Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2004, Page 37

ZOOARCHAEOLOGY, HlSTORY AND LANDSCAPE ArCHAEOLOGY AT FlNNBOGASTAÐIR IN THE 18TH CENTURY
strandage rights. However the fish so
dominant in the excavated archaeofauna
are only indirectly mentioned in the
Jarðabók account, and the documentary
account provides no means to further
investigate the marine resources that
must have sustained the households of Sr.
Bjami and Brandur. The two types of evi-
dence are complementary, and it may be
more productive to synthesize their very
different perspectives on the same eco-
nomic strategies rather than to seek to
privilege history over archaeology or the
reverse. It will require a much larger
bone sample than we now have to effec-
tively reconstmct the sheep herding pat-
tems so economically laid out in the land
register, but even a relatively small
archaeofauna such as the 1990 sample
can quickly and effectively answer the
question of the likely source of the miss-
ing resources that provisioned the early
modem farmers of Ámeshreppur - the
sea. Our zooarchaeological evidence can
also help fill in some of the missing
pieces of the puzzle of how poor tenant
farmers like Sr. Bjami and Brandur man-
aged to survive, especially if we add
archaeological survey and landscape
analysis evidence. Explaining the critical
role of marine resources at this 18th cen-
tury tenant farm requires a broader,
multi-disciplinary view of the contempo-
rary social and environmental context.
Rural Poverty, Environmental Change
and Strategies for Survival
By the 18th century most Icelanders were
tenant farmers, and many were extreme-
ly poor by any measure. The households
of Sr. Bjarni and Brandur at
Finnbogastaðir in 1706 may have repre-
sented two ends of a spectrum of relative
wealth, education, and access to the
wider world of enlightenment Europe,
but both were certainly poor and strug-
gling tenants. However, the two house-
holds on the Finnbogastaðir farm in the
fall of 1706 (18 people in all sharing the
same small site) were by no means the
poorest of the poor. These were the land-
less paupers and sporadically employed
migrant farmhands who caused such offi-
cial concem and inspired often draconian
legislation aimed at controlling the
potentially dangerous wandering poor
(who tended to have the highest mortali-
ty during times of famine, Vasey 2000).
Most tenant farmers had single year leas-
es, and would frequently move between
farms (either voluntarily or driven by
eviction). When a farmer moved a speci-
fied number of cows and sheep stayed at
the farm for the next tenant, along with
any improvements to farm buildings,
pastures, or other immovable property.
Tenants were formally required to main-
tain houses, fences, and farm buildings at
their own expense. However, mainte-
nance of structures on farms became a
problem after 1700 because tenants
moved so frequently that they considered
it a waste of time and energy to rebuild
farm buildings they could never own and
would only briefly inhabit. Only mini-
mum repairs were made to turf structures
(which require annual maintenance and
large scale rebuilding every 25-30 years),
which caused many farms to become
increasingly neglected and fall into ruin,
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