I am so excited about the article that I feature on my blog
this week, that I am barely able to contain myself. I selected this article from
National Geographic to present to you, because it has the most comprehensive
coverage. Media is abuzz with this news.
Discovered by using satellite imagery and an on site visit, the area has been
confirmed as man made. Located on the southwest tip of Newfoundland Island, Canada, overlooking the Gulf
of St. Lawrence it may prove to be medieval Viking (Norse) in nature. They are
cautiously optimistic that it is exactly that.
This stupendous archaeological discovery could be either Hop
or Straumfjord; the other two settlements of the medieval Norse alluded to in
the Norse sagas that have not previously been discovered.
I have been playing to a small, select group of believers
for the past 12-years in my Axe
of Iron series of novels about the Greenland Norse people. I have long contended,
most of my life actually, that these people did not simply disappear, they
began to assimilate with the pre-historical natives of Canada from the very
beginning of their first contact with them. If this site is Norse, my contentions may be vindicated one day.
Any conclusion as to origin would be premature at this point, but please
take a moment to read this great article. You will get in on the ground floor
of what might be the third most important, if not the most important, find after L'Anse aux Meadows and the Tanfield site on Baffin Island.
According to the latest news, an expedition will spend this summer working at the site to make positive identification insofar as origin is concerned. My fingers are crossed. (Ed.)
***
Discovery
Could Rewrite History of Vikings in New World
Guided
by ancient Norse sagas and modern satellite images, searchers discover what may
be North America's second Viking site.
 |
Archaeologists have unearthed a stone hearth that was used for iron-working, hundreds of miles away from the only other known Viking site in North America. |
PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT CLARK, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
By Mark
Strauss
PUBLISHED THU
MAR 31 18:30:00 EDT 2016
POINT
ROSEE, CANADA
It’s a
two-mile trudge through forested, swampy ground to reach Point Rosee, a narrow,
windswept peninsula stretching from southern Newfoundland into the Gulf of St.
Lawrence. Last June, a team of archaeologists was drawn to this remote part of
Canada by a modern-day treasure map: satellite imagery revealing ground
features that could be evidence of past human activity.
The
treasure they discovered here—a stone hearth used for working iron—could
rewrite the early history of North America and aid the search for lost Viking
settlements described in Norse sagas centuries ago.
To
date, the only confirmed Viking site in the New World is
L’Anse aux Meadows, a
thousand-year-old way station discovered in 1960 on the northern tip of
Newfoundland. It was a temporary settlement, abandoned after just a few years,
and archaeologists have spent the past half-century searching for elusive signs
of other Norse expeditions.
“The
sagas suggest a short period of activity and a very brief and failed
colonization attempt,” says
Douglas
Bolender, an archaeologist specializing in Norse settlements. “L’Anse aux
Meadows fits well with that story but is only one site. Point Rosee could
reinforce that story or completely change it if the dating is different from
L’Anse aux Meadows. We could end up with a much longer period of Norse activity
in the New World.”
The site
of the discovery, hundreds of miles south of L’Anse aux Meadows, was located by
archaeologist
Sarah
Parcak, a National Geographic Fellow and “space archaeologist” who has used
satellite imagery to locate lost Egyptian cities, temples, and tombs.
Last
November,
TED
awarded Parcak a $1 million prize to develop a project to discover and
monitor ancient sites. This latest discovery in Newfoundland—supported, in
part, by a grant from the National Geographic Society—demonstrates that her
space-based surveillance can not only spy out artifacts in barren desert
landscapes, but also in regions covered by tall grasses and other plant life.
Parcak
led a team of archaeologists to Point Rosee last summer to conduct a “test
excavation,” a small-scale dig to search for initial evidence that the site
merits further study. The scientists unearthed an iron-working hearth partially
surrounded by the remains of what appears to have been a turf wall.
The
archaeologists don’t yet have enough evidence to confirm that Vikings built the
hearth. Other peoples lived in Newfoundland centuries ago, including Native
Americans and Basque fisherman.
But experts are cautiously optimistic.
