Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2004, Page 73

Orri Vésteinsson
ICELANDIC FARMHOUSE EXCAVATIONS: FIELD
METHODS AND SITE CHOICES
Farm houses have been the principal focus of archaeological fieldwork in Iceland
since the close of the 19th century. The results of these excavations make up the larg-
er part of archaeological information available regarding Iceland, a corpus that is to a
large extent published and available for scrutiny. However the chronological and geo-
graphical distribution of these sites is very uneven and the excavation methods
employed have gone through major changes in the course of the 20th century. These
distributions and developments are described and discussed with the aim of providing
a more solid basis for archaeological debate on this rich material.
Orri Vésteinsson, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, lceland
E-mail: orri@hi.is
Keywords: Archaeology, Excavations, Farmhouses, Field survey
Introduction
Icelandic archaeology is a small disci-
pline in terms of numbers of practitioners
and its institutional basis has long been
weak. Only in the last 10 years has there
been rapid growth in the field with the
number of professional archaeologists
more than doubling, and the establish-
ment of new institutions like the Institute
of Archaeology (1995), a separate
Archaeological Heritage Agency (2001)
and an archaeology department at the
University of Iceland (2002). The fruits
of the last decade's archaeological pro-
ductivity are only to a limited degree in
evidence as many of the projects are still
ongoing and others are under publication.
Considering this situation it is some-
what surprising that Iceland's archaeo-
logical record contains a relative abun-
dance of information, and what is more
this information is to a large extent avail-
able in published format. Compared to
Norway for instance the number of exca-
vated and published Viking age long
houses is staggering - in excess of 20.
Iceland is also the only Nordic country to
have published (and recently updated) a
full catalogue of its Viking age burials
and grave goods (Eldjám 1956, 2000).
This situation is one of the reasons
why Icelandic archaeology is currently
experiencing such expansion. Iceland is
a place where the relative abundance of
available data makes possible compara-
Archaeologia Islandica 3 (2004) 71-100