Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2013, Page 79

THE SVALBARÐ PROJECT
Svalbarð held great potential for ongoing
archaeological research into the
interrelationships of environment,
economy and settlement. In that spirit,
the focus of the project has since 2009
shifted from the central farm itself to its
surrounding territory, specifically
towards the identification and evaluation
of the outlying components of the estate
that may have functioned as extensions of
the Svalbarð central farm or as separate
clients units. The presumption of the
project was that these auxiliary sites in the
delimited area of Svalbarðstunga are
essential elements of the Svalbarð's estate
farming economy and critical for
understanding its economic history in
terms of modes of land use and strategies
of economic production such as the use of
central and outlying pastures and of
secondary resources such as woodlands,
driftwood, fish and seals. The auxiliary
farm sites are also considered
indispensable for the reconstruction of
Svalbarð’s social history as it is the major
farm of its hreppur.
From 2009 to 2011, the project team
surveyed the Svalbarðstunga territory
and inventoried sites representing
auxiliary farms and miscellaneous sites
related to farming activity, now more
than 120 sites. Work conducted in 2009
and 2010 was funded by research grants
held by Woollett from the FQRSC
(Fonds québecois pour la recherches sur
la société et la culture, Programme
établissement de professeurs-chercheurs
nouveaux, Québec, Canada), and the
National Science Foundation (USA)
International Polar Year program
(Thomas McGovern, principal
investigator). The 2010-2011 project was
funded by the Groupe de recherche en
archéometrie (Université Laval,
Réginald Auger, principal investigator)
with equipment and facility support from
Fomleifastofnun íslands. In 2012 the
project received new funding from a
grant held by Woollett through the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada, and the National
Science Foundation-funded Comparative
Island Ecodynamics programme
(Thomas McGovern, principal
investigator). With these new resources,
the team was able to undertake an open
area excavation at Hjálmarvík while
continuing the systematic archaeological
survey of Svalbarðstunga and
environmental archaeology sampling of
selected previously-identified sites.
The oldest available historical
descriptions of farms in Svalbarðstunga
date to the early 14th century, and
include mentioning of Svalbarð itself, the
church there and its ownership of the
Svalbarð estate and outlying properties at
Hjálmarvík and Hermundarfell
(Diplomatarium islandicum 2, 425-26).
Hjálmarvík is on the coast within
Svalbarðstunga but Hermundarfell abuts
the estate to the west. Basal layers in the
middens of Svalbarð and Hjálmarvík,
which are presumed to represent the
initial phases of occupation of these sites,
are dated to the Viking age (mid llth
century at Svalbarð) on the basis of
artefact typology and 14C analyses
(Amorosi 1992; Gísladóttir et al. 2010,
38). A number of other sites in
Svalbarðshreppur are mentioned in
earlier historical sources dating from the
77