Kevin P . Smith

Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Anthropology, Arctic Studies Center, Research Associate

SUNY: University at Albany, Anthropology, Research Associate

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I am an archaeologist interested in complex societies, state formation, and the integration of domestic and political economies. My research has focused, for the past 37 years, on Iceland and the North Atlantic, where I am interested in understanding the processes by which the North Atlantic region was settled, how its societies formed, how the challenges of settling new lands changed those societies' worldviews, and understanding the dynamic processes that eventually led to the creation of a short-lived independent Icelandic state and its rapid absorption into the expanding Norwegian state. In recent years, this has taken me – unexpectedly – deep into caves and into elemental archaeology using pXRF.

At various points in the past, I've also worked on, continue to work on, and have published on, Paleoindians and the settlement of the Americas, complex hunter-gatherer societies, ritual, the archaeology of law, and issues of scale and perception in the archaeological record.

I was deputy director of Brown University's Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology from 2002-2021 and was head of the Buffalo Museum of Science's Anthropology Division from 1991-2002, overseeing daily operations, coordinating staff, mentoring students, coordinating collections management and research, planning and overseeing exhibitions, and more.
Supervisors: Henry T. Wright, Jeffrey Parsons, John M. O'Shea, and William I. Miller
Phone: +4012155073
Address: Kevin P. Smith
Osprey Heritage Consulting, LLC
21 Blaisdell Avenue
Pawtucket, RI 02860

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Papers by Kevin P . Smith

All that glitters is not gold: Multi-instrumental identification of Viking Age orpiment (As2S3) from Surtshellir cave, Iceland

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports

Fragments of orpiment (As2S3) from a Viking Age structure inside Iceland&#39;s Surtshellir ca... more Fragments of orpiment (As2S3) from a Viking Age structure inside Iceland&#39;s Surtshellir cave represent the farthest-known occurrence of this rare mineral from sources known to have been exploited during the Early Middle Ages. Actual fragments of orpiment (from Latin auripigmentum, golden pigment) are only documented in late first millennium AD northern Europe from Dunadd, the seat of the Dalriadic kings in western Scotland, Tonymore Crannóg, an elite Irish site (6 th-12 th century AD) and now Surtshellir. Ground to create a pigment, orpiment was used to add brilliant yellows to illuminated manuscripts that were produced from the 7 th-10 th centuries AD in elite monastic and ecclesiastic centers of Ireland, the Carolingian Empire, and Anglo-Saxon England. However, its only prior documented uses as a pigment in Viking Age Scandinavia are from the furnishings of King Gorm&#39;s grave at Jelling (Denmark), ca. AD 950-960 AD, and possibly the Gokstad ship, ca. AD 905. The contemporary fragments of orpiment from Surtshellir, verified through both pXRF (hand-held X-Ray Fluorescence) and SEM/EDS (Scanning Electron Microscopy with Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy), link this site to 10 th century AD interaction and trade networks that stretched from the North Atlantic to Anatolia, providing supportive evidence for re-interpreting the cave as an important, elitecontrolled ritual site from Iceland&#39;s Viking Age. This is the pre-print of a paper published on 1 December 2022, accessible until Jan 1, 2023, without cost at https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1gAq6_,5MKXACN3

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The woman in blue: using modern analytical methods to investigate a Viking Age burial from Iceland

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Zooarchaeological analysis of bones from Hallmundarhellir cave

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Ritual responses to catastrophic volcanism in Viking Age Iceland: Reconsidering Surtshellir Cave through Bayesian analyses of AMS dates, tephrochronology, and texts

Journal of Archaeological Science, 2021

Abstract Surtshellir, a 1600-m-long lava cave in the interior of Iceland, contains a unique Vikin... more Abstract Surtshellir, a 1600-m-long lava cave in the interior of Iceland, contains a unique Viking Age archaeological site located nearly 300 m from its entrance and more than 10 m below the surface of the Hallmundarhraun lava field. Since the 1750s, the site has been interpreted as an outlaw shelter, yet in the 12th-13th centuries it was associated with actions directed towards an elemental being – Surtr – for whom the site was named and who, according to medieval Icelandic accounts of Viking Age mythology, was present at the world's creation and would destroy it after the battle of Ragnarok. Archaeological fieldwork inside Surtshellir in 2001, 2012, and 2013 produced 20 new AMS dates that, combined with three earlier radiocarbon and tephrochronological dates, provide the basis for Bayesian analyses which suggest (1) that the cave formed in the first major volcanic eruption directly witnessed by northern Europeans since the Late Pleistocene; (2) that this took place shortly after the Norse colonization of Iceland began; (3) that people entered the cave soon afterwards; (4) that for 80–120 years they deposited the fragmented bones of slaughtered domestic animals in piles stretching 120 m through the cave's “dark zone”, burning others at high temperatures in a dry-stone structure built deep inside a raised side passage; and (5) that these activities ended shortly after Iceland's conversion to Christianity. Surtshellir provides important new insights into Viking Age ritual practice, Iceland's settlement and conversion, and the cultural responses of Iceland's newly arrived settlers to the existential challenges posed by previously unimagined catastrophic volcanism.

