A team of archaeologists just uncovered a potential Viking settlement In North America, making this the second one to be found. The site is located the southwestern tip of Newfoundland in Canada.
Scientists utilized satellite imagery to search for this site on the Point Rosee peninsula of the island where researchers already began excavations last June. Now, a new documentary known as "Vikings Unearthed" is scheduled next week on the BBC and PBS channels, revealing these much awaited new findings.
According to the archaeologists involved in this investigation, they were inspired by Norse oral histories that described these long forgotten and lost Viking settlements. The team of researchers are led by space archaeologist Sarah Parcak from the University of Alabama, Birmingham and archaeologist Douglas Bolender from the University of Massachusetts along with a team of Canadian scientists and researchers.
Using satellite imagery, they began their investigation by identifying hundreds of potential sites along the Canadian and U.S. eastern seaboard. After examining these sites, they determined this specific location in Newfoundland that details an outline of the remaining turf walls and other structures that appear to be buried into the earth based on overgrowth.
The most recent dig revealed a stone hearth that was most likely used for iron works along with traces of charcoal, slag and burnt bog iron. Bog iron was mostly used by Vikings to produce nails to build their wooden ships.
Apart from these evidence, artifacts appear to be almost non existent to the site such as pottery and the like, since majority of Viking tools were mostly made from wood and iron. Naturally, wood would have been decayed over the course of centuries and iron would be most likely recycled and melted down to create new tools.
Currently, the only known Viking settlement in the Americans is located in the L'Anse aux Meadows some 700 kilometers away from the northernmost region of Newfoundland, where archaeologists determined this as a 1,000 year old temporary settlement. The settlement was abandoned just after a few years where this was discovered in 1960.
Since this milestone discovery, archaeologists are in the quest of searching for more evidence of Viking expeditions. Most scientists believe that Vikings attempted a brief colonization of the Americas but failed. If this finding is confirmed, this would mean that Vikings would become the first colonizers of the Americas, pushing at least 500 years before the age of Europeans and Christopher Columbus.