Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2005, Page 42

Yekaterina Krivogorskaya, Sophia Perdikaris &THOMAS H. McGovern
proportions of two selected skeletal ele-
ments on the same set of site archaeofau-
na as compared in Figures 3 and 4. This
comparison of selected elements
inevitably reduces sample size, but it has
the advantage of directly comparing two
bones (cleithrum in the pectoral girdle
and premaxilla in the jaw) which are
comparable in size, density, recovery,
and which are equally identifiable to
species level. Cleithra should unambigu-
ously stay with "meat" and premaxillae
should equally regularly be deposited
with heads, potentially providing a sim-
ple and robust indicator of differential
deposition. As figure 4 demonstrates, this
direct comparison of these two selected
elements strongly emphasizes the con-
trast between all the inland consumer
sites and the coastal Strandasysla collec-
tions (a complete gadid skeleton would
have exactly equal representation of
these bones and show a 50/50 split in this
graph). Among the Strandasýsla collec-
tions, the 18th century collection from
Finnbogastaðir again most closely
approaches the natural 50/50 balance,
while the Akurvík collections show the
most marked surplus of premaxillae over
cleithra.
Size Reconstruction
Live length reconstructions for Atlantic
cod have been widely carried out on
selected bone elements, employing the
widely used Wheeler & Jones (1989)
Atlas Size Reconstruction
------AU1 ATLAS — - AU2 ATLAS « 'SU22 ATLAS
Figure 5. Reconstructed live length of codfish based on measurement of the atlas vertebrae. The
optimal size range for production of stockfish (solid line) andfor klipfisk (dotted line) is indicat-
ed for reference.
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