Abstract
This paper follows the lead of the increasing numbers of scholars utilizing the methods and theory of environmental archaeology within historical archaeology. This paper addresses the issue of “modernity” in early modern Iceland through the analysis of faunal assemblages from historic sites in Iceland. It examines the idea of modernity through the ideas of commoditization of animals as well as the improvement of domestic animals as seen through these faunal assemblages. There are a number of possible faunal indications of processes associated with modernity in the existing historic assemblages of Iceland though at least some of these have deep roots in the medieval period. Examining the idea of modernity through the faunal assemblages of historic-period Iceland both help refine the idea of modernity as well as reveal the medieval roots of much of what we term “modern”.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Albarella, U. (1997). Shape variation of cattle metapodials, age, sex, or breed? Some examples from mediaeval and post-mediaeval Sites. Anthropozoologica 25–26: 37–47.
Abu-Lughod, J. L. (1991). Before European hegemony, Oxford University Press, New York.
Barrett, J. H., Locker, A. M., and Roberts, C. M. (2004). Dark Age economics’ revisited: The English fish bone evidence AD 600–1600. Antiquity 78: 618–636.
Bath Slicher van, B. H. (1966). The agrarian history of Western Europe, A.D. 500–1850, E. Arnold, London.
Bowen, J. (1999). The Chesapeake landscape and the ecology of animal husbandry. In Michaels, R. L., and Egan, G. (eds.), Old and new worlds, Oxbow, Oxford, pp. 358–367.
Brook, T. (2007). Vermeer’s hat: The seventeenth century and the dawn of global world, Bloomsbury, New York.
Cronon, W. (1983). Changes in the land: Indians, colonists, and the ecology of New England, Hill and Wang, New York.
Crosby, A. W. (2004). Ecological Imperialism: The biological expansion of Europe, 900–1900, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Crumley, C. L. (1994). Historical ecology: Cultural knowledge and changing landscapes, School of American Research Press, Santa Fe.
Deetz, J. (1977). In small things forgotten: The archaeology of early American life, Doubleday, New York.
Driesch von den, A. (1976). A guide to the measurement of animal bones from archaeological sites, Harvard University, Cambridge, Peabody Museum.
Edvardsson, R., Perdikaris, S., McGovern, T., Zagor, N., and Waxman, M. (2004). Coping with hard times in NW Iceland: Zooarchaeology, history, and landscape archaeology at Finnbogastaðir in the 18th Century. Archaeologia Islandica 3: 20–47.
Fisher, C. T., Hill, J. B., and Feinman, G. M. (2009). Introduction: Environmental studies for twenty-first century conservation. In Fisher, C. T., Hill, J. B., and Feinman, G. M. (eds.), The archaeology of environmental change: Socionatural legacies of degradation and resilience, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, pp. 1–15.
Hambrecht, G. (2006). The bishop’s beef: Improved cattle at early modern Skálholt, Iceland. Archaeologia Islandica 5: 82–94.
Hambrecht, G. (2007). The bishop’s beef: Improved cattle in 18th century Skálholt, Iceland. Stanford Journal of Archaeology 5. http://www.stanford.edu/dept/archaeology/journal/.
Hambrecht, G. (2009). Zooarchaeology and the archaeology of early modern Iceland. Journal of the North Atlantic 2: 3–22.
Hambrecht, G., Kuchar, P., Pallsdottir, A., and Woollett, J. (2006). Preliminary Report of the Archaeofauna at Skálholt, Iceland. NORSEC Zooarchaeology Laboratory Report, CUNY Northern Science and Education Center, New York.
Hardesty, D. L. (2007). Perspectives on global-change archaeology. American Anthropologist 109: 1–7.
Harrison, R., Alexander, E., Feeley, F., Gorsline, M., Hicks, M., and Mitrovic, S. (2008). Faunal Analysis from the 2005 Excavation at Aðalstræti Nr. 10 in Reykjavík, Iceland. NORSEC Zooarchaeology Laboratory Report, CUNY Northern Science and Education Center, New York.
Hicks, M. T., and Harrison, R. (2009). A Preliminary Report of the 2008 Midden Excavation at Skutustadir, N Iceland. NORSEC Zooarchaeology Laboratory Report, CUNY Northern Science and Education Center, New York.
Hoffmann, R. C. (2001). Frontier foods for late Medieval consumers: Culture, economy, ecology. Environmental History 7: 131–167.
Horrebow, N. (1758). The natural history of Iceland, A. Linde, London.
Johnson, M. (2006). The tide reversed: Prospects and potentials for a postcolonial archaeology of Europe. In Hall, M., and Silliman, S. (eds.), Historical Archaeology, Blackwell, Malden MA, pp. 313–330.
Kantanen, J., Olsaker, I., Adalsteinsson, S., Sandberg, K., Eythorsdottir, E., Pirhonen, K., and Holm, L. E. (1999). Temporal changes in genetic variation of north European cattle breeds. Animal Genetics 30: 16–28.
Kantanen, J., Olsaker, I., Brusgaard, K., Eythorsdottir, E., Holm, L. E., Lien, S., Danell, B., and Adalsteinsson, S. (2000). Frequencies of genes for coat colour and horns in Nordic cattle breeds. Genetics Selection Evolution 32: 561–576.
