PUBLICATIONS
2005
'Ore, Fire, Hammer, Sickle: Iron Production in Viking Age and Early Medieval Iceland'
Iron was produced in Iceland from the ninth century AD until the early sixteenth century. As a fundamental industry supporting this medieval Scandinavian outpost, iron production offers uniquely valuable opportunities for examining the changing organization and structure of this society and its economy. Starting with archaeological data gained from recent excavations of a Viking Age smelting site at Hals (Borgarfjardarsysla), western Iceland, this paper integrates archaeological and historical sources to shed light on the organization of iron production (quarrying, smelting, forging/smithing, distribution, and repair of tools) in the economic structure of Viking Age (AD 875-1000) and Early Medieval (AD 1000-1300) Iceland.
In De Re Metallica: The Uses of Metal in the Middle Ages, AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science and Art, Volume 4, edited by Robert Bork, pp. 183-206. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
2004
'Patterns in Time and the Tempo of Change: A North Atlantic Perspective on the Evolution of Complex Societies'
Between AD 1175 and 1250 medieval Iceland society transformed itself from a network of decentralized simple chiefdoms into a unified proto-state. Uniquely, a vast corpus of vernacular writing - much written by the chieftains themselves - describes actors' ideologies, histories, motivations, and understandings of the processes involved. Archaeological data provide alternative perspectives, highlighting processes that extended over temporal scales beyond actors' abilities to observe or manage. How robust can our explanatory frameworks be if the changes we seek to explain occurred too rapidly to be monitored by most archaeological methods? Do archaeological perspectives provide valuable or illusory insights into the processes we seek to study?
In Exploring the Role of Analytical Scale in Archaeological Interpretation, BAR International Series 1261 (2004), edited by James R. Mathiew and Rachel E. Scott, pp. 83-99. Oxford, UK: Archaeopress.
CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS
2004
'Independent people, householders and outlaws: reconciling economic self-sufficiency, political centralization, and trade in medieval Iceland'
From its colonization in the 9th century AD to its absorption by the Norwegian state in the 13th, medieval Iceland was transformed from a confederation of simple chieftaincies into a network of competing complex chiefdoms and, briefly, a unified state. While comparable chiefdoms' economies have been characterized through reference to redistributive, tributary, or patron/client relationships among elite and non-elite households, medieval Iceland's non-elite households have generally been considered largely autonomous, self-sufficient, and politically independent - held in check by the ultimate sanction of outlawry. This paper examines the archaeological records of outlaws (theoretically the most independent and autonomous members of society) and farming households in western Iceland to consider the benefits and risks of autonomy and to examine material evidence for the degrees to which these groups were integrated into social, political, and economic networks linking Icelanders with one another and with other communities in the medieval North Atlantic region.
Presented at the 69th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Montreal; April 3, 2004.
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