Paul Ledger
My research is interdisciplinary and draws on environmental and archaeological sciences. I generate original palaeoenvironmental data and examine archival datasets as a means to ask spatial and temporal questions about the complex nature and legacy of human-environment interactions, farming, biogeographical change and the formation of cultural landscapes. The temporal, geographic and cultural locus of my work is the past two millennia in the North Atlantic (Greenland, Iceland, Newfoundland) and circumpolar North America (Alaska), and the cultural groups therein (Norse, pre-Inuit, Inuit, European).
My work utilises data from a variety of sources, including ‘natural’ archives such as stratified accumulations of peat and soils as well as more traditional written and digital archives. Currently, I am Co-I with Véronique Forbes (PI) on a SSRHC Insight grant entitled ‘Biocultural and Archaeological Legacies at L’Anse aux Meadows’. This project seeks to integrate renewed archaeological research at L’Anse aux Meadows, the site of a late Viking Age settlement in northern Newfoundland, with legacy collections.
During my stay at the Centre for the World in the Viking Age I most looking forward to the inspiration and exchange of ideas that working within such a grouping can offer. L’Anse aux Meadows, lies at the westernmost extent of the Norse world in Viking Age and I am particular keen to reconnect with old colleagues and meet new ones to share the results of the past six years working at this site. To this end I will be working on a bringing new palaeoenvironmental data from L’Anse aux Meadows to publication that demonstrates the link with Viking Age settlements in the wider North Atlantic. Related to this, I will present a departmental seminar outlining some observations on the geographical and environmental setting of L’Anse aux Meadows. This I see as a means to thinking through how this iconic site is related to ideas of Vinland. I am hoping that my stay at the centre, and the opportunity to visit Norse sites throughout Scandinavia will provide new insights and inspiration for exploring what L’Anse aux Meadows meant in the Viking Age world.