Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2006, Síða 65

Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2006, Síða 65
First steps towards an archaeolooy of children in Iceland cent to domestic buildings (e.g. Brogiolo 1989; Haughton & Powlesland 1999). An example has also been found in Lund, for example, a Scandinavian urban context, where an infant was buried under the floor of a dwelling (Roslund 1990). This phe- nomenon has not so far been observed in Iceland but it does at least seem possible that examples could have been missed in previous rural settlement excavations, given that so few excavations have been taken down to ‘natural’ (Gavin Lucas pers com; Vésteinsson 2002: 87). In Ice- land, as elsewhere in western Europe, as soon as Christian cemeteries were estab- lished, babies and older children were buried close to churches. At Keldudalur, for example, the child burials clustered along each long side of the church are in a similar location to babies found in Eng- land and elsewhere (Fig.l) (e.g. Stroud 1993). They could form part of a longer tradition of burying children in or close to buildings which has gone undetected. None of the discussion above necessarily rules out the possibility that some people at some time or other in Iceland or Scandinavia in the early mid- dle ages found it convenient to abandon children they did not want. What is harder to find good evidence for, given the vari- ous kinds of source material available, is systematic child exposure such that it can fully explain the low frequency of child burials observed archaeologically in Ice- land or across the viking diaspora. Age and rite The rarity of landnám-period children’s burials, then, cannot yet be taken as a measure of some kind of disrespect for them on the part of adults nor of their perceived inherent difference. The types of children’s burials which appear to be from the tenth century might give some initial indication of attitudes towards chil- dren. There are two burials of infants of up to two years; five aged between seven and twelve years; and five aged thirteen to seventeen respectively (Gestsdóttir 1998a: 5, 17). Despite the material poverty of their surroundings, Iceland’s first settlers generally continued Scandinavian prac- tices in their new environment. Grave good deposition is often related to age, gender as well as the more indefinable notion of ‘status’ and the Icelandic child burials show the influence of all three but not consistently. The two youngest chil- dren have no grave goods associated with them which suggests that they were not seen as socially significant. At seven to twelve years the better preserved burials all had grave furnishings but their quanti- ty varies considerably. They ranged from a single knife in a cemetery where oth- erwise the adult burials were furnished reasonably well (Ytra-Garðshorn; Eld- járn 2000: 158); to a single (small) spear which accompanied the isolated burial of a child and an unsexed adult together (Grímsstaðir; Eldjárn 2000: 211); to a possible boat burial accompanied by a small axe, a knife, lead weight and two pebbles (Straumur; Eldjárn 2000: 221-3). Unlike in some ninth- to eleventh-cen- tury Swedish graves, Icelandic children’s graves do not appear to have been marked out by any particular form of amulet (cf. Fylgerfeldt 2005: 23-4 who identifies amber amulets as being associated with “shaman, children, pregnant women and old women”). For people dying at thirteen to seventeen years of age our only examples suggest that there was a heavy investment in their graves. At Hemla in southern 63
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Archaeologia Islandica

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