Val Dufeu here reconstructs settlement patterns of fishing communities in Viking Age Iceland and proposes socio-economic and environmental models relevant to any study of the Vikings or the North Atlantic. She integrates written sources, geoarchaeologicaldata, and zooarchaeological data to examine how fishing propelled political change in the North Atlantic. The evolution of survival fishing to internal fish markets to overseas fish trade mirrors wider social changes in the Vikings’ world.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- I Introduction
- Fishing in the North Atlantic Scandinavian World: A Human-Environment Approach to the Role and Place of Iceland and the Faeroes
- II Reviewing Viking Studies and North Atlantic Realm Archaeological Research
- Iceland
- Archaeological Research and Environmental Sciences Studies Related to Fish in Viking Age and Medieval Iceland
- The Faeroes
- The Faeroes and Environmental Sciences Research
- Archaeo-ichthyological Research
- Fishing and Fishing Communities: Anthropological, Archaeological and Historical Approaches
- III Interdisciplinarity and Environmental History: Setting the Methodology
- Primary Sources
- Environmental History and Theories
- Consilience
- Historicism, Materialism, Functionalism and Behaviourism
- Economics and Anthropology
- Environmental Archives
- Geoarchaeology and Micromorphology
- Zooarchaeology
- A Holistic Approach
- IV Sagas and Archives
- Part 1: Icelandic and Faeroese primary sources and the writing of history
- Sagas
- Íslendinga sögur, The Sagas of the Icelanders
- Landnámabók or Book of Settlement
- Grágás and Íslendingabók
- Church & Public Records: Diplomatarium Islandicum
- Part 2: Reading the sources thematically
- Exploiting Sea and Rivers
- Fishermen and Those involved in Fishing
- Traders and Commercial Partnerships
- Ship and Cargo
- Icelanders and Norwegian kings
- V Modelling the Exploitation of Aquatic Resources and the Emergence of Commercial Fishing in Iceland and the Faeroes
- The Climate and Geography of Iceland
- The Climate and Geography of the Faeroes
- Marginality and Rationality as a Conceptual Framework
- Marginality: Adaptation and Resilience
- Behaviour and Rationality
- Environmental Factors and the Norse Pioneers of Iceland and the Faeroes
- Environmental Determinism and the Settlement of Iceland and the Faeroes
- Resource Possibilism and the Settlement of Iceland and the Faeroes
- Exploitation of Aquatic Systems
- Icelandic and Faeroes Waters
- Off shore, Inshore and Riverine Fish Resources
- Marine Species
- Riverine Species
- Economic Commonwealth: Core and Periphery within the North Atlantic Realm
- Economic Patterns from the Later Iron Age to the Medieval Period
- Emergence of an Original Icelandic Economy or Scandinavian Continuity?
- An Atlantic Economic Commonwealth
- Emergence of Specialised Workers
- Exploiting Renewable Resources for Commercial Purposes
- Icelandic and Faeroese Merchants?
- Regulating the Trade and Fishing Rights: Sea and Riverine Rights
- Trading Network
- National-Regional Trade, Markets and Fair: Alþíng og Þíng
- Fishing and Settlement Patterns
- High Status Farm – Coastal and Inland
- Mid-Rank Farm
- Fishing Stations
- Gender Exploitation of Ecosystems
- Church and Fish
- Icelandic Seafaring
- Navigation Skills
- Ship and Seafaring Regulations
- Iceland and the European Fish Markets
- VI Geoarchaeology of the Emergence of Commercial Fishing
- Testing Historical and Environmental Reconstructions of the Emergence of Commercial Fishing
- Geo-archaeology: Understanding Human Economic History through the Use of Landscape
- Identifying Settlement Patterns
- The Soils of Iceland
- Micromorphology: Investigating Human Economic Patterns through Soil Analysis
- Methodology
- Zooarchaeology: Understanding Human Economic Behaviour through Bone Finds
- Bone Recovery: Archaeological Contexts
- Methodology
- The Norse Fish Horizon
- Reconstructing Commercial Fishing: Case Studies
- Árneshreppur, Strandasýsla, North West Iceland
- The Westfjords: Vatnsfjörður
- Mývatnssveit: Skútustaðir
- The Faeroes
- Undir Junkarinsfløtti
- Á Sondum
- Environmental Archives and Human behaviour: modelling fish based paleo-economies in Iceland and the Faeroes
- VII Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- List of Figures, Maps, Photos, Plates and Tables
- Figure 1 Relation of strategic choices and resources possibilism in organisational adaptation
- Figure 2 Availabilty of renewable resource and possibilism concept
- Figure 3 Fish-based economic development within a resource possibilism framework
- Figure 4 Cyclical activities related to commercial exploitation of fish
- Figure 5 Schema of economic exploitation of aquatic ecosystems by high status farm
- Figure 6 Schema of economic exploitation of aquatic ecosystems by mid-rank status farm
- Figure 7 Schema of economic exploitation of aquatic ecosystems by permanent fishing station
- Figure 8 Economic exploitation of ecosystems by gender
- Figure 9 Frequency of fish and mammal bones identified in thin sections
- Figure 10 Total number of bones per species for Gjögur
- Figure 11 Organic materials in thin sections
- Figure 12 Bone assemblage per species
- Figure 13 Vatnsfjörður dietary habit
- Figure 14a Means frequency of of fish bones to animal bones as observed in cultural sediments for the fifteenth century
- Figure 14b Means frequency of fish bones to animal bones as observed in cultural sediments for the seventeenth century
- Figure 15 Display the total number of fragments by major taxanomic categories
- Figure 16 Fish bone abundance
- Figure 17 Display of archaeofauna from the ninth-tenth century
- Figure 18 Frequency of fish and animal bones as observed in cultural sediments
- Figure 19 Fish bones and birds bones in assemblage
- Figure 20 Junkarinsfløtti archaeofauna
- Figure 21 Total of bones collected
- Figure 22a Compared birds and fish NISP between Undir Junkarinsfløtti and Á Sondum
- Figure 22b Birds, fish and domestic mammals NISP at Undir Junkarinsfløtti and Á Sondum
- Figure 23 Bone assemblages for the case studies presented
- Map 1 The Westfjords peninsula and Mývatnssveit
- Map 2 North Atlantic and East Icelandic currents
- Map 3 Icelandic sites location
- Map 4 Reykjarnes Bay, Gjögur and Akurvík (hver on the map)
- Map 5 Map showing the location of Finnbogastaðir in relation to Gjögur and Akurvík
- Photo 1 Band of grey tephra (T)
- Photo 2 Yellowish-orangey infills features with well-developed radial crystallisation. Similar features have been identified as Ca-Fe-phosphate by Adderley et al.
- Photo 3 Aerial view of Gjögur
- Photo 4 Still inhabited, the houses are closer to the beach than the early medieval settlement as shown by the farm mound in the fore ground. Structures were surveyed on the left of the mound
- Photo 5 Mammal bone
- Photo 6 Fragments of fish bones
- Photo 7 Akurvík beach and reefs
- Photo 8 Akurvík eroded profile
- Plate 1 Successive phases of processing fish as stockfish product
- Plate 2 Gjögur stratigraphy, east facing section
- Plate 3 Akurvík stratigraphy
- Plate 4 Skútustaðir stratigraphy
- Plate 5 Area A East Section facing West (Scale: 1:10 (cm))
- Plate 6 West profile
- Table 1 Summary of collection methods with indication of information from each category
- Table 2 Summary table of expected data
Text
Audio
Adobe DRM
Login to your account