testing area
“Grazing” denotes the intentional and managed gathering of domestic animals in designated locations where they consumed pasture plants as a primary food source. Grazing is often seasonal, practiced for only part of the year in a given location. Grazing practices respond to and reflect, social, economic and environmental factors. Grazing land productivity is tied to human management of amendments (dung, seaweed, midden refuse) and managing soil moisture as well as climate fluctuations in growing season and accumulated temperature. Key sources of evidence for grazing as a practice include documentary discussion, field boundaries and routeways preserved in the archaeological record, geoarchaeology. and pollen and macrofloral evidence for grasses.
The communal management of wet meadow grazing areas in Iceland is documented from early settlement down to the present
Water management structures (dams, ditches) are associated with medieval farms in both Iceland and Greenland aimed at preserving and enhancing highly productive wet meadows and extending the grazing season.
The enrichment of homefield areas (often within a home field dyke) with soil amendments and fertilizer from multiple sources.
Brown, J. L., Simpson, I. A., Morrison, S. J., Adderley, W. P., Tisdall, E., & Vésteinsson, O. (2012). Shieling areas: historical grazing pressures and landscape responses in northern Iceland. Human ecology, 40(1), 81-99.
Sayle, K. L., Hamilton, W. D., Cook, G. T., Ascough, P. L., Gestsdóttir, H., & McGovern, T. H. (2016). Deciphering diet and monitoring movement: Multiple stable isotope analysis of the viking age settlement at H ofstaðir, L ake M ývatn, I celand. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 160(1), 126-136.
Ragnhildur Sigurðardóttir, Anthony Newton, Megan T. Hicks, A.J. Dugmore, Viðar Hreinsson, A.E.J. Ogilvie, Árni Daníel Júlíusson, Árni Einarsson, Steven Hartman, I.A. Simpson, Orri Vésteinsson, T.H. McGovern (2019) Trolls, Water, Time, and Community: Resource Management in the Mývatn District of Northeast Iceland in Ludomir Lozny & Thomas McGovern (eds) Global Perspectives on Long Term Community Resource Management Springer Co NY pp 77-101.