Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2009, Side 11

Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2009, Side 11
Adolf Friðriksson SOCIAL AND SYMBOLIC LANDSCAPES IN LATE IRON AGE ICELAND The past decade has witnessed important advances in research involved with burial archaeology of Late Iron Age Iceland (c. 800-1100 AD). Archives have been revised and published, and a total survey of all known sites has generated location models which have been successfully applied to uncover new sites. Modem excavation methods under controlled conditions are offering greater detail and consequently new insights into burial practices in Iceland. This devel- opment has helped to go beyond typological analysis of grave goods to study all aspects of the burial tradition and the social groups represented in the data. One of the poorly understood variables is the layout and organisation of grave fields in Iceland. This paper describes the main characteristics of grave fields from frag- mentary earlier evidence and more recent findings. The most important conclu- sion is that, on the basis of the plan and arrangement of interments, different types of burial sites in Iceland can be distinguished. A larger, unsolved puzzle remains: what is the meaning of this variance? How can we explain the difference in the stmcture and organisation of grave fields in Iceland? Adolf Friðriksson, Fornleifastofnun Islands, Bárugata 3, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland Keywords: Late Iron Age, Burials, Grave fields, Spatial organization Introduction In recent years there has been an upsurge of interest into burial archaeology in Iceland. The fundamental work on Icelandic Iron Age material culture, Kuml og haugfé í heiðnum sið á Islandi (“Burial and grave goods in pagan Iceland”) by Kristján Eldjám (1956), was revised and re-published posthumously (Eldjárn and Friðriksson 2000), containing a complete corpus of known burial sites and an analysis of all grave goods and relevant artefacts and stray-finds. Over the past decade, all human bone remains from this period have been re-examined and are currently the subject of further palae- opathological study (Hildur Gestsdóttir 1998; 2004). Specifíc groups of artefacts are also being re-analysed in greater depth for new projects and problem-ori- entated research is emerging (Smith 2001, 2003, 2004; Elín Hreiðarsdóttir 1998, 2005; Þóra Pétursdóttir 2007). Over 90% of known grave fields from the Iron Age have now been systematically re-visited by the present author, their topographic setting and necrography recorded, inspiring fresh enquiries into their geographical context (Adolf Friðriksson 2004a, b). New models pre- dicting the location of burials have been put forward, tested, modified, and tested further, and have now led to new burial fínds which have been subsequently excavated (Adolf Friðriksson 2006; et al. 2005a, b, c). Archaeologia Islandica 7 (2009) 9-21

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