Lower Keflavík: Excavation, Geophysical Prospection and Coring Reports 2016 & 2017

• Main Authors: M. Steinberg, John, Zoëga, Guðný, Damiata, Brian, Shepard, Rita, Schoenfelder, John, Bolender, Douglas
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: NSF Arctic Data Center 2020
• Subjects: Archaeology; Viking Age; Iceland; Farmstead; Geophysics; FOS Earth and related environmental sciences; Keflavík
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.18739/a2mg7fw5p; https://arcticdata.io/catalog/view/doi:10.18739/A2MG7FW5P

These two reports describe the archaeological investigations at the Viking Age Farmstead of Lower Keflavík. This archaeological work confirms the existence of a Viking Age farmstead that was constructed and occupied very soon after the settlement started. The primary occupation of this farmstead seems to have been between the settlement tephra layer (~ 871 AD) and the falling of a dark tephra at the end of the 10th century (~885 AD). The farmstead appears to be abandoned before the Hekla 1104 AD tephra layer fell, although there is a suggestion of later outbuildings, probably associated with the visible farm mound at Keflavík. The methodological results at Lower Keflavík are also significant. In this field, several of the major modern conductivity meters were employed, including the DualEM, the CMD Explorer, and the CMD Mini (Damiata, et al. 2017). The results of the additional coring and test pit suggest that at Lower Keflavík, the CMD Mini, using a transect spacing of 0.25 meter (m) with an effective sampling rate of 0.06 m and relying on the in-phase component (IP) of the longest dipole (1 m) is the most efficacious for highlighting the structure of the shallowly buried Viking-Age farmstead.