VSF 2010 Report - Nabo

against the 3 m thick, external western wall of the house. Two small rooms south of room
10662, close to the western edge of the excavation area, were also excavated further, with a
focus on the low, stone-paved platform in room 9502 and the removal of midden, turf and
stone deposits in room 8562. South of room 8562, a series of mixed gravel, turf debris and
ashy deposits were cleared away to reveal a very narrow room, 10676. The removal of the
western and northern walls of this room, and the underlying mixed deposits of turf, stones,
and ash, revealed a new stone pavement belonging to an earlier phase of the building. To
the east of rooms 9502 and 8562, the corridor 10590, which connects to the southern end of
room 10662, was further excavated as well, including a sequence of dark, compacted floor
deposits, finally revealing a floor rich in shells, egg shells, bones, textiles, and pottery
sherds dating to the 17th-18th century. On the southern edge of the excavation area, the
removal of turf and stone collapse deposits revealed another wall, 9560, which probably
belonged to the 1884 house, and underneath this wall was revealed more of the pavement
on the southern side of the house that first began to be uncoverd in 2008. Finally, mixed
demolition deposits were cleared from the area to the east of the central corridor, which
was used as a vegetable garden in the 20th-century. By the end of the 2010 field season,
therefore, it had been confirmed that some of the walls of the 19th century house in fact
date as far back as the late 17th century, and the goal of subsequent field seasons will be to
bring the entire house into phase.
Landscape and Environmental Research at Vatnsfjörður 2003-2010
In addition to the excavations on the Vatnsfjörður farm, archaeological and environmental
research on the homefield and the landscape around Vatnsfjörður have been ongoing since
2003. Archaeological landscape surveys directed by Oscar Aldred since 2005, assisted by
Poul Baltzer Heide in 2007 and 2008, recorded 65 new sites in 2006, 333 new sites in
2007, and 224 new sites in 2008, and 159 in 2009, bringing the total number of cairns,
structures, burials, pits, tracks, boat landing places, fox traps, walls, pots, peat cuttings,
enclosures, crossings and bridges in the study area to 977 (Aldred 2005; Aldred 2006;
Aldred in Milek 2007, 2008, 2009, and this volume). The most abundant sites in the region
are stone-built cairns, which Oscar Aldred and Poul Baltzer Heide have been able to
classify according to their shape and building style, though it has so far not been possible to
devise a way to date them. The extensive network of cairns in the hills around Vatnsfjörður
served as route markers, boundary markers, and navigation aids for sea-faring boats, and
the distribution of these cairns lends support to the idea that Vatnsfjörður was a central
place in this landscape. In addition to finding new sites in the vicinity of Vatnsfjörður, the
work of Oscar Aldred and Poul Heide has also been making an important contribution to
our understanding of how people interacted with their environment in Vatnsfjarðardalur:
how they moved through the landscape, how they experienced sights and sounds, and how
they made decisions about where to situate their settlement sites and landscape markers.
This work continued in 2010 with a detailed survey of the farms in Vatnsfjarðarlur
by Ásta Hermannsdóttir, who recorded a total of 132 individual monuments in the
homefields of Vatnsfjörður (82), Vatnsfjarðarsel (15), Sveinhús (18), Miðhús (10), and
Hálshús (7) (Ásta Hermannsdóttir, this report). Two of these farms, Hálshús, and
Vatnsfjarðarsel, were also the subject of an evaluation programme in order to determine the
quality of bone preservation and the potential of these farms for future research. A test
trench placed infront of an exposed midden section at Hálshús was investigated by Hildur
Gestsdóttir (with post-ex analysis and write-up by Oddgeir Isaksen), and a coring
programme was conducted at both Hálshús and Vatnsfjarðarsel by Céline Dupont-Hébert.
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