New horizons at L'Anse aux Meadows

Paul M. Ledger; Linus Girdland-Flink; Véronique Forbes

doi:10.1073/pnas.1907986116

New horizons at L'Anse aux Meadows

Paul M. Ledger^*
, Linus Girdland-Flink
, Véronique Forbes

^*Corresponding author for this work

Archaeology

Liverpool John Moores University
Memorial University of Newfoundland

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

29 Citations (Scopus)

13 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The UNESCO World Heritage site of L'Anse aux Meadows (LAM) in northern Newfoundland is the only undisputed site of pre-1492 presence of Europeans in the Americas. In August 2018, we undertook fieldwork at LAMto sample the peat bog 30meast of the Norse ruins for a multiproxy paleoenvironmental assessment of Norse settlement. Instead, we encountered a new cultural horizon. Here we report our fieldwork at this iconic site and a Bayesian analysis of legacy radiocarbon data, which nuance previous conclusions and suggest Norse activity at LAM may have endured for a century. In light of these findings, we reflect on how the cultural horizon, containing nonnative ecofacts, may relate to indigenous or Norse activities.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	15341-15343
Number of pages	3
Journal	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume	116
Issue number	31
Early online date	15 Jul 2019
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1907986116
Publication status	Published - 30 Jul 2019

Funding

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We thank Birgitta Wallace for stimulating discussions and support and the Parks Canada staff at LAM and Dartmouth. We also wish to thank Meghan Burchell and Bryn Tapper for help with imagery and Dawn Mooney and Yannick Miras for advice on botanical IDs. We acknowledge support from Memorial University Faculty Start-Up Funds.

Keywords

Bayesian modeling
Indigenous
Insects
Norse
Pollen

Access to Document

10.1073/pnas.1907986116Licence: CC BY

Ledger_etal_PNAS_VOR
Copyright © 2019 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Final published version, 1.14 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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New horizons at L'Anse aux Meadows

Abstract

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Keywords

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