“A site
like Point Rosee has the potential to reveal what that initial wave of Norse
colonization looked like not only for Newfoundland but for the rest of the
North Atlantic,” says Bolender.
 |
Sarah Parcak, a "space archaeologist," has used satellite imagery to locate lost Egyptian cities, temples, and tombs. And now, her eyes in the sky are searching for Viking settlements in Canada. |
PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT CLARK, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Location,
Location, Location
“Who’s
your daddy?!?” Parcak shouts at the ground as her muddy boot pushes down on a
shovel, cutting its way through thick turf to the soil beneath. It’s a joyous
sound, the primal yell of an archaeologist in her natural habitat, doing
fieldwork. “Digging makes us better people,” she tells me.
Parcak
is far afield of her usual stomping grounds in Egypt. But this project has
clearly captivated her imagination, drawing her into Viking history and lore.
One
afternoon, we cautiously make our way down a steep path—created by a small
landslide and gully—to a narrow beach. As we stroll along the shoreline, Parcak
speculates on why this tiny peninsula would have made an ideal Norse outpost.
“They
were quite nervous about their safety, threats by locals,” she says. “They
needed to be in a place where they could have good access to the beaches but
also a good vantage point. This spot is ideally situated—you can see to the
north, west, and south.”
After
studying the area and researching prior land surveys, the archaeologists have
identified other characteristics that would have made Point Rosee an optimum
site for Norse settlers: The southern coastline of the peninsula has relatively
few submerged rocks, allowing for anchoring or even beaching ships; the climate
and soil in the region is especially well-suited for growing crops; there’s
ample fishing on the coast and game animals inland; and there are lots of
useful natural resources, such as chert for making stone tools and turf for
building housing.
Iron
Men
And
then, of course, there was the most valuable resource of all: bog iron. It’s a
type of ore that forms when rivers carry dissolved particles of iron down from
mountains and into wetlands, where bacteria leach the iron from the water,
leaving behind metal deposits.
The
Norse didn’t do much mining. Most of their iron was harvested from peat bogs,
and their very way of life depended upon it. Metal nails held their ships
together as they sailed west—expanding their realm across the North
Atlantic—and south, establishing trade routes throughout Europe and the Far
East. A modern-day reconstruction of a Norse longship, built by the Viking Ship
Museum in Denmark, required 7,000 nails made from 880 pounds (400 kg) of
iron—which means that a blacksmith would have had to heat and process 30 tons
of raw bog iron ore.
Bog
iron prospectors knew what telltale signs to look for, such as an oily looking
microbial slick on the surface of stagnant water. In fact, three historians
authored
a
study making the case that iron was a prerequisite for Viking
settlements. L’Anse aux Meadows, they observe, was a site used for iron
production and ship maintenance, providing evidence “that the explorers,
knowing their ships needed repair, actively sought out a location where they
could acquire bog iron and produce new nails.”
Searching
For Signs
Up
until now, Parcak has predominantly used her eyes in the sky to gaze upon
Egypt, where she has been able to spot geological anomalies that indicate the
presence of ruins beneath the barren, mostly undisturbed sands.
 |
A satellite image of Point Rosee used by archaeologist Sarah Parcak in her search for Viking settlements. Dark straight lines indicate the remains of possible structures. |
SATELLITE IMAGE BY DIGITALGLOBE
But,
whereas the ancient Egyptians left behind stone edifices that have endured for
thousands of years, Viking structures were hewn mostly from wood and earth. So
when Parcak uses satellite imagery to search for signs of Norse settlers, she’s
not looking for actual ruins. Instead, she’s scrutinizing the plant life.
The
remnants of structures buried at Point Rosee alter the surrounding soil,
changing the amount of moisture it retains. This, in turn, affects the
vegetation growing directly over it. Using remote sensing, variations in plant
growth form a spectral outline of what was there centuries earlier. The Point
Rosee images were taken during the fall, when the grasses in the area were
particularly high, making it easier to see which plants were healthier,
drinking more water from the soil.
