Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2004, Síða 119

Gröf - Methods and Interpretations
paved floor of the main passage a stone-
paved sewer or channel runs from the
lavatory and opens a short distance in
front of the outer door.
Gestsson 1959, 84 [trans. author]
This sewer seems a little strange because
if it really is a sewer from the lavatory, it
lies right along the main passage and the
main entrance of the complex. One can
imagine that the odour for inhabitants
and visitors was not a nice one, even
though it was a closed sewer. But there
are more examples of similar drains in
Icelandic medieval and post-medieval
houses (e.g. Skálholt). In the hall (skáli)
there are built-in benches (set) along the
long sides and even alcoves at the south
side. In the living room (skáli) and
kitchen there are traces of timber walls
and in the living room and skáli there
seems to have been timber boarding. In
the complex there were six fireplaces,
one a long-fire, but none of them are
neatly constructed according to
Gestsson.
About 50 metres east of the farmstead
are the byre and the bam. Gestsson's cal-
culations lead to the conclusion that the
byre could accommodate around twenty
heads of cattle and that the bam would
not have taken less than 126 cubic metres
of hay. Just northwest of the pantry's
gable is the kiln house (corn-dryer)
which is unique in Iceland (see below).
All the outer walls, and most of the inner
walls, were built of stones, some of them
very large; mostly basalt but also liparite
and obsidian, with soil in the middle. The
highest were around 2 metres high but
the thickness varied considerably, up to 3
metres wide. All the mins were full of
this white pumice and because of it the
walls of the buildings had preserved to a
remarkable degree.
Method and Interpretation at Gröf
The excavation method at Gröf was basi-
cally to unveil the buildings á la Pompeii.
Gestsson's team dug hard and fast until
the buildings were uncovered but, cultur-
al layers inside the buildings including
the floors were not investigated. When
the mins had been cleaned, the buildings
were measured with tapes and a plan was
drawn, along with a few sections to
demonstrate the stratigraphy and details
of the buildings. A few photographs
were also taken after the buildings had
been cleaned out and samples collected.
The samples consisted of birch bark,
bones from a cooking pit, some bumt
wood and grain. The samples have not
been used for dating or analyzed further,
except for the barley grains which were
identified as such by Sturla Friðriksson.
Of the artefacts, 74 pieces were roughly
located, for example: "Whetstone (úr
leirskífer), one end broken, pretty used
and crooked. Length: 9.4, width: 2.0,
thickness: 1.2 - house II, on southem
bench" (set). Gísli Gestsson 1959, 74
(614) [Transl. author]. Often the descrip-
tions are more precise. It is not stated
what kind of bones were found and no
sieving was carried out.
One might say that the digging strate-
gy was based on "common sense". By
that I mean that the excavation process
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