This image is a soil profile which has been branded Skalavik 1 (there are four Skalavik trenches in total but this is the deepest!). From the bottom, around 1.4 metres of material has accumulated. Near the bottom you may observe the tiniest of black flecks; these are charcoal which have been dated to around the 11th century AD. This means that around 900 years ago, someone was standing at this very spot burning birchwood for a fire at this very location, an isolated peninsula in northwest Iceland. I'd find it hugely strange if someone was going through my waste in 900 years time to see how I lived my life. The silver tins are Kubiena tins to allow for microscopic analysis of the soils. By looking at these I can tell if he was farming, fishing or doing anything else when he or she happened to be burning charcoal on that particular day. It may still be boring, but it's interesting to me! Welcome to the world of geoarchaeology.
6 comments:
Hi Stuart! This is Dani's best friend Mandy, just stopping by...
I went and got you a stalker, go me! Us California girls aren't that bad, promise (or at least not all of us).
I really liked this entry; you managed to make it interesting and put things in a bit of perspective with the acknowledgment that someday somebody might be doing something similar with our soil!
Some Californian girls are a bit mad, I've watched Hills before!
I think it'll be difficult to interpret waste in the future because we produce so much of it...besides, we write things down now. We have no documentary record of how these people lived their lives in the past hence how we're poking about their waste!
Hmm. Right. This is why you study this stuff and not me!
I'm actually looking at the cultural record contained withing the soil and not the soils themselves, but that's another story...
Well now you're just being argumentative!
Naw, just kidding. Thanks for clearing that up, I'll try to remember that.
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