Ólafía : rit Fornleifafræðingafélags Íslands. - 01.05.2007, Page 112

also profited from specializing in
crafting the raw materials as well as
selling the raw products, and at the end
of the chain the core cultures
demanding and receiving luxury goods
(comparable with A. Sherratt’s study of
the Neolithic exchange systems on the
Hungarian alluvial plane, 1997).

Expanding Norse settlements
and explorations after A.D. 1000

Choosing to draw a line around the year
1000 A.D. is obviously due to the
appearance of Norse Greenlandic
settlements, both because walrus trade
might have been a factor in settlement
and because it definitely had an
influence on the preceding walrus tusk
trade. These new hunting grounds were
taken into use as an effect of increased
demand for tusks on the European
market (whether it is because of the
decreasing elephant ivory trade or not).
On the other hand the Norse Green-
landers also had a need, or at least
demand, for missing raw materials
(such as iron) and more traditional core
type products of fashion, fabrics,
pottery, malt etc. It is even possible that
iron was retrieved from America
(Seaver, Kirsten 2000, p. 173-4) and
then the classic world system idea
prevails - the raw materials go into
areas of higher degree of coreness and
the specialized goods and culture goes
out into the periphery.
Looking at the conditions in Europe,
it seems that the networks in the sub-
peripheral systems become increasingly
complex, and the following will there-
fore only be a superficial mentioning of
the changes in the general networks.
The focus will in stead be on the towns
with known implication in the tusk
trade. But even attempting to discuss
which towns were implicated in the
walrus tusk trade might be superficial
as the find material is still relatively
sparse since only one scholar (Roesdahl
2003) thus far has been concerned with
gathering the needed background
evidence, as will be discussed further in
the conclusion.
What can be said though is that one of
the towns that grew significantly in
importance due to the North Atlantic
trade was Bergen, which foundation
within resent years has been pushed
back to around 1020-1030. To be crude,
one could say that this fits rather
smoothly with the shift in walrus tusk
trade now centred in the North West
Atlantic area. Also Dublin grew in im-
portance and is thought to be primarily
a redistribution centre; where as other
parts of the British Isles were highly
specialized in crafting and art pro-
duction (Roesdahl 2003).
Actually in most of the important
Scandinavian towns of the time, there
have been found tusks, waste materials
from tusk production and whole skulls
as the map underneath shows.
From these northern European and
Scandinavian towns the tusks or
artefacts of tusks were distributed
further south into the European
continent and the church in particular
seems to have acquired such materials.
Though the study of tusk as an artistic
commodity has been studied more than
any other aspect of the walrus trade,
there is still no available overview of
the material, which makes it hard to use
directly in a world systemic exercise
like this.
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Walrus Tusk and World System Theory