Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2015, Page 19

Surveying The Assembly Site And Churches Of Þingeyrar
booth remains that might indicate the loca-
tion of the assembly site. Some years later,
in 1894, Brynjúlfur Jónsson also visited
Þingeyrar to locate the assembly site (Jóns-
son 1895; 1907). Apart from the dómhrin-
gur, he observed “many large ancient ruins,
some of which are quite clear and remark-
ably similar to the booths at ancient as-
sembly sites” in the western and southern
part of the homefield (Jónsson 1895, 8-9,
transl. by authors). Thus, Jónssons obser-
vations stand in contrast to the earlier re-
port by Sigurður Vigfússon. Only in 1905,
after a second visit, did Brynjúlfur Jónsson
publish a map of the site, commenting that
most of the booths had been levelled in
the meantime and that the sketch map was
partly drawn from memory (Fig. 3).
In August and September 2012, a team
of archaeologists from the University of
Vienna, with support from Fornleifastof-
nun íslands, conducted a geophysical and
topographical survey at Þingeyrar. The
investigation was part of “The Assembly
Project (TAP) - Meeting places in North-
ern Europe AD 400-1500”, which was
financed by HERA, the Humanities in the
European Research Area. The main aim of
the surveys was to clarify the nature of the
dómhringur and other structures buried
in the homefield of Þingeyrar. The survey
also tried to identify some of the ruins pub-
lished by Brynjúlfur Jónsson in 1907, some
of which may have been associated with the
assembly site.
Resistance and topographical
surveys from 2012
Two surveys were conducted in 2012, a
resistance survey and a topographical
survey3, concentrating on the dómhringur
and the area south of it (Fig. 4). The geo-
electrical survey was carried out with a
Geoscan RM15 resistance meter, equipped
with a MPX15 multiplexer. The latter allows
for measurements with multiple arrays or
probe separations during one survey. The
instrument was set up in a paired twin
array (Clark 1990, 44-45), with two remote
probes fixed at distances of 15-50 m from
the surveyed grid. Readings were taken eve-
ry 50 cm along the traverses, with 0.5- and
1-m probe separations in a 20x20 m grid.
Although a larger probe spacing increases
the penetration depth of the measure-
ments, it reduces the horizontal resolution.
Thus, the measurements taken with a 1-m
probe separation provide additional infor-
mation on the depth of detected features,
3 The choice of methods was mainly based on their wide application in Iceland, as the surveys were part of a
larger fieldwork campaign on a number of tentative assembly sites across Iceland. Although other geophysical
prospection methods, particularly magnetometry and ground-penetrating radar, have been successfully
applied in some sites in Iceland - and might in fact produce good results in Þingeyrar - the geological and
pedological conditions as well as the nature of archaeological structures often place constraints on these
methods (cf. Horsley and Dockrill 2002).
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