Finnbogastadir Rescue Excavation 1990


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Parent name: CUNY Strandasysla Historical Ecology Project 1988-90

Project Details

Title:Finnbogastadir Rescue Excavation 1990
Permalink:https://www.nabohome.org/cgi-bin/explore.pl?seq=5
Abstract:In 1990 construction work around the modern farm house at Finnbogastadir (Arneshreppur, Strandasysla, NW Iceland) hit a stratified midden deposit that produced substantial amounts of well preserved bone and artifacts dating to the 18th to early 19th century. After consultation with the National Museum of Iceland and with the kind permission and active help of the farm family members of the Strandasysla Historical Ecology project worked to recover and document the archaeological deposits disturbed by the construction work. While the farm midden is exceptionally deep and certainly extends further back in time, the 1990 excavations (carried out by then-graduate students Jim Woollett and Sophia Perdikaris) were limited to what was required in this rescue situation, and the materials recovered all seem to relate to the 18th-early 19th c. The Jardabok land survey thus provided closely contemporary historical evidence for the same period, allowing a tentative connection to the two historical households who shared tenantry at Finnbogastadir in the early 18th c. See:

Perdikaris, Sophia, Thomas H McGovern, Yekaterina Krivogorskaya, M. Waxman Early Modern Fisher-Farmers at Finnbogastaðir and Gjögur in Northwest Iceland, (2004) R. Gonzales (ed) Presence of the Archaeo- ichthyology in Mexico, ICAZ Fish Remains Working Group 2003, Guadalajara Mexico pp 139-144.

Edvardsson, R., Perdikaris, S., McGovern, T. H., Zagor, N. and Waxman, M. (2004) Coping with hard times in North-West Iceland: Zooarchaeology, History, and Landscape Archaeology at Finnbogastaðir in the 18th century’, Archaeologica Islandica 3, 20-48.

Keywords:Iceland,Fishing,Zooarchaeology,Strandasysla,Finnbogastadir,Early,Modern
Country:Iceland
Project Start Year:1990
Projected End Year:1990

Account Owner

Contact: Thomas H McGovern
Institution: City University New York
Postal Address: Dept Anthropology

Hunter College CUNY

695 Park Ave

New York NY 10021

Post Code: 10021
Telephone: 001 2152970373
Email: thomas.h.mcgovern@gmail.com

Project Content

PDF File
[0.18 MB]
text of Finnbogastadir publication Edvardsson et al 2004




Project Location

Latitude: 66.01244°N
Longitude: 21.49475°W