Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2002, Page 108

Orrí Vésteinsson, Thomas H. McGovern, Christian Keller
Calibrated C14 Qne Sigma Range - Earliest Contexts
1300 Years AD
1200
1100
E66 E168
1000 E75
900
800
700 -
W51
E149
W48 W54
E294
7 r E17A
GUS 1 1
I I
: Carbon from Soil
Sites
Fig. 2. Radiocarbon dates for base layers of sites in the Eastern and Western Settlements of
Norse Greenland.
traces of cereals (e.g. Hordeum) begin to
appear. In the south of Iceland this
process was over with a new balance
reached as soon as AD 920 (Margrét
Hallsdóttir 1987, based on a dating of the
Katla-R tephra - Hafliði Hafliðason et al.
1992). While the number of securely
dated sites is still low, all the available
evidence points to a rapid colonization
following the establishment of the first
settlements around 870 and complete
deforestation in lowland areas before 920
in the south of the country at least. Even
marginal areas were being exploited by
the lOth century, to the extent that many
of such early sites became abandoned
before 1100, presumably on account of
erosion which set in as a result of the for-
est clearance (Sigurður Þórarinsson
1977). These results are in sharp contrast
to the traditional model for the settlement
process, illustrated by Olafur Lárusson
(1944, 9-37) who saw the process as a
gradual one with the slow filling in of the
landscape with evenly sized farms from
the 870s and well into the llth century.
While more investigations are needed,
current archaeological and paleo-envi-
ronmental evidence both indicate a wide-
spread human impact very early in the
settlement process.
In Greenland geophysical dates for
early sites are less common (though a
major new program of AMS dating is
currently underway associated with the
GUS project). Figure 2 presents a series
of dates from the Eastern Settlement
derived from soil columns and excavated
sites (Andreasen 1982, Jakobsen 1991,
McGovern et al. 1983, Vebæk 1991).
These indicate the presence of Norse set-
tlers in both coastal (E149, E17a) and
inland (E66, E168, E294) locations at or
before the traditional AD 985 landnám
date. In the Westem Settlement, basal
dates now published from both coastal
(W48, W51) and inland farms (W54,
GUS) are almost as early, and strongly
suggest that both settlement areas saw
Norse occupation within the first genera-
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