The Management and Co-Operation (Domestic/Foreign)
Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir, PhD, Professor of Archaeology, University of Iceland.
Principal Investigator
Steinunn is the project director. She will also contribute to the interpretation of results through her knowledge on medieval and gender archaeology.
Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Iceland. Steinunn has studied monasticism in Iceland during the last decades. She did run archaeological research on the ruins of Skriðuklaustur from 2000–2012, the project Mapping monasticism in Iceland from 2013–2017 and excavations on the ruins of Þingeyraklaustur from 2018. Steinunn has published two monographs in Icelandic, Sagan af klaustrinu á Skriðu (2012), which won the Fjöruverðlaun in Iceland for the books in the scholarly category in 2012, and Leitin að klaustrunum (2017) which won the Hagþenkir prize in 2017. Both were nominated for the Icelandic Literature Prize. Her monograph Monastic Iceland will be published by Routledge in 2023. Steinunn and was the head of Faculty of Philosophy, History and Archaeology from 2018–2022. She received the Order of the Falcon award from the Icelandic state in 2016 for archaeological research and general contribution to the history of Iceland.
James G. Clark, PhD, Professor of Medieval History, Exeter University.
Principal Investigator
James is a historian specialised in the dissemination and development of Benedictinism in Europe before the Reformation. He will contribute both to the interpretation of excavation results and to their contextualization.
James Clark is Associate Dean for Research and Knowledge Transfer and Professor of History at the University of Exeter. One of his published books is The Benedictines in the Middle Ages, published by Boydell in 2011. He is also a regular contributor to TV, Radio, News Media and online coverage of medieval, Reformation and early Renaissance themes.
Gottskálk Jensson, PhD, Associate Professor at The Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen
Co-proposer
Gottskálk will investigate the medieval manuscripts, the library and book production at the monastery in Þingeyrar.
Gottskálk is an affiliate professor at the Department of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Iceland.
Joe W. Walser III, PhD, Curator of Physical Anthropology at the National Museum of Iceland.
Co-proposer
Joe will be overseeing the scientific analysing of the human skeletal remains, manuscripts and textiles preserved or excavated during the project´s time span.
Joe W. Walser III is a curator of Physical Anthropology at the National Museum of Iceland. Joe received his BA in Anthropology at Temple University, MSc in Palaeopathology at Durham University and his PhD at the University of Iceland. Joe specialises in human osteology and methods in archaeological science, such as isotope and molecular analyses. In this project he will oversee the scientific analyses of skeletal remains, textiles, manuscripts and other organic archaeological finds.
Egill Erlendsson, PhD, Professor of Geography (physical) at the Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland.
Co-proposer
Egill will be leading the research related to land use and environment as reflected in archaeological and natural contexts and within the spatial extent of the area influenced by the monastic sites in question.
Advisory Co-Proposers
Alan Outram, PhD, Head of Archaeology and Professor of Archaeological Science, at the Department of Archaeology, University of Exeter.
Alan will supervise the investigation of the remains of the animals kept on the Benedictine settlements in question in regard to manuscript and textile making, besides the diet inside the monastic houses.
Janet Montgomery, PhD, Professor of Archaeological Science at Durham University.
Janet will be directing and supervising research related to the use of isotope analyses for the reconstruction of diet and geographic provenance from archaeological skeletal remains excavated from the monastic sites.
Agnar S. Helgason, PhD, Senior Research Scientist at deCODE and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Iceland.
Agnar will supervise the analyses and interpretation of ancient DNA data produced through this project.
Claire Browne
Task: Supervise the analyses and research on medieval textiles from Iceland.
The Staff
Jakob Orri Jónsson, PhD in Archaeology. Excavation Manager.
Jakob Orri Jónsson completed his doctoral degree in archaeology from the University of Iceland in spring 2021. His work was focused on the consumption of pottery and clay smoking pipes in 17th and 18th century Iceland. Since then he has worked as an excavation leader at various excavations around Iceland, alongside further scholarly work with an emphasis on the Early Modern Period.
