Ø172 Tatsip Ataa Midden Excavation Project - Subsistence Strategies and Economy in Norse Vatnahverfi	The Norse economy in Greenland was strongly dependent upon a balance of both marine resources (seals, sea birds, walruses) and terrestrial resources (pasture plants, woodland, fertilized soils, domestic mammals, reindeer) (McGovern 1985, 2000, McGovern et al 1996, Enghoff 2003). The Vatnahverfi project aims at improving understanding of the Norse farming and hunting strategies, as well as the use of other local resources (woodland, pasture, marine and freshwater resources) in the Vatnahverfi area, and how they changed in the face of climatic and environmental changes, especially with the arrival of summer sea ice ca. 1250-1300 and the cooling and increased variability of the 15th century (Ogilvie et al 2009, Dugmore et al 2007, 2012). This in turn may have affected the settlement pattern, and the use of landscape and natural resources in this inner fjord part of the Norse Eastern Settlement. Through zooarchaeology and environmental archaeology, we aim to reconstruct the human ecodynamics of that region and collect data that will be basis for a broader comparison with other places in the Norse North Atlantic. The farm site E172 Tatsip Ataa was chosen after the completion of a coring survey and an excavation of a 2x3m trench at this farm complex in 2007, which located and dated the midden (Śmiarowski 2007, Møller et.al. 2007). The overall main objectives for both (2009-10) field seasons were to continue excavations of the midden. The 2007 survey and excavation results confirmed good organic preservation (preserved wood, bark, and small whale baleen artifacts with soil ph 6.2 in most of the midden layers), and produced sizable archaeofauna and artifact collections. Further investigation of bone and artifact density, and excavation of datable patches of cultural deposits to recover a sample of ecofacts and artifacts from the midden layers was the main aim of the 2009-10 excavations.
	Ø68 Timerliit Excavation Project - IPY - 2008	Excavation of a midden at a Norse farm in inland area of Vatnahverfi, Eastern Settlement. Ø68 is a small size Norse farm in the inland district of Vatnahverfi. Even though the main goal to generate a large, well preserved and stratified zooarchaeological collection was not fully achieved, we were still able to generate a small, stratified collection. The thorough excavation throughout the whole midden deposition sequence enabled us to take bone and charcoal (local flora, not driftwood) samples from all layers, which will be used to date the settlement and abandonment of this farm through AMS C14 dating. Soil, micro-morphology, botanical, and ancient DNA samples were taken for analysis by specialists, and we hope to be able to reconstruct the vegetation conditions in this part of Vatnahverfi region prior, and during the human settlement, and compare it to modern conditions.
	RAPID Garðar Collaborative Rescue Project - 2012	RAPID is an intensive international multi-disciplinary effort to salvage critical organic remains (zooarchaeological, archaeobotanical, artifactual, geoarchaeological, bioarchaeological, and archaeoentomological) from rapidly degrading cultural deposits at the unique site of Garðar E47 at modern Igaliku. Garðar was the bishops’ manor farm with a large stone cathedral and stalling space for well over 100 cattle. Major excavations at the site were carried out by Poul Nørlund in 1926 that documented the unusual size and layout of the church and manor farm and recovered some human and animal bone, but without observing stratigraphy or employing any systematic recovery strategy (Nørlund 1929). This site is key to understanding the changing structure and organization of Norse Greenland and its societal response to climate change and culture contact, but its unique archaeological record is now under urgent threat. As in other portions of the circumpolar north, rapid warming in the past decade has drastically degraded once outstanding conditions of organic preservation, as seasonally frozen ground now thaws completely every year and organic deposits preserved for thousands of years are rapidly decaying. In Greenland, a major finding of the 2007-10 International Polar Year effort is the rapidity and scope of loss of once well-preserved organics all across South Greenland. At Garðar medieval irrigation systems had created substantial wet meadows around the bishops’ manor farm, but in 2004 -05 modern farmers began cutting a series of deep drainage trenches in this meadow area. Site visits (Kapel 2005) confirmed that these ditches had exposed extensive midden deposits with well preserved bone and wood visible in profile. The RAPID project is aimed at rescuing these deposits, but intensive excavation during July-August 2012.
	Parent Project: Harbours of the North Atlantic AD 800-1300 Harbours of the North Atlantic (AD 800-1300) (HaNoA)	The core aims of the project are: to investigate possible port facilities and their functions by studying medieval written sources, to examine the topography of ports in relation to navigational aids (e.g. landmarks), ballast fields, the seabed and the locations of landing-places and port facilities on land, to refine and consolidate the so-called fetch method to localise and evaluate ports or landing-places, to analyse ballast as an archaeological source for the first time, in order to gain an understanding of the origins of trading vessels and the volume of maritime trade, and to ascertain the most reliable indicators for the elusive ports of the Viking period and the Middle Ages in the North Atlantic.
