Archaeological Applications of Radiocarbon Chronologies and Statistical Models: Dating the Viking Age Settlement of Iceland (Landnám)

• Main Author: Schmid, Magdalena Maria E
• Other Authors: Orri Vésteinsson, Sagnfræði- og heimspekideild (HÍ), Faculty of History and Philosophy (UI), Hugvísindasvið (HÍ), School of Humanities (UI), Háskóli íslands, University of Iceland
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: University of Iceland, School of Humanities, Faculty of History and Philosophy 2018
• Subjects: Geislakolsgreining; Fornleifafræði; Fornleifarannsóknir; Fornminjar; Aldursgreiningar; Tímatalsfræði; Gjóskulög; Landnám Íslands; Víkingaöld; Doktorsritgerðir; ice core; Iceland; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11815/984

This thesis aims to refine the accuracy and precision of radiocarbon (14C) datasets in order to better understand the timing of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental events relating to important issues like mobility, colonisation, human impacts and human responses to climate change. This is vital, because radiocarbon is one of the most important dating methods in prehistoric archaeology and Quaternary science and some 14C determinations can be anomalously older or younger than their stratigraphy suggests. Various ‘chronometric hygiene’ protocols have been developed aiming at enhancing the quality of 14C datasets by removing all potentially problematic 14C samples, but there is no generally accepted routine approach to chronology building utilising large 14C datasets. Existing practices that eliminate up to 95% of 14C dates can mean that so few dates remain in some locations that a robust chronology cannot be established. Despite their foundation in sound theory, without independent tests we cannot know if established protocols are apt, too strict or too lax. This research tackles this problem utilising Bayesian statistical modelling and tephrochronology. The Viking age settlement of Iceland (Old Norse: Landnám) is an ideal laboratory to explore the potentials and the limits of chronometric hygiene and Bayesian statistical modelling because of a remarkable conjuncture of complementary dating methods of the archaeology and palaeoenvironment of first settlement (14C dates, ice core-dated tephrochronology, artefact typology, medieval literary texts and palaeoecology). The timing of Landnám is of major international significance because it represents a key stage in the greater Norse colonisation of the North Atlantic islands that led to the first European contact with North America. In recent years intensive archaeological research on the Viking age has produced significant new dating evidence and offers exciting opportunities to assess colonisation as a process. This thesis presents a first systematic and holistic ...