Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2013, Page 66

MAGNUS HELLQVIST
The environment created by humans
attracts insects in various ways, such as
providing different substrates or the
favourable climate of the indoor
environment. The excavation at Hólar
revealed a corridor (Fig. 3) between rooms
in one of the houses, an interpretation
already stated during excavation through
its construction and connection to the
other rooms, which represents a typical
space in the house that would attract
insects by its intemal environment. The
narrow corridor mnning along the house
creates a dark space in the house indoors,
with no particular activities producing any
substrates. It is a quite typical architectural
unit of the post-medieval buildings, which
developed during the Middle Ages, as
buildings developed to more compact
building architecture which in the Late
Medieval period leads to the so called
“passage-house” where all the rooms in
the house were placed along a central
corridor. This type of architecture is dated
to the later part of the 15th century and
first part of the 16th century and became a
building tradition until the 19th century
(Urbanczyk, 1999).
Samples from this part contained
fragments from two species of Coleoptera,
of which one was identifíable to the
species level, Catops borealis. This
species is considered very synanthropic in
Iceland and is completely bound to indoor
environments, where it prefers moist and
mouldy parts of buildings: it is not found
in natural environments. The other fínd
was a beetle from the family
Figure 4
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