Search Project Results: Faroe Islands

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	Heart of the Atlantic: cultural landscapes of Sandoy, Faroe Islands	This inter-disciplinary project investigates the changing cultural and natural landscapes on the island of Sandoy, from first settlement to modern time. Archaeological investigations are focusing on the extensive excavations at Undir Junkarinsflötti, Á Sondum and Vid Kirkjard in the village of Sandur. Principle funding bodies: Anadarko (Faroes), Faroese Research Council (Faroes), Leverhulme Trust (UK) and National Science Foundation (US).
	Undir Junkarinsfløtti	Excavations of this extensive coastal erosion site occurred between 2003 and 2007.
	Social-ecological Resilience in the Viking-Age to Early-Medieval Faroe Islands, Sandur, Sandoy	This dissertation aims to evaluate the development and maintenance of social-ecological resilience during the settlement-period (ca. 9th through 11th centuries CE) in the Faroe Islands. In particular, the core objectives include the identification of the key social and natural variables involved, the examination of how these variables contributed to overall resilience, and the investigation of the initiation of the Faroese domestic economy. This research focuses primarily on an analysis of the 9th through 13th century archaeofaunal assemblage from the site of Undir Junkarinsfløtti, located on the island of Sandoy. This analysis represents the first detailed study of the Faroese settlement-period domestic economy. In addition to the Undir Junkarinsfløtti archaeofaunal data, the research presented here draws from a wide range of archaeological, paleoenvironmental, and documentary evidence. These Faroese data are compared with contemporaneous datasets from elsewhere in the North Atlantic, including Iceland, Greenland, the Northern and Western Isles of Scotland, and western coastal Norway. Interpretation of this evidence is informed by a theoretical approach rooted in historical ecology, with an emphasis on the dynamic and dialectic nature of human-environment interactions, particularly as these relate to social-ecological resilience. This study suggests that the overall resilience of the Faroese social-ecological system can largely be attributed not only to the maintenance of a broad-based domestic economy that was heavily subsidized by the sustained exploitation of robust natural resources, but also to the development of a collaborative, community-based approach to resource management and use. In particular, these factors contributed to robustness against food shortfalls.
	Harbours of the North Atlantic (AD 800-1300) (HaNoA)	The core aims of the project are: to investigate possible port facilities and their functions by studying medieval written sources, to examine the topography of ports in relation to navigational aids (e.g. landmarks), ballast fields, the seabed and the locations of landing-places and port facilities on land, to refine and consolidate the so-called fetch method to localise and evaluate ports or landing-places, to analyse ballast as an archaeological source for the first time, in order to gain an understanding of the origins of trading vessels and the volume of maritime trade, and to ascertain the most reliable indicators for the elusive ports of the Viking period and the Middle Ages in the North Atlantic.