Skagafjörður Church and Settlement Survey: Archaeofauna from Kotið, 2016 and 2017

Grace M. Cesario

Introduction and Excavations

For the past three years, the Skagafjörður Church and Settlement Survey (SCASS) has been exploring the settlement pattern on Hegranes, in Skagafjörður (Figure 1) (e.g., Bolender et al. 2016, 2017; Steinberg et al. 2016). This report focuses on test pits excavated at the site of Kotið in 2016 and 2017. Located on the land of the main farm of Helluland, but over a kilometer north of the modern farmhouse, Kotið is in between an eroded outcrop and a bog (Figure 2). Since the property of Helluland was subdivided, Helluland no longer owns Kotið (Catlin et al. 2017:36). Coring revealed that the soils around Kotið, in general, are not very deep, though some areas have significant soil deposition. Loss on ignition studies have shown that the area was more marshy in the past, and would have looked quite different than it does today.

The 2016 test pit was a 1x1 meter unit (Catlin et al. 2017), and in 2017 that unit was expanded to a 2x2 (Catlin et al. 2018), using the previous test pit as the northeast corner. Results are presented here as a combination of the two units, since they are connected and the stratigraphy could be correlated. Catlin et al. (2017:46) identified four potential phases of occupation at this site, but the tephra sequence became more unclear during 2017 excavations, and the results are reported here as one phase, from settlement (ca. 871) to AD 1104. Figure 3 shows Kotið during excavation in 2017.

These test pits were originally targeted to collect data for Kathryn Catlin’s dissertation research on the fornbýli, or ruins, on Hegranes (Catlin et al. 2017, 2018), and the archaeofauna recovered are now forming the basis of my dissertation project. Both projects are informed by the Skagafjörður Church and Settlement Survey (SCASS) research on settlement patterns on Hegranes, and are also contributing data to the settlement story.

The Fiske Center at the University of Massachusetts, Boston
CUNY Doctoral Program in Anthropology
Brooklyn College Zooarchaeological Laboratory
Hunter College Zooarchaeology Laboratory
CUNY NORSEC Laboratory Report No. 69
BSK-2018-201 / SCASS-17

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