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Document Details : Title: An Island Archaeology of the Viking Expansion in the North Atlantic Author(s): DECKERS, Pieterjan Journal: Terra Incognita Volume: 1 Date: 2006 Pages: 57-69 DOI: 10.2143/TI.1.0.2015268 Abstract : Island archaeology emerged in the 1970’s from biogeographical and anthropological island studies. Despite the amount of archaeological research on islands, and notwithstanding some attention on a theoretical level for island communities, up to the present day no coherent theoretical framework exists within which to systematically study the archaeology of islands. Within the existing theory (or rather – theories), the general knowledge of island colonization is without doubt the most advanced. Using this theoretical approach to island colonization, which in itself is based on a biogeographical method to analyse island attractivity and on the chronological sequence of the stages in the colonization process, the Viking expansion in the North Atlantic is examined in this paper. This enables an alternative approach to the Viking colonization of Orkney, Shetland, Faroe, Iceland, Greenland and Vínland. It is proposed here that the whole of the Viking expansion in these North Atlantic islands can be divided into three separate stages by identifying chronological and motivational differences. |
