Midden Investigations at Oddastaðir, Mývatnssveit, N Iceland, 2002

Summary

During the 2002 field season of the Landscapes of Settlement

Project (directed by Fornleifastofnun ĺslands with collaboration by the NABO

cooperative) a team (Tom McGovern and Christian Keller) visited Oddastaðir

August 9

th

2002 with the objective of localizing possible midden deposits around

the several groups of ruins contained within the surviving home field wall.

McGovern made a series of soil cores using the Oakfield tube type soil corer

and dug a 1 x 1 m test pit, while Keller carried out a GPS aided survey map of

the general area (returning Aug 12-13

th

to complete observations). The soil cores

rapidly indicated that the most substantial cultural deposits were around the

grass covered ruin near the center of the Oddastaðir complex (ruin group F in

this report), striking the prehistoric H3 tephra at 126 cm below modern surface

with ca 80cm of cultural deposit above. The cores outside ruin complexes H and I

to the S turned up ca 10-20 cm of deeply buried cultural materials but no clear

indications of midden. The test pit (trench II) reached H3 at 130 cm from modern

surface, and held some 80 cm of stratified ash (wood and peat) charcoal, and a

few well preserved bone fragments. A profile drawn by Orri picked up a probable

1717 tephra above the heavy 1477, then traces of N 1300, H 1158, and then the

LNS above H3 at the base of the profile. While test trench II seems to have

missed the bone rich portion of the midden (which is probably a few meters

downslope, further from the front wall) it did serve to indicate the long medieval

occupation sequence and a shorter early modern presence. The site appears

extremely promising for additional excavation work.

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

File Information