	The Siglunes Project: Long-term Investigations of Marine Economy in Eyjafjörður	The Siglunes site is characterized by a series of coastal remains associated with fishing-related activities on the peninsula itself, and an enormous farm mound and connected in-, and outfield complex on the mainland. Although heavily impacted by coastal erosion, the fisheries portion of the site offers a most unusual opportunity to consider the development of commercial fishery in its local environmental and cultural context, thanks to a well stratified archaeofaunal record that gives insights into the Atlantic marine ecosystem before the ‘great whale massacre’ and through the major climatic shifts of the MCA-LIA. The stratified deposits at Siglunes have excellent organic preservation, and preliminary work in 2011-2013 recovered significant amounts of well-preserved mammal, fish, and bird bone. The Siglunes faunal and structural deposits are dated by AMS radiocarbon, volcanic tephra, artifacts, and documentary sources to span the 9th to early 20th centuries AD and represent a major archive not only for archaeology, zooarchaeology and environmental history, but for fisheries biologists and marine mammal conservation science. Siglunes research is ongoing and hopes to not only provide further investigation of the fishery portion of the site, but also the long-term farming activities. Recent analysis of the recovered archaeofauna from targeted midden areas has already provided valuable insight into the Viking Age to Late Medieval Marine Resource Exploitation and potential local and regional subsistence and exchange strategies.
	Evaluation of Archaeoentomology for Reconstructing Rural Life-Ways and the Process of Modernisation in Iceland	This project was initiated with Véronique Forbes's PhD dissertation at the University of Aberdeen 'Evaluation of Archaeoentomology for Reconstructing Rural Life-Ways and the Process of Modernisation in 19th and Early 20th-Century Iceland' (2013). The project seeks to evaluate the potential of archaeoentomology, the study of insects preserved in archaeological contexts, to help understand when and how the social, ideological and economic changes associated with modernization took place in various parts of Iceland. So far, the project has examined insects preserved in 19th and 20th century deposits from 3 archaeological sites from northern Iceland: Hornbrekka, Vatnsfjörður and Þverá. These have yielded the earliest records of now-cosmopolitan insect species including cattle ectoparasites as well as stored food pests originally found in tropical and subtropical regions. These insects can be used to clarify the timing and processes by which individual sites began tapping into international trade networks, farming came to be modernized and people's everyday practices and attitude were affected by ideologies of 'improvement'.
	Parent Project: Snow Modelling Iceland Snow modelling to understand the impacts of Little Ice Age climate change	This project aims to use an existing process based snow model to simulate changes in snow cover and distribution for sites in Iceland and in Greenland. Changes in the duration and depth of snow cover through periods of climatic deterioration may have had significant impacts on pastoral farmers, particularly if snow cover extended into the spring. The Little Ice age is a known period of climatic cooling that would have increased the duration of snow cover. Long term records of snow cover beyond a few decades do not exist so modelling is the only way to determine how snow cover would have changed. Climatic scenarios are drawn from Global Circulation models to show snow cover in good (warm) and bad (cold) years. Fieldwork in March 2014 at the two study areas took measurements of snow thickness and density allowing a calibration of the model against modern meteorological datasets. Currently (November 2015) this project is being written up for publication in 2016. Sites in Iceland will be compared to sites in Greenland.
	Snow modelling Skaftártunga	This is the southern Iceland field site for the snow modelling in Iceland project. Fieldwork in March 2014 collected measurements of snow depth and density at the farms of Hrifunes and Búland. These measurements along with LANDSAT imagery is used to calibrate a process based snow model for the region. This model will be run under different climatic scenarios to simulate the changes in snow cover and duration from the Medieval Climate Anomaly through the Little Ice Age.
	Snow modelling Hörgardalur	This is the northern Iceland field site for the snow modelling in Iceland project. Fieldwork in March 2014 collected measurements of snow depth and density near the archaeological site of Skuggi. These measurements along with LANDSAT imagery is used to calibrate a process based snow model for the region. This model will be run under different climatic scenarios to simulate the changes in snow cover and duration from the Medieval Climate Anomaly through the Little Ice Age.
	Palaeoanthropocene in Iceland	This project used published and new records of vegetation change and soil erosion from all of Iceland to look at the timing, extent and rate of change in natural systems at Landnám. This dataset was used to investigate the what extent it was possible to distinguish a distinct 'anthropocene' in Iceland, based on these records alone.

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