Competition, Reformation, and Modernization in Western Iceland

Kevin P Smith

Competition, Reformation, and Modernization in Western Iceland

Year: 2020

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Medieval to Modern Transitions and Historical Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Research on North Atlantic societies’ transitions from medieval to early modern cultures has recently become more theoretically engaged and informed. In Iceland, historical research has framed the most important processes in this transition as changes in religious affiliation and in the trading partners that linked Iceland to continental European powers, suggesting that the trajectory from the “medieval” to the “early modern” period was marked by strong breaks in culture, community, and economy. Archaeological research on household responses to these religious, political, and economic transitions are, however, hampered by an extremely limited number of excavated sites dating from AD 1200-1700. Excavations at Reykholt and Gilsbakki, both in western Iceland, provide a preliminary basis for considering how households at two competing regional political and religious centers adopted, adapted, or retained material symbols of changing identities before and after the Reformation, as one expanded its influence at the expense of the other.