Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2005, Qupperneq 37

Fish Bones and Fishermen: The Potential of Zooarchaeolooy in the Westfjords
Gjögur E. Medieval Akurvík E. Medieval Gjögur L. Medieval Akurvík L. Medieval
NISP NISP NISP NISP
Domestic Mammals 77 2 96 15
Seals 21 26 51 8
Whale 18 67 30 1,528
Birds 7 82 24 124
Fish 8,611 8,200 7,685 93,349
Shellfish 889 545 1366 4,834
total NISP 9,623 8,922 9,252 99,858
Medium terrestrial mammal 207 4 142 23
Small terrestrial mammal 1 1 4
Large terrestrial mammal 16 17
Unidentifiable mammal
fragment 117 44 206 119
Unidentifiable bone fragment 308 859 43 1,085
Total TNF 10,272 9,829 9,661 101,089
Table 2. Summary of bones from upper and lower contexts of Akurvík and Gjögur. "Small ter-
restrial mammal" includes bones of small dog or small caprines. "Medium terrestrial mammal"
includes bones of large dog, caprines, or pigs. Both categories at Akurvík are probably, in fact,
sheep or goat. "Large terrestrial mammal” includes bones of cow-horse-sized animals. NISP =
fragments identifiable to a useful taxonomic level, TNF = all fragments.
Presence and Abundance of Species
Even though domestic mammals, sea
mammals, some birds and molluscs are
present, both site contexts in all phases
are dominated by fish. This paper will
focus on the fish remains from the
Gjögur farm mound and the Akurvík sea-
sonal fishing station, making use of both
long established and new approaches to
reconstructing the nature of this early
fishery. For discussion of the other taxa
present in the Akurvík and Gjögur collec-
tions see Amundsen, et al. (in press) and
Krivogorskaya, et al. (in press).
Quantity of Fish Bone
The quantity of fish bones recovered at
Gjögur and Akurvík (over 80% of the
archaeofauna in all phases of both sites)
place both sites in the informal category
of’fish middens" now known from many
parts of the North Atlantic (Barrett 2004;
Bigelow 1984). Such massive concentra-
tions of fish bones in archaeological
deposits are certainly one indicator of
sustained fishing efforts by ancient peo-
ples and may be one indicator of produc-
tion for export (Amorosi, et al. 1996), but
some Mesolithic coastal sites are equally
rich in fish bone, so sheer numbers of
fish bone fragments in a deposit cannot
demonstrate a commercial or commer-
cializing fishery.
Fish Species Diversity
Table 3 demonstrates the relative abun-
dance of the identified fish taxa in the
Gjögur and Akurvík collections. A limit-
ed number of flatfish species, salmonids,
skates and a Greenlandic shark (tooth)
were identified in the recovered archaeo-
fauna, but gadid (cod family) fish domi-
nate the collection and definitely make
up most of the fish bones not assignable
securely to family. The majority of the
gadid fish are Atlantic cod, distantly fol-
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