Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2013, Page 14

AGUSTA EDWALD AND KAREN MILEK
University of Aberdeen, faunal data was
analysed by Megan T. Hicks at the City
University of New York (Hicks &
Harrison 2011), while botanical,
micromorphological and etymological
analyses are still pending.
The excavation of the midden behind
the farm represents the period, from the
early 18th century to ca. 1900, while the
excavation within the house spans the
period from the middle of the 19th century
to the farm's abandonment in the 1930s.
During the time represented by the
excavated deposits, eight different
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households lived on the farm. The
excavation cannot associate specifíc
archaeological features or artefacts with
specific households, but rough
distinctions can be made by associating
specific phases of the building to a series
of households (Table 1).
Building
The farmhouse at Hombrekka was of a
‘typical’ Icelandic vemacular constmction,
built of turf and stone walls with timber
gables and a timber roof structure covered
with turf (Fig 3). The farmhouse appears
to have been located in the same place on
the property throughout the habitation
from the early 18th century and into the
twentieth. Each new stmcture built in the
Fig 3 Reconstruction drawing of Hornbrekka by
Hjalti Pálsson
same place as a former one or rather
added to existing parts in a continual
refurbishment of the house.
Buildings have been interpreted as one
of the clearest materializations of social
stractures and analysed as embodying
social, aesthetic and ideological values.
For example, architectural analysis has
been integral to the argument of progress
and improvement (see e.g. McMurry 1988
for an analysis of farmhouse architecture
and social change in 19th-century
America). Modem ideas of comfort are
associated with spaces specifically
designed for leisure, changing attimdes to
children leading to separate children’s
rooms and so forth. Within historical
archaeology much of this research has
been framed with what has been termed
the ‘Georgian Order’ thesis (Glassie 1975;
Deetz 1999 [1977]; Leone 1988; Johnson
1993), which associates changes in
building styles, amongst other things, with
changing ideologies in the 18th century,
emphasizing the individual over the
communal. Buildings have furthermore
been interpreted as mediators of power
negotiation and legitimatisation of social
stratification and unequal distribution of
wealth, especially within Marxist
approaches to the archaeology of
capitalism (see e.g. McGuire 1991;
Mrozowski 1991; Leone 1984). These
interpretive approaches, however, usually
focus heavily on the form of buildings
rather than on the processes of dwelling
and how the activities of families and
households are integral to the biography
of a building.
The Icelandic turfhouse, its
development and changing form has been
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