Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2004, Page 85

ICELANDIC FARMHOUSE EXCAVATIONS: FlELD METHODS AND SITE CHOICES
Fig. 3. A longhouse at Þyrill, excavated by Sigurður Þórarinsson in 1880. From Arbók
hins íslenzka fornleifafélags 1880-1881.
concentrated on locating and characteriz-
ing sites, describing their physical layout
and discussing their function. Of these
only Vigfússon used excavation regulari-
ly and while most of his interventions are
small test trenches there are also exam-
ples of more extensive excavations. In a
few cases he spent several days digging
up a site and at sites like Þyrill and
Lundur he at least claimed to have
uncovered the buildings in their totality
and publishes plans showing the basic
layout (Sigurður Vigfusson 1881, 74-76;
1885, 98-100; fig. 3). It is however not
clear from his descriptions how fully he
uncovered those buildings and from the
descriptions of his method elsewhere,
e.g. at Þingvellir where he dug narrow
trenches along the sides of the walls to
establish the size and shape of the build-
ing, it seems that this may have been the
basic nature of his method. This
approach shows however that Vigfússon
was concemed to establish the form of
the buildings he was investigating more
definitely than is possible by observing
only the humps and bumps of the surface.
With Vigfússon building typology
emerged as one of the main investigative
tools of Icelandic archaeology and while
Vigfússon himself was content to base
his discussion on the most basic parame-
ters, i.e. size and shape, it was only a
matter of time before investigators began
to pay attention to individual features in
those buildings, calling for a more com-
plete unearthing of the rains.
Uncovering
In 1895 the student Þorsteinn Erlingsson
was sent to Iceland to collect archaeolog-
ical information to assist in the identifi-
cation of Norse ruins in America.
Erlingsson's assignment was to locate,
investigate and describe in as much detail
as possible a number of different cate-
gories of ruins. Among these were
dwellings and he carried out several
excavations of these, both in the South
(mainly in Þjórsárdalur) and in the West.
In his report (published in 1899)
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