Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2015, Page 49

Abandoned Settlements at the Foot of Mt Hekla
Period Date Number of artefacts Types of artefacts
Period I 900-1300 65 Beads, weapons, adornment, steatite and spherical weights
Period I - II 900-1650 15 E.g. iron production remains
Period II 1300-1650 40 E.g. cast and hammered vessels of copper alloy
Period III 1650-1800 5 Gravestones, bridle parts, bread pick
Period IV 1800-1900 500+ Diverse modern artefacts
Table 2. Dated artifacts from Rangárvellir byperiods.
objects that could be given date ranges just
over 500 were from the latest period (IV).2
Ihe rest, about 125 finds could be dated to
period I-III and could often tie sites that
had no known dating to specific periods.
Most of those finds are from period I but
the smallest number dates to period III (see
table 2).
In general the finds assemblage from
Rangárvellir indicates that the area was
settled early. The find assemblage provided
important dating information about the
settlement in the area and was especially
useful for the earliest period because of
the lack of contemporary written sources.
Further research into the assemblage may
provide valuable information about daily
life and material culture in Rangárvellir.
The method of dating the occupation of
farms in Rangárvellir was based on a broad
but fragmentary database. The evidence
for occupation dates is therefore diíferent
for each farm and more uncertain in some
cases than others. There are acknowledged
limitations to our methods. For example,
each time period is long and even if we
know a certain farm was occupied during
one of these periods, it does not mean that
it was always occupied from the beginning
of the period to the end of it, or that it was
not occupied in the other periods. A more
accurate dating will only be made possible
by excavation and more detailed research
of the artefacts.
The preliminary results
of the pilot study
The information gathered in the study can
be considered as a first attempt to draw out-
lines of the history of settlement and aban-
donment in Rangárvellir. The results of the
study, based on documentary and field sur-
vey, place names and recovered objects indi-
cate that at least 46 farms were occupied in
the earliest period (900-1300). It is however
likely that this number is not representative
2 Many objects could not be tied to a specific period (such as knives, grinding stones made of lava stone,
whetstones, stone weights or bone splinters). On the other hand objects that represent iron production were
classified to period I-II as it is commonly believed that local iron production had ceased by the 15th century
(Jóhannesson 1943, 58).
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