Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2006, Page 9

Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2006, Page 9
Gavin Lucas EDITORIAL This, the fifth issue of Archaeologia Islandica, presents a variety of papers, which reflect only a small part of the diversity of archaeological research being carried out in Iceland and neighbouring regions today. The volume opens with a review by Oscar Aldred on landscape studies in Iceland, tracing the history of its practice and theory upto the present day. It is an extremely helpflil synthesis of work, particularly given the strong topical interest in landscape as a theoreti- cal concept in contemporary archaeology. While it may be misleading to assert there has been a distinct field called landscape archaeology in Iceland, this has not pre- vented scholars from making all kinds of assumptions about landscape and as Aldred shows, these assumptions play into the way research has been conducted. From this, Aldred has pulled out a distinct genealogy of the concept of landscape within Icelandic archaeology and ends by raising the potential of where a more sophisticated conceptualization might take us. The next paper by Hansen and Sheehan takes a look at one particular site, an early, well-preserved chapel or prayer-house at Leirvík in the Faroes, and comparing it to other examples in the North Atlantic, situate it within the broad- er process of Christianization. They argue that the Leirvík chapel is an example of a type of site widespread in the North Atlantic during the first phase of Chris- tianization in the 10th century, and one with closer cultural ties to Ireland rather than Scandinavia. Given other close links between Ireland and the Hiberno-Scandi- navian Viking traditions, this is perhaps unsurprising as the authors point out, but it adds another element to the increas- ingly realized complexities of identity formation in the early medieval North Atlantic. Identity is a complex matter, and as Hansen and Sheehan’s paper illustrates, ethnicity is a particularly fluid notion in the Viking archaeology on the North Atlantic. Chris Callow’s paper explores a more marginalized facet of identity - age and specifically, childhood. The paper is very much a thought-piece on the poten- tial for studying the archaeology of chil- dren in Iceland, and draws on both the wider theoretical literature as well as the specific data pertaining to Iceland. As a first step however, it provides an impor- tant review of critical ideas and the poten- tial in the archaeological record; it is a useful reminder of that old dictum, ‘you won’t find it if you don’t look for it’. One of the best places to look is in cemeteries and such sites - one in particu- lar, is the focus of the paper by Gestsdót- tir. Earlier research by Jon Steffensen in the 1940s of the burials from Skeljastaðir had suggested several instances of osteo- arthritis and Gestdóttir’s re-analysis of 7

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Archaeologia Islandica

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