Small Dwellings on the Viking Frontier: New Research from Kotið, North Iceland
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Small Dwellings on the Viking Frontier: New Research from Kotið, North Iceland" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Excavations at Kotið in 2022 and 2023 have revealed a very small, Viking Age domestic dwelling that dates to the initial settlement of Iceland in the late ninth century. Compared to known settlement farms, the site is significantly smaller and lacks access to good farmland even though better land was unoccupied at the time. The site suggests an important social and ecological role for non-elite households in the Icelandic settlement process and requires a new consideration of inequalities and complex relationships among early settler households on the Norse frontier. This poster symposium presents data from multiple aspects of the excavation, including geoarchaeology of the domestic floors and extramural spaces, material culture of adornment items, zooarchaeology and paleoethnobotany, later reuse of the site as agricultural infrastructure, and artistic visualization of the dwelling.
Other Keywords
Iron Age •
Household Archaeology •
Geoarchaeology •
Zooarchaeology •
Paleoethnobotany •
Bone Tool Analysis •
Environmental Archaeology •
Norse •
Iceland •
Viking Age
Geographic Keywords
Isle of Man (Country) •
Faroe Islands (Country) •
Department of Martinique (Country) •
Republic of El Salvador (Country) •
Department of Guadeloupe (Country) •
Cayman Islands (Country) •
Antigua and Barbuda (Country) •
Turks and Caicos Islands (Country) •
Bermuda (Country) •
Belize (Country)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-5 of 5)
- Documents (5)
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“The Cottage,” a Small Viking Age Dwelling in North Iceland (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Small Dwellings on the Viking Frontier: New Research from Kotið, North Iceland" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster serves as an introduction and overview to a poster session on the archaeology of Kotið (“The Cottage”), a small dwelling established during the initial Viking Age settlement of Iceland in the late ninth century. Kotið represents a previously unknown and uninvestigated site type in the early Viking...
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How Many Bone Pins Is a Lot? Material Assemblages at Kotið, a Small Viking Age Dwelling in Iceland (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Small Dwellings on the Viking Frontier: New Research from Kotið, North Iceland" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Icelandic Viking Age archaeological assemblages are notorious for their paucity and limited range of material types. Kotið, a small dwelling dating to the original Viking Age settlement of Iceland, is no exception. In two seasons of excavation, only a handful of artifacts have been recovered; however, three...
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Imagining Kotið: Artistic Visualization as Archaeological Practice (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Small Dwellings on the Viking Frontier: New Research from Kotið, North Iceland" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster offers an artistic visualization of the Viking Age dwelling at Kotið, North Iceland. Based on geospatial data and photogrammetry collected in 2022 and 2023, the rendering demonstrates how this structure differs from previously excavated turf dwellings in Viking Age Iceland. Its small size,...
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Kotið: An Integrated Geoarchaeological Investigation (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Small Dwellings on the Viking Frontier: New Research from Kotið, North Iceland" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Kotið, in Skagafjörður, northern Iceland, consists of several interposed components ranging from medieval outbuildings to a small dwelling from the first period of settlement in the region (ca. 870–930 CE). To understand how the inhabitants of Kotið constructed and reconstructed the buildings...
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Savor Your Subsistence: Foodways at Kotið, a Small Viking Age Dwelling in Northern Iceland (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Small Dwellings on the Viking Frontier: New Research from Kotið, North Iceland" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present food production data from the 2022–2023 excavations at Kotið, a small, non-elite Viking Age (ninth century AD) domestic dwelling located in Skagafjörður, North Iceland. Macrobotanical and zooarchaeological remains provide key data to better understand early subsistence strategies, including...