The results are back and now I should theoretically be able to get my research analysed and published. But before I divulge in sharing my results with the wider world, no doubt a practice which is frowned upon by the academic community, it's best to shape up the 'research question'. What am I looking for, what can I expect and what will it tell me.
Step One - Chronology. There's no real point in analysing soils and sediments as part of a stratigraphy in an interdisciplinary study if you cannot integrate them into a chronological framework. For this you need to pick the best dating technique, weighing up cost and accuracy.
The cheapest is tephrochronology, the analysis of volcanic ejecta. Each eruption is like a fingerprint, individual and unique in its composition and they can be cross-referenced with contemporary sources and laminated ice-cores. If you dig a hole and the layer of tephra is there, you theoretically have a date! Iceland, a volcanic island is perfect, however Vestfirdir (my study area) is not a volcanically active region, so that's out!
Next up is OSL Dating (Optically Stimulated Luminescence) and costs around £500 a pop. I'm not going to pretend I know the finer points of it, but I do understand quartz particles retain an age of the last time they were exposed to light. Iceland isn't abundant in quartz so that's that out!
The last one, and chosen method is radiocarbon dating. I was first aware of this technique when I visited the island of Ulva with my folks on holiday when it was used to date waste in a cave belonging to the parents of explorer David Livingstone. The cost is around £200 a pop, and it calculated the age based on the breakdown of carbon on the basis of its half life.
So what should I expect from my findings? Well i'm interested in how and when commercial fishing developed. Was it immediately after Landnam, the first settlement of Iceland or a few centuries after? Was this a natural evolution, from small scale to international export over hundreds of years, or were they exporting from a very early age implying that the technique was developed in Norway and transferred overseas. There should be little gap in the chronology between the original settled farm and the outlying specialist fishing station if this is true.
Findings are currently being analysed and i'll post again when the interpretations have been submitted to a journal!
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