking fever practically swept the entire city.

"To think that 50 years on the fascination in the Coppergate dig continues is wonderful."

Dr Richards and McDonnell agree that is is unlikely another dig of the scale of Coppergate could take place in York again.

"There are so many parts of York's history that we don't know about, and the fascination in it certainly hasn't gone away," Dr Richards says.

"The Coppergate dig was a once in a lifetime archaeological dig, so we can never really say never again to uncovering more of York's Viking secrets in the future."

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