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Dorset, Norse, or Thule? Technological transfers, marine mammal contamination, and AMS dating of spun yarn and textiles from the Eastern Canadian Arctic

Journal of Archaeological Science, 2018

Yarn and textiles recovered from prehistoric Dorset and Thule culture sites in the Eastern Canadi... more Yarn and textiles recovered from prehistoric Dorset and Thule culture sites in the Eastern Canadian Arctic have raised questions about the extent and timing of indigenous and Norse interaction in the New World, whether the yarn represents technological transfers between Greenland's Norse settlers and the Dorset, or whether these Indigenous Arctic groups had independent fiber technologies before contact with Europeans. However, the extensive use of marine mammals in northern cultural contexts, and the penetration of oils from these animals' tissues into datable terrestrial materials, has posed general problems for reliably dating sites in the Arctic and has raised questions specifically about previous efforts to date these fiber objects. In this paper, we use a recently developed protocol for removing marine mammal organic contaminants entirely from radiocarbon samples, making AMS dating possible and reliable for Arctic research. This study uses those protocols to directly date a suite of woven and spun animal fiber artifacts from five Dorset and Thule archaeological sites in the eastern Canadian Arctic. Directly dating these artifacts with marine mammal oils removed helps to answer questions about Norse contact with Dorset and Thule communities, sheds new light on the topic of indigenous fiber technologies in the North, and raises new questions about European contacts with the people of the North American Arctic prior to sustained efforts at colonization after the 18th century.

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‘Tangled up in Blue’: The Death, Dress and Identity of an Early Viking-Age Female Settler from Ketilsstaðir, Iceland

Medieval Archaeology, 2019

IN 1938, a woman’s burial was uncovered by road builders at Ketilsstaðir in north-eastern Iceland... more IN 1938, a woman’s burial was uncovered by road builders at Ketilsstaðir in north-eastern Iceland. Recently, her physical remains and associated funerary goods were re-examined by an international, interdisciplinary team and formed the basis for an exhibition at the National Museum of Iceland in 2015. This paper focuses on the items of dress that accompanied the woman in order to gain insights into the ways her cultural identity was expressed at the time of her death. Here we explore the roles played by material culture in signaling her identity, and the technologies and trade networks through which she was connected, visually, to Scandinavia, the British Isles, and the Viking world at large.

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The spirit of survival: cultural responses to resource variability in North Alaska

Bad Year Economics

While the basic structure of responses to scarcity is constrained by the nature of those stresses... more While the basic structure of responses to scarcity is constrained by the nature of those stresses which coping mechanisms must mediate to be effective, the implementation of coping strategies is predicated on the sociocultural context, which defines.

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Landnám:The settlement of Iceland in archaeological and historical perspective

World Archaeology, 1995

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Introduction: the archaeology of legal culture

World Archaeology, 2013

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The ‘Burgundian’ hat from Herjolfsnes, Greenland: new discoveries, new dates

Danish Journal of Archaeology, 2015

In 1921, during Poul Nørlund's excavation at the Norse farm Herjolfsnes, Greenland, a tall hat wa... more In 1921, during Poul Nørlund's excavation at the Norse farm Herjolfsnes, Greenland, a tall hat was recovered from the burial grounds surrounding the farm's church, where a substantial collection of medieval garments had been recovered. This unusual hat came to symbolize not only the end of the Greenland Norse colony but also its enduring cultural links with continental European fashions, following a comment to this effect published by Nørlund himself. In 1996, the hat was dated to the early fourteenth century by Arneborg, a century earlier than Nørlund's dating, based on stylistic comparisons with European examples. Recent research on North Atlantic textiles led to a reexamination of the hat, with different sections sampled and resubmitted for accelerated mass spectrometry dating. The results suggest that the body of the hat and its crown are of different periods with c. 100 years between them. This reanalysis of the Herjolfsnes 'tall brimless hat' or 'Burgundian' hat suggests that a considerable amount of cloth recycling took place in these North Atlantic colonies, that cloth was a valued and cherished commodity, and raises questions about the role this item of material culture role should play in discussions of identity and enduring links between Greenland and the continent.

