Colonization Models of Iceland: new Archaeological and Environmental Data

Author(s): Magdalena Schmid

Year: 2015

Summary

This study aims to improve the dating resolution of archaeological and environmental data from the earliest sites of human occupation in Iceland in order to understand better the timing, scale and rate of the colonization of Iceland. This can be achieved through critical examination of the whole corpus of approximately 650 sites which is now accessible; through cross-referencing of different dating methods – primarily tephrochronology, radiocarbon dating and typology – and through application of new statistical methods of analysis, such as Bayesian statistics which in turn allow testing of specific colonization models. A key motivation for this research is the idea that Iceland is located in the deep ocean, where in the ninth century neither indigenous people nor land-mammals lived, and agriculture had not yet been practiced making this volcanic island the most extreme case study to test colonization models.

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Cite this Record

Colonization Models of Iceland: new Archaeological and Environmental Data. Magdalena Schmid. Presented at The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Francisco, California. 2015 ( tDAR id: 397403)

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Keywords

Geographic Keywords
Europe

Spatial Coverage

min long: -11.074; min lat: 37.44 ; max long: 50.098; max lat: 70.845 ;