Helene Benkert, PhD in Zooarchaeology, Post-doctorate Researcher
Helene is a zooarchaeologist with an MSc from the University of Sheffield and a PhD from the University of Exeter. Her previous work focused on horses in medieval Europe, but she is excited to be studying other species as part of the BMN project. She will analyse the animal remains from three monastic sites to investigate the dietary and animal husbandry practices of the nuns, monks and laypeople in medieval Iceland.
Scott Riddel, PhD in Palaeoecology. Post-doctorate Researcher
Scott Riddell, is a post-doctorate researcher at the University of Iceland. He finished his PhD in Palaeoecology in 2023 at the University of Iceland. The title of his thesis was; Monks and mires: the vegetation and land use histories of monasteries and their tenancies in Medieval Iceland. His main focus was on palynological data, from the monastic sites of Þingeyraklaustur and Helgafellsklaustur, are utilised to explore the role of Icelandic monasticism with regard to vegetation change and land use in the Medieval period. In this research, Scott will analyse ecological remains from the monastery sites, such as pollen.
Sigrún Hannesdóttir, PhD Student.
Sigrún’s doctoral project is a comprehensive study of the female monastic houses operated in the archdiocese of Nidaros in the Medieval Period, that is in Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the Isle of Man and the Hebrides. In the project, Sigrún analyses how the female monasteries have previously been approached in scholarly writing and re-examines their history, placing them in a wider European context. The goal of the project is to study this distinct vocabulary of female monasticism in Nidaros and thus to rebalance the part of religious women in monastic studies, as well as to contribute to the increasing literature of transnational approaches in the field.
Delaney Dammeyer, MA Student.
Delaney is a graduate student in Historical Archaeology at the University of Iceland. Her master‘s project aims to look at the relationship of an Icelandic monastery to water, looking particularly at the water usage systems, placements within landscapes near natural water sources, and writings from the 14th and 15th century to access how water was used in monastic ritual at the time and compare to other contemporary monasteries. As an aside, she is also interested in the hybridization of Christian and folk belief around water and wants to see if that is occurring at monastic cites and to what extent.
Lára Janusdóttir, MA Student.
Lára has a BSc. degree in Business Administration and a MBA degree from Reykjavík University. She is now a MA student in Historical Archaeology at the University of Iceland, where her main focus is promotion of archaeological sites to the public. Lára will have guided tours for visitors, during the excavation period at Kirkjubæjarklaustur and Þingeyrar, and collect data from them as well.
Ian King, MA Student.
Ian has a BS in Anthropology and a BS in Political Science from the University of North Florida. Currently he is in the Historical Archaeology Masters program at the University of Iceland, where his thesis project will center on preserved embroidered textiles.
Joshua William Needham, MA Student
Joshua has a BA in Anthropology with an Archaeological focus from the University of Alberta, Canada. He spent two years after his BA working as an archaeologist in Cultural Resource Management in western Canada, as well as excavations in South Greenland for the RESPONSE project and the Greenland National Museum and Archives. He is now doing a MA in Historical Archaeology at the University of Iceland, where his focus will be on analyzing textile production tools from medieval sites in Iceland.
Nicole Abreu, MA Student.
Nicole graduated from the University of North Florida with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and a minor in photography. She is currently focusing on textile assemblages from Iceland’s monastic era as part of her master’s programme in historical archaeology at the University of Iceland.
Other Specialists
Lynda Howard, PhD palaeoentomologist and independent scholar.
Linda will be responsible for the analysis of insects collected at the sites. This involves an examination on the relationship between insects and living conditions, but even how the situation changed over time, especially with regard to the Plague and the Little Ice Age.
Sigriður Sunna Ebeneserdóttir, BA and MA anthropology, PhD student at the University of Iceland.
Sigríður Sunna will lead the laboratory work at deCode, by doing the sequencing and preparation of the results of the aDNA analysis.
Tina Jakob, bioarchaeologist and Archaeological Science Technician at Durham University.
Tina will be responsible for applied isotope lab work, processing human and animal bone samples for analysis. She will also contribute to the interpretation of the various bioarchaeological aspects of this project.