Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2006, Page 64

Christopher Callow
der is even more difficult to determine,
also muddies the waters considerably.
For the Icelandic accompanied
burials of the tenth century, though, the
overall adult male:female ratio is about
2:1 (including both more and less certain
identifications; Gestsdóttir 1998a: 5, 10-
17). This is certainly disproportionately
weighted towards males. Yet taking into
consideration the age distribution, the
problem of the ‘missing’ women is per-
haps not so acute or rather ought to make
use a pose other questions of the data. The
imbalance between males and females is
greatest for the age category 46 and over
within which, out of 29 burials, only one
certain and one possible female were
identified, as opposed to over 20 male
burials (Gestsdóttir 1998a: 10-17). In
other words, the ratio of over 10:1 for the
oldest age category completely skews the
aggregated Icelandic data. Even allowing
for our current paucity of data, the real
question for early Icelandic accompanied
cemeteries is where all the older women
were buried, or, just as likely, how we
identify them archaeologically given the
difficulties of determining the sex of bur-
ied, older individuals. The relative lack of
older women is difficult to explain either
as the result of the migration process or
of selective female infanticide; there are
a significant number of younger women
in the burial population (40% or so for
ages 18 to 45). Women therefore prob-
ably did migrate to Iceland in sizeable
numbers in the tenth century and then
die there but, using even the most up-
to-date techniques, it is difficult to iden-
tify their graves. The ratio of about 1.5:1
among younger age categories, however,
still appears to show a strong imbalance
between men and women but a number
of factors might explain this rather than
selective female infanticide. It could be
that older women were less often buried
with grave goods or with fewer of them,
as elsewhere in early medieval western
Europe (Halsall 1996) and thus their
graves have been found less often, or that
some older females have been identified
as male.
Archaeology-related arguments,
however, can suggest some reasons for
children’s under-representation among
the earliest, accompanied burials. The
poor survival of children’s bones in the
ground is still one very likely cause of
their absence, despite the evidence cited
above, and especially given that we are
dealing with the very oldest burials (Guy
et al 1997; Buckberry 2000; Gestsdóttir
1998b: 4). Another explanation might
be that the Icelandic burials that have
been discovered are not a typical cross
section; the large numbers of single, iso-
lated, adult burials which have been dis-
covered are of a type which have been
readily found by accident. It is possible
that isolated burial mounds were delib-
erately placed close to property bounda-
ries as a means of claiming ownership,
but equally such burials may just have
been the most visible ones in a cemetery
(Eldjárn 2000: 591; Friðriksson 2004).
Many burials, perhaps those less clearly
marked above ground and/or closer to
buildings, are likely to have either been
destroyed over the centuries and now are
no longer there to be found, or else have
yet to be discovered. Child burials are
more likely to be among this category if
the earlier, furnished burial tradition of
fifth- to seventh-century western Europe
can be used meaningfully for comparison
(Halsall 1995). In many parts of early
medieval western Europe, babies have
even been found buried inside or adja-
62