
NSF Org: |
OPP Office of Polar Programs (OPP) |
Recipient: |
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Initial Amendment Date: | February 6, 2015 |
Latest Amendment Date: | February 24, 2017 |
Award Number: | 1417772 |
Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
Program Manager: |
Erica Hill
OPP Office of Polar Programs (OPP) GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
Start Date: | February 1, 2015 |
End Date: | January 31, 2020 (Estimated) |
Total Intended Award Amount: | $683,881.00 |
Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $683,881.00 |
Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2016 = $199,977.00 FY 2017 = $203,417.00 |
History of Investigator: |
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Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
100 WILLIAM T MORRISSEY BLVD DORCHESTER MA US 02125-3300 (617)287-5370 |
Sponsor Congressional District: |
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Primary Place of Performance: |
IC |
Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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Parent UEI: |
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NSF Program(s): | ASSP-Arctic Social Science |
Primary Program Source: |
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Program Reference Code(s): |
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Program Element Code(s): |
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Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.078 |
ABSTRACT
The institutionalization of Christianity in the Middle Ages is one of the fundamental transformations in early European history. This research seeks to understand the connections between the adoption of Christian practices and the development of political power in Iceland between AD 870 and 1300. In about AD 870 the predominately pagan Norse started colonizing the previously uninhabited volcanic island. In AD 1000 Christianity began to replace the widespread pagan beliefs. By 1300, Iceland was dominated by centralized religious and political institutions. Iceland has one of the richest collections of medieval texts and excellent archaeological preservation of Viking Age farmsteads, churches, and cemeteries. This makes research here central to understanding early European history and has the potential to give us insights into the global effects of Christianization in its contemporary context.
The project employs geophysical surveying techniques already tested under a previous NSF award, PLR-1242829, "EAGER: Assessing the Reliability of the Geophysical identification of Early Christian Churchyards and Burials in Northern Iceland." The further improvements this project makes in developing geophysical survey protocols, including ground penetrating radar and electromagnetic conductivity, provide for a more cost-effective alternative to traditional excavation and thus, the project has broader applications to archaeological science, forensics, historic preservation, and cultural resource management.
Emerging evidence indicates that the Christianization of Iceland took place in two major phases: a popular adoption in the absence of central religious authority, followed by an institutionalization of church communities and hierarchies. Soon after the Christian conversion many individual farmers established household churches and accompanying cemeteries on their own farmsteads. In the 12th century, many of the household churches and cemeteries appear to have been shut down and replaced with new communal or parish churches. The researchers wish to understand if the parish churches were located on prominent farms that were established early in the colonization sequence or whether these church farms became important political and economic centers only after the Christian conversion.
The project will investigate the relationship between the settlement history and Christian practices at 13 farms in the Hegranes region of lowland Skagafjordur, just south of the Arctic Circle. Buried farmsteads and Christian cemeteries will be systematically surveyed using archaeological and geophysical survey protocols. Data will be collected on farmstead location, order of establishment, and changes in their size or organization throughout the 400-year period of study. The project will also systematically investigate evidence of Christian practices on these farms, including the presence and location of cemeteries or churches, dates of burials, and abandonment of the cemeteries and churches, including the use of churches after burials ceased. By comparing the farmstead establishment date and size to the geography of the Christian cemeteries, the team will determine the relationship between hierarchies that developed during the early colonization and hierarchies that developed later during the institutionalization of Christianity.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
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This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Iceland was one of the last large land masses to be settled by humans, starting in earnest in the late 9th century. The Viking Age settlers brought a Scandinavian subsistence package of animal husbandry, grass haying, and cultivation of domestic cereals such as barley to this previously uninhabited subarctic landscape. The early farmsteads established by these settlers seem to have limited social and economic stratification. However, by AD 1500, some farmsteads were substantially bigger than others and those larger farms often had churches and owned other smaller farmsteads. Was this substantial increase in inter-farmstead socioeconomic stratification an outgrowth of the original Viking Age settlement pattern or was it a result of a later combination of factors associated with the widespread adoption and later institutionalization of Christianity?
This NSF funded work specifically sought to determine if the settlement pattern of the 9th century colonization of Iceland affected the development of the religious and economic institutions that dominated the 14th century. To answer this question, we identified and determined the establishment date of farmsteads in the Hegranes region in Skagafjordur North Iceland, measured their changing sizes, and attempted to ascertain the sequence of associated churches and burial grounds. The interpretation of this settlement pattern data indicates that, at least in this part of North Iceland, while the processes of colonization and Christianity are fundamentally related, there is variation in the specific mechanisms.
This research has led to a new understanding of the colonization and that the widespread individual farmstead adoption of Christianity was a separate process from its later parochial institutionalization. The initial settlement was rapid and variable. All of the productive lands were precipitously employed. Unexpectedly, the settlement processes that stemmed from this initial rapid settlement took a very long time to play out. For at least the first 200 years of occupation, the settlement pattern was dynamic, continually evolving with farmsteads being established, abandoned, and relocated. Part of this dynamism was the widespread construction of farmstead churches, some of which would be later abandoned. Farms that built churches were of an early date, and a little larger. Some of those farms retained churches although their associated burial grounds were discontinued. The creation of parochial central churches seems to be associated with the abandonment of burial grounds at those other smaller farmsteads. Farmsteads that retained churches which assumed parochial function were the largest in the area. At the end of the 13th century - after the long dynamic settlement of the region - these large, early church farmsteads became nodes in a fossilized and highly stratified medieval settlement pattern, still evident in the landscape today.
The funded archaeological research demonstrates that changing farmstead size is a robust proxy for the development of social inequality. In the heterogeneous landscape of Hegranes there was rapid consolidation of early smaller farmsteads, many of which were abandoned (n=9), into much larger ones. In this study region, there are 9 known or suspected churches with burial grounds, only two of which survived into the early modern period. The modern farms that contain those abandoned sites tend to be larger and tend to retain their churches into the late medieval. This is a different sequence compared to the homogeneous fertile Langholt landscape nearby (studied with previous NSF grants). In the Langholt region there were fewer abandoned farms (n=3) and the earliest farms quickly became large. Instead of consolidation, later smaller farms were established on the large early farmsteads' subdivided land. Langholt has 4 known or suspected churches with burial grounds, all but one of which survived into the early modern period.
The differences in the two regions can be seen in the two methods developed for determining the count and area of an archaeological farmstead: the modern farm rule and the 100 m rule. In Langholt, both methods produced good correlations between establishment date and farmstead size. In Hegranes the correlations between establishment date and farmstead size with the two methods are not the same - there is only a strong correlation using the modern farm rule. These metrics indicate that in Langholt there was subdivision, while within Hegranes there was consolidation. In this arctic environment, either gradual subdivision or rapid consolidation seem to both result in increased social stratification with the largest sites assuming a central religious and political importance.
Until the establishment of religious institutions that in later medieval times controlled Icelandic society's productivity, the farm was the main unit of production and power. The results hint that the later hierarchical medieval settlement structure, associated with institutionalized Christianity, was set in motion by the very long early settlement pattern sequence.
Last Modified: 07/22/2020
Modified by: John M Steinberg
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