Historical Osteoarchaeology in Iceland

Abstract

Historical osteoarchaeology has not been at the forefront of archaeological research in Iceland. Large-scale excavations of historical cemeteries did not start until the mid-twentieth century, and all excavations of historical cemeteries until the early twenty-first century were development led. This fact means that many of the projects carried out did not have an osteoarchaeological focus, nor asked specific osteological questions of the material, as well as the fact that the state of the publication of these sites is very varied. This paper presents a summary of the larger excavations of historical cemeteries in Iceland alongside discussions of the various approaches to the presentation of the analysis of the skeletal remains of those sites that have been published from Jón Steffensen's focus on identifying the individuals at seventeenth-to-eighteenth-century Skálholt and Hólar; to the evidence presented for the hospital in sixteenth-century Skri{eth}uklaustur and the influence of increased urbanization in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Reykjavík on the palaeopathology of those buried there. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.