Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2010, Qupperneq 69

SMALL HOLDER FARMING IN EARLY MEDIEVAL ICELAND: SKUGGI IN HÖRGÁRDALUR
Figure 13. This map showing a site catchment exercise for Skuggi and Klausturhús shows how
close Skuggi and Klausturhús are to each other and how they were potentially using the same
areas for pasture land. The radii are 2,5 km and 5 km in diameter. NB: the GPS coordinates
give the exact location of these places, whereas the points placed on the map itself may be
slightly less exact.
'V'' 65°40.306’N, 10^27.467’W
aöartung ^////////pk
-.V/ 65°39.743/N, 18°28,782’W.
jr / f *. , v\ J *
U,f/é'''65039.é5 m{ mik{o2’\N
10 Kilometers
lower amount of caprine bones may also
influence the potential for a positive
sheep or goat identification. But as can be
observed in the NISP numbers listed in
table 2 even with a larger NISP in Phase
IV, the goat proportion is already clearly
lower than that of the Later Viking Age.
Could the disappearance of the goats
around AD 1150-1200 have coincided
with a tighter control over the forested
and also by then partially deforested land,
or was this an early sign for an eventual
shift in the area’s farming economy?
Could this lack of goat in the caprine pro-
file be indicator for a livestock manage-
ment change toward a presence of a
sheep herd mainly intended for wool pro-
duction, tended to by people who no
longer made their home at Skuggi?
Once the Skuggi farm was abandoned
some time after the H1104 tephra fall, but
possibly 100 years before the H1300
tephra fall, were the sheep in this area
from then on kept in the winter shelter at
Klausturhús, located about 800 m south-
west from Skuggi?
A simple site catchment analysis on the
map below indicates that the two sites had
access to much of the same natural territo-
ry and likely would have competed for
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