Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2010, Page 47

THREE DECADES IN THE COLD AND WET: A CAREER IN NORTHERN ARCHAEOLOGY
interactions, or “human ecodynamics”,
many of which contradict or modify the
picture we provided Jared Diamond
when he was doing his research for
Collapse nearly a decade ago. This earli-
er view saw humans in Iceland as
destructive agents of widespread envi-
ronmental change (especially deforesta-
tion and soil erosion), who introduced a
farming economy and an associated set of
cultural expectations formed in less vul-
nerable ecosystems in Norway or Britain
that had unexpectedly adverse impacts in
Iceland. Early Icelandic settlers were per-
ceived as poor resource managers who
regularly drew down the natural capital
of soils, vegetation, and wild animals
accumulated prior to human settlement
and thus left their descendants with an
impoverished landscape vulnerable to
subsequent climate change, volcanic
eruption, and early globalization impacts.
Multiple site excavations and geo-
archaeology trenches tied together with
the isochrones provided by volcanic
tephra (backed by a large series of AMS
radiocarbon and a growing number of
datable artifacts) built up over multiple
field seasons now provide some chal-
lenges to this view of human ecodynam-
ics in Iceland. In the Mývatn region the
early settlement period sites datable to ca.
875-940 analyzed to date do reflect what
we now recognize as a standard “Landnám
package" of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and
horses. Zooarchaeological analysis has
made plain that this package of animals
was altered a number of times, most
likely in response to both climatic
pressures but also to political and market
pressures. Archaeofuana from the
Thomas McGovern; photograph taken in
2010
Mývatn sites show that the initial
Landnám faunal profíle changed during
the llth century as pigs and goats
become increasingly rare, eventually
effectively disappearing from the
Icelandic archaeofaunal record by the
mid 12th century. The medieval Grágás
law code makes clear that pigs and goats
needed control precisely to manage
adverse environmental impacts (Dennis et
al. 2000) and that the zooarchaeological
shifts in species frequency are the result of
rational assessment of cost and benefíts
that were enforced on the community
scale. These changes in husbandry
strategies suggest that the Icelandic
farmers were not all conservative
'prisoners of culture' incapable of
responding to changing conditions around
them or that they were incapable of using
animals to create a landscape of their
liking. The goats and pigs (who are such
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