Primary and Secondary Icelandic Farmsteads

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With support from the National Science Foundation, Drs. John Steinberg, Douglas Bolender, Brian Damiata, Paul Durrenberger and their colleagues will conduct three seasons of archaeological fieldwork in Skagafjordur, Northern Iceland. The goal of the fieldwork is to compare large and small Viking Age farmsteads in order to understand how and why the smaller farmsteads were apparently subdivided from earlier and larger farmsteads. This subdivision appears to be an important part of the creation of substantial economic inequality of later Norse and Medieval Iceland.This research follows up on three successful NSF-funded projects: a High Risk award with which the investigators developed remote sensing methods to find deeply buried structures; a two-year project with which those methods were used in Skagafjordur to locate previously unknown Viking Age sites; and a one-year grant with which the researchers found that Ground Penetrating Rader (GPR) is effective at outlining Viking Age turf structures in preparation for detailed excavation. The work continues to be closely coordinated with both the National Heritage Agency of Iceland and the Skagafjordur Folk Museum. The work will also provide substantial research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate research.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 scholars understand this social change 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. Excavation of well-preserved turf structures is notoriously difficult and time-consuming. The PI's have found that remote sensing (shallow geophysical techniques) allows them to solve this paradox. This project has both methodological and intellectual implications beyond the Viking/Norse archaeology of Iceland. To efficiently excavate turf structures, the project will develop further various shallow geophysical techniques that have proven effective during the past years. The methodological developments would give scholars the ability to create accurate subsurface maps of buried turf architecture. These same refined techniques could be applied in numerous situations in the US and around the world. In Iceland they would have a concrete and beneficial effect on archaeological practices and preservation: substantial areas of Iceland are under threat from development, and a methodology for obtaining accurate subsurface maps of archaeological deposits would help agencies in charge of historical preservation with their environmental assessments of impacted areas. This application is especially important since the past work of Dr. Steinberg's research team has demonstrated that many of the earliest sites cannot be identified on the surface.