Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2011, Page 80

DOUGLAS J. BOLENDER, JOHN M. STEINBERG AND BRIAN N. DAMIATA
Norse sites that date back to the earliest
farmsteads in the Faroes, Iceland, and
Greenland. As he notes, farm-mounds
present a problem both of explanation and
methodology for North Atlantic
archaeologists. We have relatively few
excavations of farm-mounds, in large part
due to the difficulty and the expense
involved in their excavation, and thus the
overwhelming majority of our knowledge
of the Viking Age is derived not from the
earliest phases of farm-mounds but rather
from sites that were abandoned or
relocated at the end of the Viking Age. Put
simply, most of our information about the
North Altantic Viking Age is derived from
abondoned or relocated sites that may be
atypical. In fact, the archaeological
sample is so heavily biased that there is
relatively little information on how these
fannsteads compare to those that have
remained in the same place throughout
their history.
The completion of a systematic
settlement pattem for the Langholt region
of Skagatjörður confirms that most
Icelandic farmsteads were established
during the Viking Age and that only a
small percentage of them relocated while
most remained in the same place as
originally established. In our survey,
which covered 22 farmsteads, only two
were relocated, indicating that only a
small percentage (ca. 10%) of farmsteads
have Viking Age components that are
easily accessible to archaeologists. The
two relocated farmsteads were also among
the largest Viking Age farmsteads in the
survey region. Thus, relocated farmsteads
are both rare and unusually large, at least
in the survey area.
Regional Survey and the
Skagafjörður Archaeological
Settlement Survey
In general, survey methods in Iceland have
relied heavily on historical documentation,
air photos, landowner interviews, and
surface survey. The paucity of durable
Viking Age and medieval material culture
make it difficult to date sites based on
surface finds (Smith and Parsons 1989).
This is especially problematic in lowland
areas where rapid soil deposition has
buried many early sites (cf. Catlin 2011;
Guðbergsson 1975) and contemporary
field smoothing and plowing have often
eliminated telltale signs of buried turf
buildings. Understanding how relocated
farmsteads compare to other sites requires
methodologies capable of identifying
buried farmstead sites, estimating their
size, and dating the earliest deposits.
Archaeologists working in Iceland are weli
aware of these biases and their potential
impact on site selection and the
reconstruction of early settlement pattems
and chronologies (Friðriksson 1994;
Steinberg and Bolender 2005; Vésteinsson
2004; Vésteinsson, et al. 2002). However,
at the regional level, the systematic
implementation of subsurface survey
methods, such as soil coring, geophysical
surveying, and targeted test excavations
has been limited due to a lack of tested
methodologies and the costs involved.
Over an eight year period (2001-2009)
The Skagafjörður Archaeological
Settlement Survey (SASS) experimented
with and implemented novel survey
protocols to systematically identify, date,
and characterize 22 farms in and around
the Langholt region of Skagafjörður. The
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