Current Research Projects
Commodity Entanglement: The Archaeology of the Trade Monopoly (2015-2018)
Funded for three years by the Icelandic Research Council, this project aims to explore the impact of the Danish trade monopoly in Iceland during the 17th and 18th centuries in terms of both merchant activity and power and also on consumption patterns in the domestic context. The project is funding two doctoral students under my supervision.
Skalholt. A Medieval and post-Medieval Episcopal Centre in Western Iceland (since 2002).
The project focuses on the investigation of a nationally famous site and bring to light a deeper and more tangible understanding of the nature of Episcopal power, how it grew and declined and its relation to both internal and international patterns of consumption of material goods. Supported by the Icelandic Millenium Fund, the Icelandic Archaeology Fund (fornminjasjóður) and the University of Iceland, the project takes a multi-disciplinary approach using excavation, archive documents and environmental analysis to address these issues.
Previous Research projects
Ruin Memories: Modern ruins on Viðey (2009-2012)
An archaeological project linked to the Ruin Memories Project (www.ruinmemories.org) is exploring the nature of materiality, memory and ruination at the site of Viðey, a small island in the bay of Reykjavik which housed a small community based on the fishing industry but was gradually abandoned and de-populated in the 1940s. The site today largely consists of comcrete building foundations but has been conserved as a local heritage area. Several articles have been published relating to this project.
Hofstaðir. A Viking, Medieval and Post-Medieval farmstead in Northeast Iceland (1998-2002)
An internationally famous Viking ‘temple’ site, the project was a multi-disciplinary and long-term study of the Icelandic farm with a strong emphasis on environmental and landscape change. I was involved as field director of this project run in collaboration with Hunter College in New York, and the Center for Viking and Medieval Studies, Oslo, among others. A fieldschool was also run during the excavation of which I was also overall director. Funding came primarily from the Icelandic Research Council (Rannís), the Nordic Fund (NOS-H) and the United States National Science Foundation (NSF). Several papers have been published on the project, most recently in the journal Archaeologia Islandica. A major monograph was published in 2009: Hoftsaðir. Excavations of a Viking Aghe Feasting Hall in Northeastern Iceland (Fornleifastofnun Íslands, Monograph No.1).
Farm Lives. A Study of Historical Archaeology in the Western Cape, South Africa (1999-2002).
This project explored the processes of colonization and diaspora from the late 17th to 19th centuries in terms of material culture, focusing on one valley in the Cape. Using archaeological fieldwork (survey and excavation), documentary research and oral history, the project drew on a wide network of expertise in South Africa and the UK. Set up and directed by myself with a team of assistants, it was funded by the MacDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge. The results have been presented at various conferences and seminars and were published as a book The Archaeology of Colonial Identity. Power and Material Culture in the Dwars Valley, South Africa in 2004 (Springer).
The House Project. The archaeology of alienation in the late 20th century (1997)
This was a short-term project set up and conducted by myself and Dr. Victor Buchli (UCL) to investigate the material culture of a marginal member of our society from an abandoned council property. Two papers have been published from this (‘Childhood and Modernity’, in Children and Material Culture, ed. J. Sofaer-Deverenski. and ‘The Archaeology of Alienation’ in Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past, eds. Buchli & Lucas)