Karlsson, G. (2000). The history of Iceland, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Kjaergaard, T. (1994). The Danish revolution, 1500–1800: An ecohistorical interpretation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Koerner, L. (1996). Carl Linnaeus in his time and place. In Jardine, N., Secord, A., and Spary, E. (eds.), Cultures of natural history, Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 145–162.
Koerner, L. (1999). Linnaeus: Nature and nation, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Kurlansky, M. (1999). Cod: A biography of the fish that changed the world, Vintage, New York.
Lucas, G., and McGovern, T. (2007). Bloody slaughter: Ritual decapitation and display at the Viking settlement of Hofstaðir, Iceland. European Journal of Archaeology 10: 7–30.
Marks, R. (2007). The origins of the modern world: Fate and fortune in the rise of the West, Rowan and Littlefield, Lanham, MD.
McGlade, J. (1995). Archaeology and the human ecodynamics of human-modified landscapes. Antiquity 69: 113–132.
McGovern, T. H. (2010). Report and Community Statement Global Long Term Human Ecodynamics Conference Eagle Hill Maine October 14–18th 2009. http://www.nabohome.org/meetings/glthec2009report.pdf
McGovern, T. H., Vésteinsson, O., Fridriksson, A., Church, M., Lawson, I., Simpson, I. A., Einarsson, A., Dugmore, A., Cook, G., Perdikaris, S., Edwards, K., Thomson, A., Adderley, P., Newton, A., Lucas, G., Edvardsson, R., Aldred, O., and Dunbar, E. (2007). Landscapes of settlement in northern Iceland: Historical ecology of human impact and climate fluctuation on the millennial scale. American Anthropologist 109: 27–51.
Mrozowski, S. A. (1999). Colonization and the commodification of nature. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 3: 153–166.
Mrozowski, S. A. (2006). Environments of history: Biological dimensions of historical archaeology. In Silliman, S., and Hall, M. (eds.), Historical Archaeology, Blackwell, Malden, pp. 23–41.
Ogilvie, A. E. J., Woollett, J. M., Smiarowski, K., Arneborg, J., Troelstra, S., Kuijpers, A., Pálsdóttir, A., and McGovern, T. H. (2009). Seals and sea ice in Medieval Greenland. Journal of the North Atlantic 2: 60–80.
Overton, M. (1996). Agricultural revolution in England: The transformation of the agrarian economy, 1500–1850, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Perdikaris, S., Amundsen, C., and McGovern, T. H. (2002). Report of Animal Bones from Tjarnargata 3C, Reykjavík, Iceland. NORSEC Zooarchaeology Laboratory Report, CUNY Northern Science and Education Center, New York.
Perdikaris, S. (1999). From chiefly provisioning to commercial fishery: Long-term economic change in arctic Norway. World Archaeology 30: 388–402.
Perdikaris, S. and McGovern, T. H. (2007). Cod fish, walrus, and chieftains: Economic intensification in the Norse North Atlantic. In Thurston, T. and Fisher, C. (eds.), Seeking a richer harvest, Springer, New York, Vol. 3, pp. 193–216.
Perdikaris, S., Hambrecht, G., Brewington, S., and McGovern, T. H. (2007). Across the fish event horizon: A comparative approach. In Plogmann, H. H. (ed.), The role of fish in ancient time, Verlag Marie Leidorf, Rahden Westphalia, pp. 51–62.
Pope, P. E. (2004). Fish into wine: The Newfoundland plantation in the seventeenth century, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
Puputti, A. K. (2008). A zooarchaeology of modernizing human/animal relationships in Tornio, northern Finland, 1620–1800. Post-Medieval Archaeology 42: 304–316.
Redman, C. L., Grove, J. M., and Kuby, L. H. (2004). Integrating social science into the Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) Network: Social dimensions of ecological change and ecological dimensions of social change. Ecosystems 7: 161–171.
Richards, J. F. (2006). The unending frontier, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Thomas, R. (2005). Zooarchaeology, improvement and the British agricultural revolution. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 9: 71–88.
Tinsley, C., and McGovern, T. H. (2001). Zooarchaeology of Aðalstræti 14–16: Assessment Report of the Post-Medieval Contexts. NORSEC Zooarchaeology Laboratory Report, Hunter College Department of Anthropology Bioarchaeology Laboratory, New York.
von Troil, U. (1780). Letters on Iceland, W. Richardson, London.
Wallerstein, I. (1980). The Modern World-System I: Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century, Academic, New York.
Woollett, J. (2007). Labrador Inuit subsistence in the context of environmental change: An initial landscape history perspective. American Anthropologist 109: 69–84.
Worster, D. (1994). Nature’s economy: A history of ecological ideas, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Wubs-Mrozewicz, J. (2008). Fish stock and barrel: Changes in the stockfish trade c.1360–1560. In Sicking, L., and Abreu-Ferreira, D. (eds.), Beyond the catch: fisheries of the North Atlantic, the North Sea and the Baltic, 900–1850, Brill Academic, Leiden, pp. 187–208.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hambrecht, G. Zooarchaeology and Modernity in Iceland. Int J Histor Archaeol 16, 472–487 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-012-0194-x
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-012-0194-x