Magdalena Maria Elisabeth Schmid
Department of Archaeology, University of Iceland
Nönnugata 8
101 Reykajavik
Iceland
Tel: + 354 7751295
mme6@hi.is
Biography
I studied at the University of Bonn and University of Budapest. My Master´s thesis
deals with the late avar khaganate in the Carpathian basin, in particular with burial
practices and chronology. I am currently a PhD student at the University of Iceland.
I am dealing with the archaeology of Viking Age Iceland; I am compiling a catalogue
of all available dating evidence from settlements and burials. My focus is on
interdisciplinary dating methods (tephrochronology, radiocarbon dating, and
typology) in order to refine the chronology of Viking Age Iceland. In autumn 2013 I
will teach the course “dating methodologies in archaeology” at the University of
Iceland and in the following spring term I am going to be at the University of
Cambridge and Edinburgh to compare my data, in particular with Andrew Dugmore
and James Barrett.
Aims for NABO Meeting
Cathy Batt and I have been working on Bayesian statistics in order to refine
chronologies of individual sites in Iceland, which hasn`t been done in Iceland yet.
We would like to introduce these statistical approaches for a few sites where the
necessary data (accurate stratigraphy and multiple radiocarbon data from short
lived organic material) is available to demonstrate how the combination of
multidisciplinary dating evidence (mainly tephra) can be collated into more
complex chronologies. The NABO meeting will be a great opportunity for me to
present my first results and to get feedback from researchers working across the
North Atlantic. Cathy and I are planning on presenting together and also publishing
the results sometime after the meeting.