Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2013, Page 108

HOWELL M. ROBERTS AND ELÍN ÓSK HREIÐARSDÓTTIR
wholly unpromising as the basis for
further study. Today we have a different
view.
Litlu-Núpar and its wider
context
Litlu-Núpar is located on a grassy slope of
Hvammsheiði heath, on the eastem bank
of the River Laxá in Suður-Þingeyjarsýsla.
Research in the area has mostly focused on
the pre-Christian burials at the edge of the
homefield but a field survey and limited
trial trenching within the homefield and
beyond have begun to reveal a settlement
pattem that might be largely contemporary
to the burials.
At Litlu-Núpar three big enclosures
and fourteen mins can be found within
the home field which is marked by a
double and in parts triple, turf boundary
(Fig.l). The heathen burials discussed in
this article were found alongside side of
outermost boundary where some erosion
has occurred but most of the home field
is overgrown with heather. The mins and
boundaries at Litlu-Núpar are sunken and
intergrated with the landscape with the
exception of a turf- and stone built sheep
house from the 19th century, which
stands much higher than the other mins,
in the south eastem comer of the home
field. The other remains are scattered
across the home field and could well be
from the same and much earlier
occupational phases of the site. Most of
the stmctural rains at Litlu-Núpar are
simple, that is they consist of a single
compartment or are divided up in two.
There are only two exceptions to this
which are two ruins close together,
situated on small hills around the middle
of the innermost boundary. Both of these
mins have several compartments and it is
not unlikely that one of them could be the
original farm in the area. Another
possible location of the farm might be
undemeath the mins of the 19th century
sheep house where a small hill has
accumulated and gives an indication of a
substantial occupation history.
Trial trenching was conducted
through three of the mins (marked A, B
and C on figure 1) in the home field in
connection to the excavation of the
burials in 2006. The trenches showed that
all three mins were likely outhouses.
Ruins A and B only seem to have had a
single occupational phase and were out
of use by the 13th century, possibly long
before. Ruin C was used for a longer
period, sometime between 940 and 1300
AD and might have been a bam. It is
likely that most of the mins within the
home field of Litlu-Núpar were
outhouses of some sort (Friðriksson et al.
2007, 5-7).
The multiple boundaries and large
enclosures in Litlu-Núpar are of some
interest. Such boundaries in seem to be
fairly common in abandoned farms in
Þingeyjarsýsla county but have not been
found to any similar extent else were in
Iceland (see for example Lámsdóttir and
Hreiðarsdóttir. 2011, 135). Little is
known about the role of these multiple
boundaries although it is most likely that
they served some function relating to
cultivation (e.g. crops). Two of the
enclosures at Litlu-Núpar were trenched
in 2008-2009 (marked D and E on figure
1). The trenches revealed that one of the
enclosures, D, was clearly built before
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