The landscape of Deserted Medieval Settlement

This work package will build upon a humanities-led GIS approach. We will therefore incorporate the meaning of the environment for medieval communities and see the landscape as a container and a surface where settlements were not isolated units, but highly networked and connected to other places, e.g. dwellings, territories, etc. Indeed, the idea in this work package is to move away from environmentally deterministic thinking toward a socially enriched spatial analysis. Thus, we will further develop the idea of a more humanities-led GIS to assess medieval settlement dynamics. This will be important for shaping hypotheses about the medieval settlement system in our four study areas.

The humanities-led environment will allow us to expand the chronological focus of WP 2 and think how we represent the temporal aspects of settlement, beyond just the date of a settlement or its abandonment. We will also interrogate the rich data recorded in Ísleif and examine the morphology and topography of these farms. For example, what range of structures have been surveyed at abandoned farms, are they always within their own enclosure (túngarður)?