Vegetation history in Mývatnssveit, Iceland: Report on fieldwork, 29 June – 27 July 2009

This fieldwork was co-funded by National Science Foundation grant ‘Human Ecodynamics in Norse North Atlantic’, the Earth and Biosphere Institute (EBI), University of Leeds and Durham University. It forms part of our efforts to understand the landscape history in general, and past vegetation dynamics and modification by humans in particular, in Mývatnssveit, northern Iceland. This field expedition had three specific aims:

To procure sediment sequences from a number of lakes in the Mývatnssveit region. This aim relates to an ongoing project to reconstruct vegetation history using pollen analysis, some results of which are already published [15, 17, 20].
To excavate a number of charcoal productions pits and take samples for radiocarbon dating, to establish the timing of woodland exploitation across the region.
To undertake experiments to produce charcoal using traditional Icelandic methods, to improve our ability to interpret the archaeological data from charcoal production pits.

Iceland International Polar Year Kalmannstjörn Leirtjörn Mývatn Mývatnssveit pollen analysis radiocarbon dating Skútustaðir vegetation

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