Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2005, Page 48

Yekaterina Krivogorskaya, Sophia Perdikaris &THOMAS H, McGovern
medieval contexts at the Akurvík
fishing station, but not at the nearby
fishing farm of Gjögur. There seem
to be differences between these pat-
tems and those documented in early
modem times, again underlining the
danger of an uncritical use of the
ethnographic record.
-There are indications of a still earli-
er fish processing pattern in the basal
layers at Akurvík, one which may be
complementary to the pattems seen
on the Viking Age consumer sites.
More early (lOth-llth century) fish
producing sites may help resolve this
issue.
Analysis of the Gjögur collec-
tion is ongoing, later work may change
some conclusions presented here, and
this paper should not be taken as any sort
of final statement. New research pro-
grams in the West Fjords and in other
parts of the North Atlantic offer the
prospects for still more effective interdis-
ciplinary cooperation. It seems clear that
the way forward in fisheries zooarchaeol-
ogy in the West Fjords is through sys-
tematic comparisons of large archaeofau-
na, consistently recovered and analyzed
to a comparable standard, and then com-
bined with many other data sets to unrav-
el the complex picture of pre-modem
marine resource use in this region. By
combining zooarchaeological approaches
(species diversity, element distribution,
size and age reconstruction) with loca-
tional analysis, paleoclimate, modern
fisheries science, historical documents
and archaeological excavation, coopera-
tive investigations in the near future can
be expected to greatly improve our
understanding of long-term dynamic
interactions of environment, fish and
fishermen in Northwest Iceland.
Acknowledgements:
We would like to thank the people of the
West Fjords for their generosity and kind-
ness during the field seasons in 1987 and
1990, and especially recognize the
invaluable assistance of Dr. Haukur
Jóhannesson who first directed our atten-
tion to the erosion face at Akurvík and the
mound at Gjögur. Thanks are also due to
the hard working intemational field crew
and the multidisciplinary team of collabo-
rators who carried out the field work in
the face of challenging weather. The
National Museum of Iceland both spon-
sored the project and has expertly curated
the finds. Generous support was provided
by the Icelandic Science Council, US
National Science Foundation, City
University of New York, Sheffield and
Aarhus Universities, and the US NSF
Office of Polar Programs- Women in the
North program- made the original field-
work possible. The analysis is a product
of the National Science Foundation Arctic
Social Sciences Research Experience for
Undergraduates Program and the North
Atlantic Biocultural Organization
(NABO) and the Leverhulme Trust
Project Landscapes Circum Landnám.
The NABO radiocarbon dating program
has been generously supported by the
PSC-CUNY awards program and the
Leverhulme Trast Landscapes Circum
Landnám Project and Dr. Gordon Cook of
SUERC Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory.
We would like to thank Colin Amundsen,
Matthew Brown, Konrad Smiarowski,
Malgorzata Frik, Monika Koczela, Dmitri
Chitov, Jonathan Frankel, Eduardo
Martinez, Scott Roche, Courtney Scott,
Alex Volkov, Shaye Storm and Elina
46