In one
area, a magnetometer survey reveals a hot spot that, according to the satellite
imagery, is partially surrounded by straight lines indicating the possible
ruins of a small structure. Excavation reveals the remains of what appear to be
turf walls and an iron-working hearth.
To an
untrained eye, the hearth doesn’t look like much: a boulder in front of a
shallow pit, surrounded by smaller stones. But traces of charcoal and 28 pounds
of slag found in the pit suggest to the archaeologists that this hearth was
used for roasting ore.
 |
The archaeologists found 28 pounds of slag in a hearth that they believe was used to roast iron ore prior to smelting it in a furnace. |
PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT CLARK, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
This
was the first step in the iron-working process. Before the metal could be
smelted and forged by a blacksmith, the ore needed to be dried out—otherwise,
it would explode when placed inside a furnace. The roasting process also
removed some of the impurities, in the form of discarded metal slag.
The
discovery of this hearth makes Point Rosee the southernmost and westernmost
known iron-working site in pre-Columbian North America.
The
Stuff of Legends
Was
Point Rosee a Viking outpost a thousand or so years ago? The evidence thus far
is promising.
The turf structure that partially surrounds the hearth is nothing
like the shelters built by indigenous peoples who lived in Newfoundland at the
time, nor by Basque fishermen and whalers who arrived in the 16th century. And,
while iron slag may be fairly generic, “there aren’t any known
cultures—prehistoric or modern—that would have been mining and roasting bog
iron ore in Newfoundland other than the Norse,” says Bolender.
Very
few artifacts have been found at Point Rosee, but that’s actually a good sign.
Most Norse possessions haven’t preserved well; they were typically made from
wood, which decayed, or iron, which either decayed or was melted down to make
something else. Archaeologists conducted seven excavations at L’Anse aux
Meadows, from 1961 to 1968, before they had sufficient evidence to confirm it
was a Norse outpost. And even then they found only a handful of personal items,
such as a bronze pin, a needle hone, and a stone lamp. If the archaeologists
had found many artifacts at Point Rosee, then it probably wouldn’t be a Viking
site.
 |
Archaeologists conducted a "test excavation" in Newfoundland—a small-scale dig to search for initial evidence that the site merits further study. They were successful. |
PHOTOGRAPH
BY ROBERT CLARK, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
One
theory is that Point Rosee was primarily an iron-working camp, a temporary
facility supporting exploration and exploitation of resources within the Gulf
of St. Lawrence. Bolender, however, believes it might have been part of a more
substantial settlement somewhere in the vicinity.
If so,
then how does this discovery fit into history’s bigger picture?
Much of
what we know about the Norse exploration of North America is gleaned from the
Viking sagas, oral stories passed down across generations that were eventually
transcribed.
“We’re
looking here because of the sagas,” says Bolender. “Nobody would have ever
found L’Anse aux Meadows if it weren’t for the sagas. But, the flipside is that
we have no idea how reliable they are.”
Archaeologists
have found sporadic evidence suggestive of Viking explorers who traveled beyond
their settlements in Greenland. Artifacts from the 11th century, including a
copper coin, were discovered in Maine, possibly obtained by Native Americans
who traded with the Norse. Canadian archaeologist Patricia Sutherland has found
ruins on Baffin Island, far above the Arctic Circle, which she claims were a
trading outpost—though the evidence remains inconclusive. (
Read about Sutherland’s discovery.)
The
confirmed discovery of a Norse camp at L’Anse aux Meadows proved that the
Viking sagas weren’t entirely fiction. A second settlement at Point Rosee would
suggest that the Norse exploration of the region wasn’t a limited undertaking,
and that archaeologists should expand their search for evidence of other
settlements, built 500 years before the arrival of Christopher Columbus.
“For a
long time, serious North Atlantic archaeologists have largely ignored the idea
of looking for Norse sites in coastal Canada because there was no real method
for doing so,” says Bolender. “If Sarah Parcak can find one Norse site using
satellites, then there’s a reasonable chance that you can use the same method
to find more, if they exist. If Point Rosee is Norse, it may open up coastal
Canada to a whole new era of research.”