Chiefdom to Manor: Using Ground Penetrating Radar on Viking Age and Medieval Archaeological Sites in Skagafjordur, Iceland

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With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. John Steinberg and his colleagues will conduct one season of archaeological fieldwork in Skagafjordur, Northern Iceland, to test the effectiveness of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR-Slice) images for guiding the excavation of well-preserved but deeply buried turf long-houses of the Viking Age.Iceland was uninhabited until AD 874, when chieftains and wealthy farmers, along with their household retinues, began to arrive in their open boats. Accounts of the settlement and of the resulting chiefly society are given in semi-historical sagas. However, these sagas are ambiguous, contradictory, or silent on several critical socio-economic issues that would help scholars understand why this Viking Age chiefly society was stable for so long and why, in the end, it finally turned into a medieval manorial state society. Archaeological investigations of the settlements can help by yielding information on economic status of farmsteads. Unfortunately, the archaeology of Iceland is paradoxical: in the fertile coastal lowlands early archaeological sites are difficult to identify. Conversely, once found, preservation at these sites is often outstanding. The funded research will specifically address this paradox with GPR.This research follows up on a successful NSF-funded subsurface survey, which identified a series of previously unknown Viking Age sites. The survey results indicate a dynamic settlement pattern sequence: large farmsteads were initially established, they then later spun off smaller farmsteads, and finally many of those larger farmsteads moved locations. One of the sites discovered during the subsurface survey, at a farm called Glaumbaer, is probably the farmstead of the family that returned from Greenland and the New World and told the story of Erik The Red and his son Leif. This discovery has received substantial media attention.The proposed work is a prelude to future excavations. Excavation of turf structures is notoriously difficult and time-consuming. GPR has the highest resolution of any remote sensing technique and GPR-Slice images would aid significantly in excavation. GPR-Slice imaging would be employed on several Commonwealth sites in Skagafjordur (including Glaumbaer) and on two pagan burial grounds. Excavations would follow, allowing us to test the GPR-Slice images and determine their value for future research. More generally, the ability to create accurate subsurface maps of Icelandic buried turf architecture would have a substantial and beneficial effect on archaeological practices in Iceland and in other regions with wet clayey soils. Substantial areas of Iceland are under threat from development and accurate subsurface maps of archaeological deposits would be useful to those agencies in charge of historical preservation. This is especially important since our past work has demonstrated that many of the earliest sites cannot be identified by surface features.