Dynamic Landscape Use at Kotið, North Iceland at the Millennial Scale

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Landscape Archaeology - Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Kotið in the 21st century is a small, grassy space between eroded bedrock and managed wetland, used occasionally for grazing horses. Yet recent excavations have revealed that Kotið had a substantial and varied history of land use over the millennium since Iceland was first settled by the Norse in the late 9th century. Early domestic habitation was followed by three distinct periods of buildings for livestock in the 10th, 14th, and likely 16th centuries. These moments of infrastructure investment were punctuated by long periods when the land was used primarily for livestock grazing and outfield hay collection, much as it is today. Preliminary investigations of other small sites in the region suggest similar complex histories of changing land-use. By integrating excavation and survey data, ethnohistoric and archival research, paleoethnobotany, zooarchaeology, and geoarchaeology, we discuss how a changing relationship to the land reflected changing political-economic and environmental conditions in Iceland over the last millennium.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Interdisciplinary Approaches to Landscape Archaeology - Part 1   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52673