With National Science Foundation support, Kevin Smith will lead an international team in one field season of archaeological research to explore a newly discovered monumental site in western Iceland. The site, Efranes-1, discovered on satellite imagery and briefly visited in 2007, incorporates ca. 7500 m2 of contiguous architecture. It appears to be the largest-known turf-built structure in the North Atlantic and is potentially a unique example of "monumental" construction in that region, analogous to political centers erected during the process of state formation in other regions of the world.
The origin of the state has been a subject of debate for centuries, yet Iceland is the only region in the world where the process of pre-industrial state formation was described in contemporary texts by the very chieftains who built their state. These texts provide unique information on what chieftains said about why they consolidated power and how the Icelandic state arose, but Icelands archaeological record for the period of state formation - the 12th-13th centuries - remains under-explored. This period's administrative centers - its assembly sites - where state-founders demonstrated their power and integrated their regions into a new kind of political system, have not been explored archaeologically.
Historical references, place-names, and archaeological clues suggest that Efranes-1 was such a site: the Thverárthing - the assembly site for Icelands largest pre-state polity, a governing node in the indigenous Icelandic state, and one of the places where Icelanders relinquished their independence to King Hákon IV of Norway in 1262. Fieldwork at Efranes-1 in 2008 will use standard archaeological site assessment techniques to (1) document the extent and sub-surface complexity of the site, (2) confirm its age, and (3) obtain sufficient information to allow Smith's team to assess whether it is the Thverárthing and if larger-scale investigations are warranted there.
If Efranes-1 is the site of this assembly, it has unique potential to provide information on the practice and organization of state and pre-state governance in medieval Iceland that could balance indigenous texts' emphasis on personalities and events. Together, this combination of textual and archaeological data has the potential to allow global models of state formation to be tested and refined at levels currently unavailable anywhere else in the world. The broader impacts of this project will also include academic and community benefits ranging from site management/preservation efforts, public education, outreach components to benefit local and international communities, and opportunities for training students from Brown University and elsewhere in field archaeology. The National Science Foundation's SGER funding in 2008 supports the pilot project that will test this exciting site's potential to realize these broader goals.