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ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD: MULTI-INSTRUMENTAL IDENTIFICATION OF VIKING AGE ORPIMENT (As2S3) FROM SURTSHELLIR CAVE, ICELAND [pre-print]

Journal of Archaeological Science, Reports, 2023

Fragments of orpiment (As2S3) from a Viking Age structure inside Iceland's Surtshellir cave repre... more Fragments of orpiment (As2S3) from a Viking Age structure inside Iceland's Surtshellir cave represent the farthest-known occurrence of this rare mineral from sources known to have been exploited during the Early Middle Ages. Actual fragments of orpiment (from Latin auripigmentum, golden pigment) are only documented in late first millennium AD northern Europe from Dunadd, the seat of the Dalriadic kings in western Scotland, Tonymore Crannóg, an elite Irish site (6 th-12 th century AD) and now Surtshellir. Ground to create a pigment, orpiment was used to add brilliant yellows to illuminated manuscripts that were produced from the 7 th-10 th centuries AD in elite monastic and ecclesiastic centers of Ireland, the Carolingian Empire, and Anglo-Saxon England. However, its only prior documented uses as a pigment in Viking Age Scandinavia are from the furnishings of King Gorm's grave at Jelling (Denmark), ca. AD 950-960 AD, and possibly the Gokstad ship, ca. AD 905. The contemporary fragments of orpiment from Surtshellir, verified through both pXRF (hand-held X-Ray Fluorescence) and SEM/EDS (Scanning Electron Microscopy with Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy), link this site to 10 th century AD interaction and trade networks that stretched from the North Atlantic to Anatolia, providing supportive evidence for re-interpreting the cave as an important, elitecontrolled ritual site from Iceland's Viking Age.

This is the pre-print of a paper published on 1 December 2022, accessible until Jan 1, 2023, without cost at https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1gAq6_,5MKXACN3

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Hallmundarhellir: Víggirtur Hellir frá Sturlungaöld

by Kevin P . Smith and Albína Hulda Pálsdóttir

Árbók hins Íslenzka Fornleifafélags (Yearbook of the Icelandic Archaeological Society), 2022

Hallmundarhellir is one of eight caves within western Iceland's Hallmundarhraun lava field that a... more Hallmundarhellir is one of eight caves within western Iceland's Hallmundarhraun lava field that are known to contain archaeological remains. It was discovered in 1956 by Stefán Kalmansson of Kalmanstunga and was briefly investigated in 1958 by Gísli Gestsson, who interpreted it as a Viking Age outlaw shelter and perhaps the model for Hallmundur's lair in Grettir's Saga. In 2017, we revisited Hallmundarhellir to map it; take samples for radiocarbon dating, aDNA analysis, and zooarchaeological evaluation; and reassess its condition, archaeological remains, and Gestsson's interpretations. Our investigations documented that the site's archaeological features and deposits remain intact, but the cave's walls and ceiling are fragile. Sand blowing in from outwash plains below Langjökull and Eiríksjökull already covers the cave's floor and will soon fill its entrance. Gestsson's mapping was accurate but under-estimated the number of the site's archaeological features and its complexity. Our evaluation of the site's faunal assemblage suggests that it is unusually composed of bones from just sheep or sheep/goats. No horse teeth (mentioned in Gestsson's report) were identified, nor were any additional artifacts seen or recovered. Five AMS dates on sheep bones from the site indicate that it was used in the late-12th through mid-13th century, during the so-called Age of the Sturlungar. Our investigations, therefore, indicate that Hallmundarhellir remains in good shape but is endangered. Rather than being a Viking Age outlaw shelter, it may represent a new type of site from Iceland's poorly studied Sturlung Period.

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Late-Paleoindian Archaeology at the Eaton Site, Western New York

by Kevin P . Smith, William Engelbrecht, and John Holland

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Ritual responses to catastrophic volcanism in Viking Age Iceland: Reconsidering Surtshellir Cave through Bayesian analyses of AMS dates, tephrochronology, and texts

