The Vikings were not the first colonizers of the Faroe Islands
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.
- Publication:
-
Quaternary Science Reviews
- Pub Date:
- October 2013
- DOI:
- Bibcode:
- 2013QSRv...77..228C
- Keywords:
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- Faroe Islands;
- Earliest human settlement;
- <SUP>14</SUP>C Dating
