acknowledgements

I'm back in Iceland for another summer of dissertation research! My work this summer continues to be funded by the National Science Foundation. For the 2016-17 school year, I will be staying in Iceland to continue my research thanks to a grant from the Fulbright US Student program. Last but definitely not least, I have also been awarded a Leifur Eiriksson Foundation scholarship, which will supplement my NSF and Fulbright funds, and will also permit me to extend my fieldwork for an additional summer, through 2017. Look for more details about my research and travels here in the months to come - and at my more informal tumblr blog, kat-in-iceland.tumblr.com.

This evening I attended a lovely dinner with Leifur Eiriksson fellows, board members, and supporters - what a wonderful way to kick off a new summer field season!

I'm here in Iceland for the next two summers on a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation, investigating the relationship between anthropogenic environmental change and changes in settlement patterns between about 900 - 1500 AD. It's well established that the environment of Iceland changed dramatically soon after Norse settlers arrived, ca. 871. Clearing the land for hayfields and putting livestock to pasture in the highlands led to deforestation and erosion on a grand scale. How did these changes in the environment affect social relationships between people? For example, as the environment became increasingly degraded over time, did social inequality increase, and how did people maintain control over land and labor under those circumstances?

To begin to answer these questions, I'm mapping and coring in and around abandoned turf structures on Hegranes, an island in Skagafjörður, North Iceland. Coring combined with small text excavations will suggest what these structures were used for, and through the presence of volcanic tephra layers, will tell me approximately when they were constructed and when they fell out of regular use. Farther afield from human habitation, coring combined with detailed analysis of soil profiles will show how the sediment accumulation rate has changed over the last 1100 years. My colleagues in the Skagafjörður Church and Settlement Survey will be defining a settlement sequence of farms that were successful over the long term. By putting all of this data together, I hope to show what kind of relationship existed between long-term anthropogenic environmental change (sediment erosion and deposition) and social inequality (abandonment or restructuring of settlements).

This work is supported financially by the National Science Foundation and Northwestern University. Huge thanks also to my colleagues at NU, Byggðasafn Skagfirðinga, and the Andrew Fiske Center at the University of Massachusetts Boston. (Opinions and ideas expressed on this blog are my own and are not necessarily shared by these organizations.)

Comments and suggestions are always welcome, so if you like what you see here - or if you really don't like it at all - please feel free to leave me a note!