New horizons at L’Anse aux Meadows

The UNESCO World Heritage site of L’Anse aux Meadows (LAM) in northern Newfoundland is the only undisputed site of pre-1492 presence of Europeans in the Americas. In August 2018, we undertook fieldwork at LAM to sample the peat bog 30 m east of the Norse ruins for a multiproxy paleoenvironmental ass...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Main Authors: Ledger, PM, Girdland-Flink, L, Forbes, V
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2019
Subjects:
G Geography (General)
GB Physical geography
GE Environmental Sciences
Newfoundland
Online Access:http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/11055/
https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/11055/1/New%20horizons%20at%20L%E2%80%99Anse%20aux%20Meadows.pdf
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1907986116
Description
Summary:The UNESCO World Heritage site of L’Anse aux Meadows (LAM) in northern Newfoundland is the only undisputed site of pre-1492 presence of Europeans in the Americas. In August 2018, we undertook fieldwork at LAM to sample the peat bog 30 m east of the Norse ruins for a multiproxy paleoenvironmental assessment of Norse settlement. Instead, we encountered a new cultural horizon. Here we report our fieldwork at this iconic site and a Bayesian analysis of legacy radiocarbon data, which nuance previous conclusions and suggest Norse activity at LAM may have endured for a century. In light of these findings, we reflect on how the cultural horizon, containing nonnative ecofacts, may relate to indigenous or Norse activities.

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