Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2005, Page 47

Fish Bones and Fishermen: The Potential of Zooarchaeology in the Westfjords
in the production of preserved cod for
export to local or distant markets, proba-
bly making use of a diversity of fishing
and fish curing strategies.
There is a general pattem of
increasing proportion of físh bone rela-
tive to domestic mammal bone from
early medieval to early modem times in
most Icelandic archaeofauna in all por-
tions of the country, a pattem usually
ascribed to increasing subsistence use of
marine resources in response to climate
fluctuation, soil erosion, and changing
social forces (Perdikaris and McGovem,
in press; Amorosi et al. 1996). Edvards-
son (2002; 2004b) has argued that north-
west Iceland played a critical role in
fulfilling these growing Icelandic subsis-
tence needs in the later Middle Ages, and
has documented the role of powerful
chieftains in managing the production
and distribution of fish and other marine
products from the North West into the
rest of the country. Edvardsson has
argued that the "ethnographic present" of
the impoverished 18th-19th century sub-
sistence fisher-farmers is a poor model
for the greater wealth and economic
complexity of high medieval Iceland.
Were two físh distribution systems in
operation at the same time in the 14th-
15th centuries in Strandasýsla: one serv-
ing a long established (but evolving)
Icelandic market and the other aimed at
the growing intemational fish trade?
Other dimensions of the interactions
between fishing farms, físhing stations,
and físh consumers in Iceland will surely
emerge as fíeldwork and analysis con-
tinue.
New Methods for Reconstructing Past
Fishing Activity
Zooarchaeological analyses making use
of a series of complementary approaches
and drawing on comparisons to the wider
Icelandic zooarchaeological record now
indicate that:
- It is possible to clearly differentiate
consumer from producer sites on fish
skeletal element frequency meas-
ures. These techniques allow confír-
mation that the later medieval trad-
ing center at Gásir in Eyjafjörður was
being provisioned with prepared fish
rather than acting as a major fishing
center (Harrison, et al. 2005), and
may help clarify the role of other
sites with direct access to the sea but
which may or may not have pro-
duced their own físh.
- A substantial trade in preserved fish
took place in Iceland as far back as
the first settlement. The Mývatn and
upper Eyjafjörður archaeofauna are
currently the best documented, but
finds of marine físh cleithra and ver-
tebrae have also been made in early
medieval contexts in Hrafnkelsdalur
in the east, and at Háls and Reykholt
in the southwest (Amundsen, et al.
2005). The zooarchaeological record
thus supports Edvardsson's hypothe-
sis of substantial intemal Viking Age
físh trading within Iceland prior to
the expansion of the intemational
fish trade of the later Middle Ages.
- Different types of físh preparation
and curing seem to have taken place
at the same time at different sites.
Stockfísh production seems to have
increased in importance in the late
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