Midden Investigations at Oddastaðir Mývatnssveit, N Iceland 2002

During the 2002 field season of the Landscapes of Settlement Project (directed by Fornleifastofnun ĺslands with collaboration by the NABO cooperative) a team (Tom McGovern and Christian Keller) visited Oddastaðir August 9th 2002 with the objective of localizing possible midden deposits around the several groups of ruins contained within the surviving home field wall. McGovern made a series of soil cores using the Oakfield tube type soil corer and dug a 1 x 1 m test pit, while Keller carried out a GPS aided survey map of the general area (returning Aug 12-13th to complete observations). The soil cores rapidly indicated that the most substantial cultural deposits were around the grass covered ruin near the center of the Oddastaðir complex (ruin group F in this report), striking the prehistoric H3 tephra at 126 cm below modern surface with ca 80cm of cultural deposit above. The cores outside ruin complexes H and I to the S turned up ca 10-20 cm of deeply buried cultural materials but no clear indications of midden. The test pit (trench II) reached H3 at 130 cm from modern surface, and held some 80 cm of stratified ash (wood and peat) charcoal, and a few well preserved bone fragments. A profile drawn by Orri picked up a probable 1717 tephra above the heavy 1477, then traces of N 1300, H 1158, and then the LNS above H3 at the base of the profile. While test trench II seems to have missed the bone rich portion of the midden (which is probably a few meters downslope, further from the front wall) it did serve to indicate the long medieval occupation sequence and a shorter early modern presence. The site appears extremely promising for additional excavation work.

Iceland midden Mývatnssveit Oddastaðir tephrochronology

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