This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
This project supports innovative research to introduce a little studied and poorly understood group into Norse North Atlantic archaeological research - women. The research team will start in Icelandic museum collections and a western Icelandic elite archaeological site, to explore the potential for a larger project focused on gender and the production and circulation of textiles from the Viking age to the early 20th century. Through this research the team hopes to bring women's lives and women's roles in the Icelandic economy, household organization, regional politics, and culture into the forefront of contemporary archaeological research in the North Atlantic.
The project consists of two components: First, through collections-based research at the National Museum of Iceland, the PIs will document the extent of existing archaeological textile collections in hopes of determining how they they might be used in subsequent analyses considering textile production and use through time on an island-wide scale; Second, the research team will undertake two weeks of excavation at an "elite" farm site in western Iceland, Gilsbakki, where preliminary investigations in 2008 produced an unexpected number of remarkably well-preserved textile remains from well-stratified deposits dating from the 13th- early 20th centuries. Excavations in 2009 will take the archaeologically exposed existing trenches down to sterile soil to understand the site's full potential - its time depth and sequence, its preservation conditions, and whether textiles are preserved throughout the entire sequence or are concentrated in particular deposits.
By combining information on a well-contextualized sample of textiles from this single site that was occupied over the entire Icelandic time sequence with an island-wide perspective gained from the Museum collections, the PIs will be better able to assess how to bring Icelandic women and women's work to the forefront in North Atlantic research. This project will use Icelandic womens' material remains as an entree for reintroducing an interpretation of women's lives into archaeological research programs across the North and contribute to global discussions about the hidden roles of women in traditional societies and their roles in guiding change and preserving tradition.