by Kevin P . Smith and Albína Hulda Pálsdóttir

Journal of Archaeological Science, 2021

Surtshellir, a 1600-m-long lava cave in the interior of Iceland, contains a unique Viking Age arc... more Surtshellir, a 1600-m-long lava cave in the interior of Iceland, contains a unique Viking Age archaeological site located nearly 300 m from its entrance and more than 10 m below the surface of the Hallmundarhraun lava field. Since the 1750s, the site has been interpreted as an outlaw shelter, yet in the 12th-13th centuries it was associated with actions directed towards an elemental being – Surtr – for whom the site was named and who, according to medieval Icelandic accounts of Viking Age mythology, was present at the world's creation and would destroy it after the battle of Ragnarök. Archaeological fieldwork inside Surtshellir in 2001, 2012, and 2013 produced 20 new AMS dates that, combined with three earlier radiocarbon and tephrochronological dates, provide the basis for Bayesian analyses which suggest (1) that the cave formed in the first major volcanic eruption directly witnessed by northern Europeans since the Late Pleistocene; (2) that this took place shortly after the Norse colonization of Iceland began; (3) that people entered the cave soon afterwards; (4) that for 80–120 years they deposited the fragmented bones of slaughtered domestic animals in piles stretching 120 m through the cave's “dark zone”, burning others at high temperatures in a dry-stone structure built deep inside a raised side passage; and (5) that these activities ended shortly after Iceland's conversion to Christianity. Surtshellir provides important new insights into Viking Age ritual practice, Iceland's settlement and conversion, and the cultural responses of Iceland's newly arrived settlers to the existential challenges posed by previously unimagined catastrophic volcanism.

Link to download through April 21, 2021: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1cg9k15SlTogqR

NOTE: The PDF "Preprint DRAFT" attached to this entry is a pre-print version that preceded peer-review and revisions and therefore differs in some important ways from the final published version. It is provided here only for comparison with the published version, under agreement with Elsevier's copyright agreements. The published version is available from the Journal of Archaeological Science through the link above or the DOI.

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"Tangled Up in Blue": The Death, Dress and Identity of an Early Viking-Age Female Settler from Ketilsstaðir, Iceland

Medieval Archaeology, 2019

In 1938, a woman’s burial was uncovered by road builders at Ketilsstaðir in north-eastern Iceland... more In 1938, a woman’s burial was uncovered by road builders at Ketilsstaðir in north-eastern Iceland. Recently, her physical remains and associated funerary goods were re-examined by an international, interdisciplinary team and formed the basis for an exhibition at the National Museum of Iceland in 2015. This paper focuses on the items of dress that accompanied the woman — born in the British Isles, but who migrated to Iceland at a very young age — to gain insights into the ways her cultural identity was expressed at the time of her death. Here we explore the roles played by material culture in signaling her identity, and the technologies and trade networks through which she was connected, visually, to Scandinavia, the British Isles, and the Viking world at large.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Medieval Archaeology on June 18, 2019, available at

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/85KSUjTRteGNwPAUjc7z/full?target=10.1080/00766097.2019.1589816

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Tangled up in Blue’: The Death, Dress and Identity of an Early Viking-Age Female Settler from Ketilsstaðir, Iceland

by Michele Hayeur Smith and Kevin P . Smith

Medieval Archaeology, 2019

IN 1938, a woman’s burial was uncovered by road builders at Ketilsstaðir in north-eastern Iceland... more IN 1938, a woman’s burial was uncovered by road builders at Ketilsstaðir in north-eastern Iceland. Recently, her physical remains and associated funerary goods were re-examined by an international, interdisciplinary team and formed the basis for an exhibition at the National Museum of Iceland in 2015. This paper focuses on the items of dress that accompanied the woman — born in the British Isles, but who migrated to Iceland at a very young age — to gain insights into the ways her cultural identity was expressed at the time of her death. Here we explore the roles played by material culture in signaling her identity, and the technologies and trade networks through which she was connected, visually, to Scandinavia, the British Isles, and the Viking world at large.

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Dorset, Norse, or Thule? Technological transfers, marine mammal contamination, and AMS dating of spun yarn and textiles from the Eastern Canadian Arctic

by Michele Hayeur Smith and Kevin P . Smith

Journal of Archaeological Science, 2018

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Bacterial tetraether lipids in ancient bones record past climate conditions at the time of disposal

