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
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