Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2010, Qupperneq 28

Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2010, Qupperneq 28
ORRI VÉSTEINSSON swept off the floors. They seem to me however, to be the principal reason for the non-accumulation of farm-mounds. At Stóraborg there do not seem to have been wooden floors in any of the buildings in any period, whereas at Laufás parts of the farm-house had wooden floors according to descriptions of the buildings surviving from the 16th century onwards. Even if only a limited proportion of the total floor space had wooden floors, they were the important parts, the living quarters and reception rooms. It is likely that they set the standard for the levels the earthen floors of the rest of the building had to be kept at. It is also important in this context that the wooden floors are primarily found in those rooms where - had they had earthen floors - accumulation would have been most rapid. The presence or absence of wooden floors may be seen to relate to wealth and status; there was clearly more wooden panelling and fumiture in the households of the elite. It does not seem that this affected farm-mound accumulation directly however. Stóraborg was not a low status site, although it may not have been as rich as Laufás, and Bessastaðir would then not be expected to have developed the enormous farm-mound which it evidently did. It is possible that the fuel-consumption of the elite was so much greater than that of common house- holds that it cancelled out the check on earthen floor build-up caused by wooden floors. It is also likely that architectural traditions, such as the prevalence of lofts or storeys, muddy the waters here; it is quite possible that the Stóraborg equiva- lents to the wooden floored and panelled rooms of Laufás were raised above the rooms for which we have archaeological information. The mechanics of farm-mound accumulation: floors It is the nature of earthen floors that they increase in thickness with time. Matter from the surrounding walls and roof will become deposited on the floor, as will matter carried in from the outside on the soles of people’s feet. Ash and other waste created by people’s activities were however undoubtedly the most signifi- cant factors in the build-up of the floors. At Stóraborg the floors in some houses could be as much as 0,5 m thick (Fig. 9). In many of those cases it seems that ash was intentionally deposited on the floors, probably to keep them dry. Straw or rush- es for the same purposes cannot be ruled out although such remains are much more difficult to detect and are not well docu- mented in the ethnographic literature. In other words earthen floors can grow thicker through time on account of both intentional and unintentional deposition of materials. If, for the sake of argument, we imag- ine that a floor has become 10 cm thick when a house is rebuilt it is likely that even if the house is completely levelled, it will only be down to the level of the floor - mucking out the floor at that stage will have limited utility. Leaving it in however will mean that a corresponding thickness of the walls will also be left. If this house has the dimensions of 20x5 m that means that 5-9 m3 of turf will be left in the ground (depending on the width of the walls), along with the old floor (with 26
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Archaeologia Islandica

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