Resources, Mobility, and Cultural Identity in Norse Greenland, Vatnahverfi Project – Report from The Field Work 2008 (field report)

The summer of 2008 was the fourth season with archaeological field work in the Vatnahverfi region in the Norse
Eastern Settlement.
The main purpose of the project is to investigate and discuss cultural, social and economic strategies of the Norse
Greenland settlement from landnam in the late 980´ties to depopulation in the later part of the 15
th
Century with
Vatnahverfi as case study area.
Knowledge of the culture landscape are prerequisite for the project and high resolution and GPS surveys of ruins and
ruin groups were initiated already in 2005 and have continued ever since.
In 2005 and 2006 Niels Algreen Møller and Christian Koch Madsen surveyed parts of the large area measuring ruin
groups with GPS (Møller & Madsen 2006 and Møller & Madsen 2007), and in 2007 Møller and Madsen headed
continued surveys and GPS measurements in Vatnahverfi along with archaeological investigations at the small
churches at the ruin groups E64 and E78. Konrad Smiarowski joined the fieldwork in 2007 especially focussing on
economy, middens and midden excavations. (Møller et al. 2007; Smiarowski 2009).
In 2008 the strategy was to focus on single sites in Vatnahverfi and the ruin groups E64 and E66 were selected for
archaeological excavations. Both ruin groups are situated in Kujalleq, an eastern branch of Igaliku fjord. Both sites had
churches connected. The church at E64 was apparently built at landnam and abolished after some centuries whereas
the church at E66 seems to have been in use up to depopulation. We do not know when the first church at E66 was
established. As churches connected to farms are used as indicators of wealth the objective of the excavations was to
make comparisons between the two sites.
At E64 both the church, church yard and the midden in front of the dwelling were the target for excavations. At E66
the midden was chosen for investigations. The conditions here were however more complicated than foreseen, and
the excavations at E66 therefore had to be postponed. Midden excavations were carried out at E68 instead.