Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2002, Page 114

Orri Vésteinsson, Thomas H. McGovern, Christian Keller
(E17a) and Westem (W51, W48) settle-
ment areas. Birds were exploited, but not
so heavily as in southem Iceland. Seals
and caribou (here included in the Other
category, see Fig. 5 for breakdown)
instead dominate the wild species collec-
tions. Seals taken include harbor seals (P.
vitulina), harp seals (P. groenl.), bearded
seals (E.barbatus) and hooded seals (C.
crystata, only in the Eastern Settlement).
In later time periods, seal bones percent-
ages tend to rise (to over 75% of total
collection in 14th century layers at W48)
except at the large chieftain’s farm W51
where seals decline relative to caribou
(McGovem et al. 1996). Despite excel-
lent conditions of preservation and
repeated intensive sieving efforts, fish
remains have never been recovered in
quantity from Greenlandic sites- a
marked contrast to lceland and the rest of
the Scandinavian North Atlantic
(Amorosi et al. 1994). Some locational
anomalies may signal the operation of
some sort of communal networks in
Greenland. Seal bones are actually more
common on some small inland farms
with no direct access to salt water than on
large coastal farms, and caribou bone fre-
quencies indicate that select cuts of deer
probably killed in the highlands were
being differentially deposited at the mag-
nates’ farms on the coast (McGovern et
al. 1996). Sea birds (mainly auks) are
found on most farms, inland and coastal
alike, and fragments of walrus bone on
inland sites likewise suggest group par-
ticipation in hunting.
Overall, the animal bone evidence
supports the image of a broad (but selec-
tive) foraging strategy applied to wild
resources, an interest and ability to trans-
fer marine products substantial distances
inland, and a core reliance upon a suite of
imported European domesticates initially
including substantial numbers of pigs.
Significant regional diversity is evident
in Icelandic use of wild resources (a pat-
tem that continues down to the early
modem period), but the Greenlandic pat-
tern of dependence on seals and caribou
(and minor use of fish) proves far more
uniform and lasts to the end of the
colony. Icelandic use of wild resources
appears more complex and regionalized,
though the recovery of substantial
amounts of físh bones (and the occasion-
al seal bone) on interior Icelandic sites at
all periods similarly suggests the opera-
tion of some sort of regional provisioning
network.
Nearly all the wild resources men-
tioned in Skallagrímr’s tale are present in
one or another bone collection, and wild
species clearly played an important sup-
porting role in the subsistence economies
of both islands. However, all known ani-
mal bone collections from early Iceland
and Greenland (including many too small
to reasonably quantify) contain bones of
the core domesticates. This suggests that
while emphasis was placed on acquiring
a wide variety of resources, each settle-
ment unit was based on the production of
domesticated animals. Even if the small-
est units were to some extent specialized
out-stations following the Skallagrímr
model, they were soon run as farms
boasting a full spectrum of domestic
mammals, though not necessarily in the
same proportion as the core settlement. It
seems that differences in ratios of cattle
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