Sorting Sheep and Goats in Medieval Iceland and Greenland Local Subsistence, Climate Change, or World System Impacts?

Large archaeofaunal collections recovered from Viking Age and Medieval sites in Iceland and Greenland during intensive collaborative fieldwork over the past decade have demonstrated a diverging pattern in sheep and goat (caprine) management after ca. 1200 CE in the two Norse communities. Since Landnám (first settlement), flocks in both places contained a mixture of sheep and goats and survivorship profiles suggest a very mixed milk-meat-wool production strategy. By the late 13th century Icelandic herds were nearly all sheep, and zooarchaeological evidence suggests an increasing focus on wool production. Greenlandic archaeofauna indicate that farmers maintained the old Viking Age pattern down to the abandonment of the settlement in the mid-15th century. The Icelandic pattern appears to relate to intensified wool production aimed at creating a marketable surplus, while Greenlandic archaeofauna seem to reflect a sustained subsistence focus. Does this divergence reflect differential participation in an early Pax Mongolica proto-world system, responses to early LIA climate change, or local subsistence requirements

Climate challenges, vulnerabilities, and food security

This paper identifies rare climate challenges in the long-term history of seven areas, three in the subpolar North Atlantic Islands and four in the arid-to-semiarid deserts of the US Southwest. For each case, the vulnerability to food shortage before the climate challenge is quantified based on eight variables encompassing both environmental and social domains. These data are used to evaluate the relationship between the “weight” of vulnerability before a climate challenge and the nature of social change and food security following a challenge. The outcome of this work is directly applicable to debates about disaster management policy

Archaeological sites as Distributed Long-term Observing Networks of the Past (DONOP)

The authors would also like to acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation, specifically the Arctic Social Sciences Program, and RANNIS (The Icelandic Center for Research).Archaeological records provide a unique source of direct data on long-term human-environment interactions and samples of ecosystems affected by differing degrees of human impact. Distributed long-term datasets from archaeological sites provide a significant contribution to establish local, regional, and continental-scale environmental baselines and can be used to understand the implications of human decision-making and its impacts on the environment and the resources it provides for human use. Deeper temporal environmental baselines are essential for resource and environmental managers to restore biodiversity and build resilience in depleted ecosystems. Human actions are likely to have impacts that reorganize ecosystem structures by reducing diversity through processes such as niche construction. This makes data from archaeological sites key assets for the management of contemporary and future climate change scenarios because they combine information about human behavior, environmental baselines, and biological systems. Sites of this kind collectively form Distributed Long-term Observing Networks of the Past (DONOP), allowing human behavior and environmental impacts to be assessed over space and time. Behavioral perspectives are gained from direct evidence of human actions in response to environmental opportunities and change. Baseline perspectives are gained from data on species, landforms, and ecology over timescales that long predate our typically recent datasets that only record systems already disturbed by people. And biological perspectives can provide essential data for modern managers wanting to understand and utilize past diversity (i.e., trophic and/or genetic) as a way of revealing, and potentially correcting, weaknesses in our contemporary wild and domestic animal populations.PostprintPeer reviewe

Disequilibrium, adaptation and the Norse settlement of Greenland

This research was supported by the University of Edinburgh ExEDE Doctoral Training Studentship and NSF grant numbers 1202692 and 1140106.There is increasing evidence to suggest that arctic cultures and ecosystems have followed non-linear responses to climate change. Norse Scandinavian farmers introduced agriculture to sub-arctic Greenland in the late tenth century, creating synanthropic landscapes and utilising seasonally abundant marine and terrestrial resources. Using a niche-construction framework and data from recent survey work, studies of diet, and regional-scale climate proxies we examine the potential mismatch between this imported agricultural niche and the constraints of the environment from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries. We argue that landscape modification conformed the Norse to a Scandinavian style of agriculture throughout settlement, structuring and limiting the efficacy of seasonal hunting strategies. Recent climate data provide evidence of sustained cooling from the mid thirteenth century and climate variation from the early fifteenth century. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Norse made incremental adjustments to the changing sub-arctic environment, but were limited by cultural adaptations made in past environments.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Historical Ecology of Norse Greenland: Zooarchaeology and Climate Change Responses

This thesis invokes Historical Ecology approach to better understand human impacts on marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and the creation of cultural landscapes and seascapes in Norse Greenland. It also investigates climate impacts on human economic strategies, as they vary substantially by island and region in the North Atlantic but were especially important in arctic Greenland. The analysis centers on the animal bone data and uses both existing and newly generated zooarchaeological collections to contribute to the study of Norse Greenland and its place in human ecodynamics research. The newly analyzed archaeofauna shows that the culturally Nordic European settlers used to the life based around domestic livestock and associated foddering rapidly transformed their subsistence strategies to the limits and opportunities of the new environment. Marine fishing was immediately supplanted by intensive communal seal hunting, caribou hunting was rapidly organized by the elite managers, and the herding strategies were adapted to the less productive pastures. At the same time the data shows early prolonged commitment to the Norðursetur walrus hunt, despite the high risks, and does not show evidence for a reduction of the hunting effort after the 1300 CE climate impacts. Climate change played significant role in the Greenlandic adaptations, and intensification of seal hunting and modification of the herding economy after 1300 CE, were successful strategies until a conjunction of environmental and economic events caused the disappearance of the settlements. Different trajectories for large and small farms through time, and elite takeovers of smaller holdings after ca. 1250 CE support the picture of medieval Greenland as fully hierarchical society, which was sustainable for a prolonged period of time. Through fieldwork that generated the new archaeofauna the research community was made aware of current climate change caused degradation of organic preservation at archaeological sites in SW Greenland, and enabled researchers to study these processes, and to organize excavations aimed at saving the remaining fragile sites from complete decomposition in the immediate future. Suggestions for future research to make best use of available sites and materials is also provided

An Interim Report of the Viking Age Archaeofauna from Hrísheimar, Mývatn District, N Iceland

The excavations at Hrísheimar in Mývatnssveit in N Iceland are producing a very large archaeofauna, which can now be dated through both radiocarbon and two major volcanic tephra layers (the Landnám tephra of ca AD 871 and the Veiðivötn 930 tephra). While much of the site has been destroyed by wind erosion, substantial midden deposits (which overly earlier structures in some cases) still remain along the NE edge of the site area. While excavation is ongoing and only a small portion of the very substantial archaeofauna has been analyzed so far, it may be useful to present an interim working report of this important new early Icelandic archaeofauna

Fishing Booths and Fishing Strategies in Medieval Iceland: An Archaeofauna from the [Site] of Akurvík, North-West Iceland

Excavations in 1990 in North-West Iceland documented a stratified series of small turf structures and associated midden deposits at the eroding beach at Akurvík which date from the 11th–13th to the 15th–16th centuries AD. The site reflects a long series of small discontinuous occupations, probably associated with seasonal fishing. The shell sand matrix had allowed excellent organic preservation, and an archaeofauna of more than 100,000 identifiable fragments was recovered. The collections are dominated by fish, mainly Atlantic cod, but substantial amounts of whale bone suggest extensive exploitation of strandings or active whaling. This paper briefly summarizes the excavation results, presents a zooarchaeological analysis of the two largest radiocarbon dated contexts, and places the Akurvík collections in the wider context of intra-Icelandic and interregional trade in preserved fish. Analysis of the Akurvík collection and comparison with other Icelandic collections from both inland and coastal sites dating from the 9th to 19th centuries AD both reinforces evidence for an early, pre-Hanseatic internal Icelandic fish trade and supports historical documentation of Icelandic participation in the growing international fish trade of the late Middle Ages