Journal of Archaeological Science, 2018

Assessing impacts of climate change on ancient human societies requires accurate reconstructions ... more Assessing impacts of climate change on ancient human societies requires accurate reconstructions of regional climate variations. However, due to the scarcity of in situ climate indicators in archaeological sites, climate interpretation often relies on indirect, geographically distant data from geological archives such as lake or ocean sediments, ice cores and speleothems. Because many cultural changes occurred abruptly over periods of years to decades, and are regional or even local in scale, correlating societal changes with climate reconstructions from geological archives induces significant uncertainties: factors such as chronological dating inconsistencies and geographic heterogeneity of climate can severely undermine interpretation. Here we show, for the first time, that it is possible to determine past climate change by analyzing bacteria-derived ‘branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers’ (br-GDGTs) in ancient bones from archaeological sites. To the best of our knowledge this proxy has never been applied before to bones, nor with the intention of developing the method for application in archaeological research. We demonstrate that these compounds are likely derived from bacterial growth within bones following deposition in the ground, and the potential for their distributions to reflect climate and environmental conditions during the years immediately following deposition when bacteria consume internal substrates. Our preliminary results show that bone samples from different climate zones display distinct br-GDGT distributions. Well-dated late Pleistocene and Holocene bones from Alaska yield reconstructed temperatures consistent with existing climate reconstructions. While further work is necessary to determine how quickly the signal stabilizes in the bones, and to continue ongoing refinement of calibrations for temperature, precipitation, and other influences on br-GDGTs, we propose that br-GDGTs from ancient bones in archaeological sites may be taken as a new, in situ archive for reconstructing past climate conditions. This opens new perspectives for assessing connections between climate variations and social transformations in the past.

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The Colour of Belief: Objects of Jasper, Opal, Chalcedony, and Obsidian from the Reykholt Churches

This chapter, an appendix within "Reykholt: The Church Excavations" (Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir, e... more This chapter, an appendix within "Reykholt: The Church Excavations" (Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir, ed.), describes the largest and most diverse assemblage of lithic objects known from archaeological excavations in Iceland. This assemblage was recovered from floor and fill deposits associated with the medieval and post-medieval churches at the elite center of Reykholt, and is particularly distinguished by a clear selection for stones in a range of related green and green-blue colors. Their deposition within the physical boundaries of the church's sacred space documents a pattern of color-based selection, use, and controlled sequestration that extended for at least 450 years.

Green shades of jasper, opal, and chalcedony are among the least common color variants at geological sources in Iceland; green-colored lithic artifacts are, consequently, rarely present in more than trace levels (9.6%) within other analyzed Icelandic archaeological lithic assemblages. However, in the deposits associated with Reykholt's churches green and blue-green shades account for 91% of the lithics recovered. Proximity to green jasper and opal sources cannot explain this preference, which extends only to deposits within the space occupied by the church's consecrated ground and not even to deposits associated with the adjacent, contemporary, residential complex of Reykholt's chieftains and priests, where red jasper, black obsidian, and white chalcedony objects were used and discarded.

An explanation for this color preference within Reykholt's churches is found in medieval lapidary texts and in the color symbolism associated in medieval sources with this church's patron saint. This interpretation suggests not only that trans-European perspectives on medieval science were current in medieval Iceland but also that they may were expressed here through a localized form of veneration, communication, or propitiation with the saint in which gifts of stones associated with him and with the color of penitent belief were carried to the church, left there, and, at times, shattered to reveal the colors at their core.

An additional group of scraped and ground green opal objects within the assemblage are identified as pigment stones, and provisionally associated with manuscript illumination. If this interpretation is accurate, their temporal distribution suggests that manuscript production and illumination was most intense at Reykholt during the time it was Snorri Sturluson's home, and that manuscript illumination continued there until the Reformation. These humble objects, if accurately identified, also provide the first archaeologically recovered material cultural evidence for manuscript production in the North Atlantic and suggest a form of material culture that can be used to document manuscript production at other sites in Iceland and, potentially, beyond.

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The ‘Burgundian’ hat from Herjolfsnes, Greenland: new discoveries, new dates.

by Kevin P . Smith and Jette Arneborg

In 1921, during Poul Nørlund’s excavation at the Norse farm Herjolfsnes, Greenland, a tall hat wa... more In 1921, during Poul Nørlund’s excavation at the Norse farm Herjolfsnes, Greenland, a tall hat was recovered from the burial grounds surrounding the farm’s church, where a substantial collection of medieval garments had been recovered. This unusual hat came to symbolize not only the end of the Greenland Norse colony but also its enduring cultural links with continental European fashions, following a comment to this effect published by Nørlund himself. In 1996, the hat was dated to the early fourteenth century by Arneborg, a century earlier than Nørlund’s dating, based on stylistic comparisons with European examples. Recent research on North Atlantic textiles led to a reexamination of the hat, with different sections sampled and resubmitted for accelerated mass spectrometry dating. The results suggest that the body of the hat and its crown are of different periods with c. 100 years between them. This reanalysis of the Herjolfsnes ‘tall brimless hat’ or ‘Burgundian’ hat suggests that a considerable amount of cloth recycling took place in these North Atlantic colonies, that cloth was a valued and cherished commodity, and raises questions about the role this item of material culture role should play in discussions of identity and enduring links between Greenland and the continent.
DOI:10.1080/21662282.2016.1151615

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Kevin P . Smith

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