NORSEC Activities : CUNY - NABO - FSI International Field School in Iceland - a University of the Arctic Program

  Since 1996 CUNY students have participated in an international archaeological and environmental field school in northern Iceland. CUNY students work with students from Iceland, Denmark, Norway, France, Germany, UK, Sweden, Czech Republic, Greece, Spain and Canada. Urban New Yorkers have been successfully encountering the north in a truly international context for the past four summers and several have been attracted to northern MA and PhD projects. Icelandic students have joined the CUNY doctoral program in Anthropology, and we expect more productive two-way educational exchanges with the direct cooperation of the University of Oslo and Stefansson Arctic Institute. In cooperation with the NABO Education Working Group and the Archaeological Institute of Iceland (FSI), NORSEC offers students a combined classroom and field experience of the best of US, Scandinavian, and UK field archaeology. Financial Support: PSC-CUNY, National Geographic Society, NSF (REU) Arctic Social Science Program, Icelandic Science Council, FSI.

The field school is centered on excavations of the Viking Age chieftain's farm of Hofstadir, famous since 1908 for its large feasting hall / pagan temple. Our work indicates that the site probably is among the very first farms established in Iceland ca AD 874, and has uncovered some indications of Viking ritual activity. Excellent preservation of animal bones, egg shell, charcoal and plant phytoliths allow detailed reconstruction of the massive environmental impact of these early settlers on this previously uninhabited mid - Atlantic island. In 1999 a new very early settlement site was uncovered at Sveigakot ca 20 km S of Hofstadir, and a full scale investigation of human impact and the landscape of settlement is now underway. The cooperative investigations involve ecologists, historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and environmental scientists from CUNY, and the Universities of Edinburgh, Stirling, Sheffield, Oslo, Akureyri, and Bradford, as well as the Icelandic Nature Conservancy and the U Iceland Science Center at nearby Skutustadir. The NABO research cooperative provides sustained international, cross-disciplinary cooperation and close collaboration between North American, Scandinavian, UK and other EU scholars. Cutting edge science applied to one of the most important sites in the North Atlantic provides excellent opportunities for both research and education.