Abstract
This paper concerns the mobilities associated with the gathering and sorting of sheep within the community of Skútustarðarhreppur, northeast Iceland in the recent historic period. It examines the relationships between people, animals, and landscape in terms of their movements. It presents an argument based on examining the mobilities on the surface and in the depths of a continual, in-the-making landscape, and considers the dwelling of farmers and their movements in attending to sheep as both place-forming and identity-forming processes. I present a hypothetical gathering and sorting of sheep based on historical and archaeological sources and explore the relations that are formed on-the-move.
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Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I would like to thank Gavin Lucas for his unflappable commitment to my ideas, helping to shape them and bring them to fruition. I would also like to thank Chris Witmore for our conversations while I was at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown University. These discussions about time, narratives, and the entanglements between landscape, humans, and animals have been largely responsible for the argument taken in this paper, though any wanderings I have made here are of my own making. Katrín Lund pointed me in the direction of Tuan’s aesthetic argument about the surface and depth of landscape, and as another mentor has helped me to shape my anthropological leanings and my general approach to landscape observation for which I am very grateful. I also would like to thanks my friends, colleagues at Fornleifastofnun Íslands who created an endearing intellectual environment, encouraging my perusal of an unconventional topic; especially Birna Lárusdóttir and Elín Ósk Hreiðarsdóttir, but also Mjöll Snæsdóttir for help in translation and finding the obscure references needed to support some of my arguments. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the support of Rannsóknasjóður (doktorsstyrkir úthlutun—University of Iceland), Fornleifasjóður, National Science Fund—International Polar Year (and Tom McGovern), and Brown University for allowing much of the research behind this paper to be carried out. All the usual disclaimers apply and any errors within this paper are mine alone.
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Aldred, O. Mobile Communities: The Gathering and Sorting of Sheep in Skútustaðarhreppur, Northeast Iceland. Int J Histor Archaeol 16, 488–508 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-012-0187-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-012-0187-9