Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2007, Blaðsíða 41

Nails, Rivets, and Clench Bolts: A Case for Typological Clarity
this entry suggests that all of the supposed
naglar (nails) in this context may have
originally been clench bolts. The entry
writer also notes as a concluding remark,
“it seems that riveting did take place to
some degree in the making of the coffin.”
6 The hnoðnegling (‘riveting’) in this
instance refers to the functional action of
a clench bolt rather than a rivet. This
example demonstrates that even though
‘nagli’may be one of the simplest artifact
categories in the classification system,
referential inconsistency still occurs with-
in the category.
The other two categories, ‘hnoð-
nagli' and ‘rónagli' yielded even less
consistency than the ‘nagli' category
(see Figure 5). There are seven entries
in the National Museum’s database
labeled ‘hnoðnagli' (‘rivet’). Of the seven
‘hnoðnagli' entries, three contain rivets,
six contain clench bolts, and one has a
nail. Out of the 24 entries labeled ‘róna-
gli' (‘rove-nail’) in the catalog, 16 contain
clench bolts, three have rivets, two include
nails, and five entries contain artifacts
that could not be securely identified.
The Effect ofTypological Inconsistency
The analysis above illustrates that the cate-
gorization of iron artifacts in the database
does not consistently follow a typology
derived from the functional and morpho-
logical characteristics of the individual arti-
facts. The two particularly pervasive termi-
nological problems are the result of diamet-
ric typological practices. The first problem
is the use of a single term to apply to several
artifact types (Tumping’). The secondprob-
lem is the use of several different terms to
refer to the same artifact type (‘splitting’).
Ultimately, both problems complicate com-
parative and statistical analyses that rely on
terminological uniformity.
The pie charts (Figure 5) docu-
ment the extent of the typological prob-
lems in the database. Each of the individ-
ual pie charts reveals that a single term
includes two or more artifact types that
have been lumped together. For instance,
the term ‘hnoðnagli' is used for the nail,
rivet and clench bolt artifact types. Taken
together, the three pie charts show that
several different terms are used to identify
each individual artifact type. For exam-
ple, the three terms ‘nagli,’ ‘hnoðnagli’
and ‘rónagli’ are all applied to a single
artifact type, the clench bolt.
The finds from boat burials illus-
trate that the two typological problems
outlined above also appear within a single
kind of archaeological context. In general,
boat burials typically contain both nails
and clench bolts, which partially explains
why there is little consistency in the cat-
egorization of iron from boat burials. The
iron hardware from one boat burial in the
National Museum is cataloged as ‘hnoð-
nagli’ (B: 1939: 71), whereas the iron arti-
facts from two others are cataloged under
‘rónagli’ (B: 1937-73 and B: 1964-110-
1). Hardware fforn a fourth boat burial is
cataloged under ‘bátasaumur’ (bátur=boat,
saumur= nail; B: 1946-53). Cataloging
iron fforn a boat burial as ‘boat nails’ is
understandable as an attempt to avoid
misidentifying some of the many artifacts
in the entry with terms such as ‘rónagli’
or ‘hnoðnagli,’ but in practice the use of
‘bátasaumur' relies on the find context for
cataloging rather than artifact morphology
and thus only increases the typological con-
fusion. Each individual catalog entry from
the boat burials lumps multiple artifact
6 “Virðist hnoðnegling þvi að einhverju leyti hafa átt sér stað i líkkistusmíðinni”
39