Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2006, Page 91

The bishop’s beef. improved cattle at early modern Skálholt, Iceland
Skalholt Cattle MWS - Context 454
Mandible Wear State
Figure 4. Mandible wear states of cattle
at least some part of the 17th and/or 18th
centuries.
That these Skálholt cattle were
being raised for dedicated mature beef
production is exceptional in the Scandi-
navian North Atlantic during any period.
A dairy economy is in pure economic
terms the most cost effective way to raise
cattle. A beef economy costs far more in
terms of time and fodder. For each ani-
mal, a farmer achieves only a one-time
return for all their effort as opposed to the
steady return of a dairy cow once it has
reached a productive age. The presence of
beef on the Bishop’s table is not in itself
surprising. Skálholt was one of the high-
est status sites in Iceland. European upper
classes (by modern standards) ate large
amounts of meat, with beef a significant
portion of this consumption, throughout
the medieval period and into the early
modern period (Elias, 1994, 96).
There are other examples of prime
beef cattle appearing in Icelandic zooar-
chaeological assemblages, but on a much
smaller scale such as at the early medieval
farm of Hofstaðir (McGovern, 1999) and
at the high medieval trading site of Gásir
(Harrison, 2005). There is also at least
one 18th century documentary mention
of steers in Iceland, so Skálholt is likely
not be the only place engaging in a prime
beef economy (Vésteinsson, personal
communication). Yet relative to current
zooarchaeological knowledge in Iceland
this beef economy looks to have worked
on a much larger scale than anything seen
previously. What makes these cattle more
exceptional is that all of the cattle crania
(ten skull elements in which the horn core
area was intact) recovered from context
454 are polled (without horns). Eight of
these crania were naturally polled (Fig.
6), and two were artificially polled. In
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