Midden Investigations at Hofstaðir, Mývatnssveit, N Iceland, 2002 (field report)

Summary

During the 2002 field season of the Landscapes of Settlement

Project (directed by Fornleifastofnun ĺslands with collaboration by the NABO

cooperative) the CUNY team was tasked to locate midden deposits surviving

around the medieval to early modern farm mound on the southern side of the

home field and assess their prospects for further excavation. Two areas were

investigated with small test pits: 1) the area of a midden mound drawn by Bruun

in 1908 and subsequently leveled by bulldozer, and 2) a midden concentration to

the NE of the area Z excavation unit that had produced bone and artifacts in a

test trench profile dug in 2000. The area of the bulldozed midden was

approximately located and two 1 x 0.50 m (pits A & B) and one 2 x 0.50 m (pit C)

test pits were dug. These showed clear evidence of surviving well stratified

cultural deposits directly below the modern turf surface, and all produced small

amounts of well preserved bone as well as ash and charcoal. The three pits were

otherwise very different in stratigraphy, with pit A showing a deeper deposit

marked by multiple in situ tephra (including the LNL sequence and probable

medieval tephra above the H4 prehistoric tephra approximately 60 cm below

modern surface). This pit did clearly show cultural materials (including some

displaced H3 tephra) directly above the probable LNL tephra sequence, but it is

not completely clear if turf cutting or other disturbance is the cause of this

superposition. The second pit B showed a much shorter total profile, reaching H4

at 40 cm above modern surface and producing ca 20 cm of cultural deposit. LNL

and medieval tephra were less evident in this pit. Pit C provided a 2 m

continuous profile and yet another set of tephra, including the 1477 (absent in

pits A & B) both 1158 and 1104, and a clearly sterile layer separating the cultural

material from the LNL sequence. The area Z midden investigation confirmed the

presence of an extremely rich early modern (18

th

-19

th

c) midden overlying a

stratified sequence of peat ash and medium brown cultural deposit. It appears

that a significant bone and artifact collection could be made in this area

documenting the final centuries of occupation, and that earlier midden materials

(probably less bone and artifact rich) are preserved below.

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