Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2010, Page 39

ON FARM MOUNDS
the dwelling now became concentrated
inside it, while the inside space was reor-
ganised so as to give certain tasks, or
groups of tasks, their own separate and
more clearly differentiated spaces. An
interesting aspect of this is that the
annexes very often could only be
accessed by going past the hall’s central
hearth (see íurther Price 1995). This adds
a further dimension because it suggests
that that centralisation was not just about
increased proximity of task-spaces, but
that there was also increased centralised
control and oversight of the household’s
activities. It is very tempting to interpret
this as a reflection of increased authority
of the household manager, presumably
the housewife. Centralisation meant that
she could more easily and effectively
supervise tasks which previously had
been carried out outside or in detached
buildings accessed from outside.
Differentiation can then be seen as an
outcome of such increasingly effective
control vested in a single person situated
in the epicentre of household activities. It
is in the interest of more effective control
to clearly demarcate where different
activities take place and to separate them
one from another. With the maid chum-
ing the butter in the pantry, with no
escape except past the central hearth, and
the servant boy plucking feathers from
ptarmigans in front of the fire, the house-
wife can monitor both and can make sure
they do not interrupt each other or are
interrupted by others. The hall with
annexes therefore can be seen as a kind of
panopticon, architecture of control.
It is possible that this hypothesised
change in the authority of housewives
reflects an improvement in the status of
women in the late Viking age, but for
now I will limit my claims to suggesting
that they reflect increasing hierarchiza-
tion within the household structure, relat-
ing both to increased permanence of
households and, more importantly, a cul-
tural emphasis on that permanence and its
beneficial effects.
To sum up: Farm-mounds did not
begin to form in Iceland, and by inference
not in the Faroes either, at the start of set-
tlement but rather in the late Viking age, in
the late 10th century at the earliest, when
halls began to spout annexes. This impor-
tant development, which I suggest had its
roots in changes in household stmcture
and ideology, led to a change in building
maintenance whereby floors were no
longer dug out regularly, and it is this that
set off the build-up of farm-mounds.
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