Article
Details
Citation
Church MJ, Arge SV, Edwards KJ, Ascough PL, Bond JM, Cook G, Dockrill SJ, Dugmore AJ, McGovern TH, Nesbitt C & Simpson I (2013) The Vikings were not the first colonizers of the Faroe Islands. Quaternary Science Reviews, 77, pp. 228-232. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.06.011
Abstract
We report on the earliest archaeological evidence from the Faroe Islands, placing human colonization in the 4th-6th centuries AD, at least 300-500 years earlier than previously demonstrated archaeologically. The evidence consists of an extensive wind-blown sand deposit containing patches of burnt peat ash of anthropogenic origin. Samples of carbonised barley grains from two of these ash patches produced 14C dates of two pre-Viking phases within the 4th-6th and late 6th-8th centuries AD. A re-evaluation is required of the nature, scale and timing of the human colonization of the Faroes and the wider North Atlantic region.
Keywords
Faroe Islands;
Earliest human settlement;
14C Dating
Journal
Quaternary Science Reviews: Volume 77
Status | Published |
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Funders | |
Publication date | 31/10/2013 |
Date accepted by journal | 12/06/2013 |
URL | |
Publisher | Elsevier |
ISSN | 0277-3791 |
People (1)
Professor, Biological and Environmental Sciences