Author ORCID Identifier

0009-0004-3293-3945

Date of Award

12-31-2025

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Historical Archaeology

First Advisor

John M. Steinberg

Second Advisor

Douglas J. Bolender

Third Advisor

Guðný Zoëga

Abstract

Enclosure walls, constructed during the Viking Age and Medieval periods, were a common feature of early Icelandic agropastoral farmstead infrastructure. These walls divided the landscape and created discrete areas, often protecting grass grown in homefields. Harvesting grass for fodder was essential to support livestock, especially cattle, through the winter. Enclosure walls were built with various combinations of turf, stone, and grass sod, which were generally cut, gathered, or excavated close to the wall’s location. Data was collected for this project and combined with substantial previous archaeological work, which all take advantage of common volcanic tephra layers (including Hekla AD 1104), to outline and date wall and farmstead deposits with soil cores and small excavations. This thesis examines enclosure size, date, occupation status, and location-based variables (elevation, slope, aspect, and region) for a sample of 80 enclosures in Skagafjörður, North Iceland. In cases where there is data, enclosure size is also compared to farmstead area.

The results of this research indicate that most enclosures surround a contemporary farmstead occupation. There are also uninhabited enclosures without contemporary farmstead occupations. The distribution of enclosure size estimates has a multimodal distribution with modes at 0.5 and 1.7 ha. Enclosure occupation type, based on whether an enclosure has a contemporary occupation, has an impact on enclosure size. During the early part of the settlement sequence (~AD 870 to AD 1104), occupied enclosures are statistically more likely to be larger than uninhabited enclosures. After AD 1104, all enclosures tend to be similar in size. The presence of very small, occupied enclosures (< 0.5 ha) both pre-AD 1104 and from AD 1104-1300 may indicate a different subsistence pattern than attested to in the 18th and 19th centuries. Before 1104, farmstead area and enclosure size are not related, suggesting that homefield fodder was only one part of a broader agropastoral package that also relied on extensive resources. The conclusions of this study suggest that, while there are some important differences between the pre- AD 1104 enclosures and those established 1104-1300, both groups were a part of a flexible agropastoral adaptation that used intensive and extensive resources.

Comments

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