VIKING UNST PROJECT: FIELD SEASON 2008 - Nabo

has been widely criticised as too general to produce meaningful estimations of pastpopulation (Casselberry 1974, 117), later ethnographic studies have continued to producevariations on this method.Like previous studies, this PhD research employs ethnohistoric analogy as a basis formodelling past human populations. Principally, to calculate the size of domestic VikingAge populations this project utilises census and floor size data from the Crofting period inUnst (Shetland) and Fara (Orkney). The Crofting period provides a good comparison to theearlier Viking Age with geographical, environmental, and even social and economicsimilarities existing. Initial application of this approach has produced encouraging results, acase study of the ‘longhouse’ at Hamar (Unst) producing population figures of c.3-6individuals. Any knowledge of Viking/Norse populations, even on a domestic scale, willprovide archaeologists with a powerful interpretive tool. The re-peopling of theViking/Norse North Atlantic landscape will offer a fundamental foundation for social andeconomic modelling, as well as cast new light on previous research.MUCK, FARMSTEADS AND LANDSCAPES: GEOCHEMICAL AND GEOPHYSICAL INVESTIGATIONSOF FARMSTEAD AND LANDSCAPE INTERACTION ON THE ISLE OF UNST (SHETLAND)Robert M. LeggThis PhD intends through geochemical and geophysical analysis to model agricultural andsocial interaction of abandoned farmsteads and their landscapes on the island of Unst. Thestudy then intends to assess and explain differences between the different abandonedfarmsteads on the island. To answer these questions the project will aim to:• Identify geoarchaeological characteristics that can be associated with the differentparts of the agricultural activity• Identify different strategies for agricultural processes such as grazing and manuremanagement.• Assess how different strategies, such as different mucking out processes, affectedinteraction between the farmsteads and the landscape• Evaluate the traditional identification and interpretation of the byre, which is largelybased upon ethnographic studiesManuring and grazing practices historically would have been an integral part of botheconomic and social life on the farmstead and in the surrounding landscape. For exampleduring the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, events such as the springtime muckingout of the byre and the movement of cattle to the shielings were important events in theagricultural calendar for the Northern and Western Isles (Fenton 1997; Holden 2004).Historically a wide range of materials such as seaweed, hearth ash and animal excrementwere used for sources of manure in the Northern Isles (Fenton 1997, 274-84). Use ofanimal manures would have required a combination of joint pastoral and arable agriculturewith animals being stalled for period time to enable the collection of manure (Simpson etal. 1998b, 123). Within the North Atlantic region cattle byres often provide evidence foranimal stalling on Viking period and later farmsteads.69