Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2004, Page 97

ICELANDIC FARMHOUSE EXCAVATIONS: FlELD METHODS AND SITE CHOICES
the primary subject material of the plans.
These lists can therefore be seen as an
extension of the sections into the space
not recorded in the sections, and as such
they herald the introduction of the con-
text.
Single context recording and open area
excavations
The concept of the context has been
introduced in Iceland from Britain and a
number of Icelandic archaeologists edu-
cated in Britain started to use it in their
excavations in the early 1990s. The fírst
example is an excavation at Hofstaðir in
Mývatnssveit in 1992. This was in fact
an evaluation trench and the section
drawn must be considered the principal
record of that intervention. Each context
was however separately described on
pre-designed sheets and a stratigraphic
matrix was recorded. In 1996 open area
excavations started at Hofstaðir where
they continue to this day and single con-
text recording has been employed there,
as well as a number of other recent exca-
vations (e.g. Sveigakot, Aðalstræti,
Skálholt). The Hofstaðir excavations are
particularly significant in that the imme-
diate vicinity of the buildings has been
excavated as well as the inside. Not all
Icelandic archaeologists have adopted
this methodology. Some still use the sec-
tion based approach, digging in spits has
been attempted, and some use modified
versions of the single context recording
approach. None of the excavations of the
last 15 years have however reached final
publication so a full analysis of develop-
ments in this most recent period cannot
be attempted at present.
Conclusions
One way of looking at the development
of excavation techniques in Iceland in the
last century is to see it in terms of
increasingly comprehensive destruction.
In the earliest period excavators did little
more than to scratch the surface - often
selecting sites where this was all that had
to be done to reveal the form of the build-
ings. By the mid 20th century archaeol-
ogists had started to move great volumes
of earth, but only from the inside of the
buildings and normally not actual occu-
pational deposits. Floors were the first
such deposits to become valid targets and
from the 1970s several sites with deep
stratigraphies have been excavated,
necessitating the complete removal of all
deposits and features save those at the
very bottom of the sequence. It is prima-
rily those experiences which have stimu-
lated recent developments of excavation
methodologies, which in tum call for a
comprehensive and complete considera-
tion of all stratigraphic units and there-
fore their removal.
Another way of viewing this develop-
ment is to attempt to characterize the
aims of the excavators. In the earliest
period, when test trenching for negative
evidence was the main approach, the
excavation was primarily a test of the
validity of a hypothesis regarding the
identification of the min in question: was
it a temple? an assembly-booth? the
dwelling of a saga personage? The sites
were as a mle selected for excavation on
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