James H Barrett
Biographic Data
| ID | 158917 |
|---|---|
| NAME | James H Barrett |
| GIVEN NAMES | James H |
| FAMILY NAME | Barrett |
| SIGNATURE | BARRETT J H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6683-9891 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 486 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Ötzi, 30 years on
When Ötzi, the Iceman, was found in a gully in the Tisenjoch pass in the Tyrolean Alps in 1991, he was a huge surprise for the archaeological community. The lead initial investigator of the find argued that it was unique, preserved by serendipitous circumstances. It was hypothesised that the mummy with associated artefacts had been quickly covered by glacier ice and stayed buried until the melt-out in 1991. It is now more than 30 years since Ötzi…
Ancient DNA sequence quality is independent of fish bone weight
The field of ancient DNA (aDNA) typically uses between 50 and 200 mg of minimum input weight of bone material for the extraction of DNA from archaeological remains. While laboratory and analysis techniques have focused on improved efficiency of extracting useable sequence data from older and poorer quality remains, bone material input requirements have rarely been critically evaluated. Here, we present the aDNA analysis of 121 size-constrained At…
On a Mountain High
Glacial archaeology is a developing field, brought on by climate change. High mountain ice is melting, which has led to the exposure of artifacts in North America, Mongolia, the Alps, and Scandinavia. The highest number of finds and sites in the world are reported from Innlandet County, Norway. We present our methods of finding and documenting glacial archaeological sites in Innlandet based on 15 years of experience. Sites are found using a combi…
The preservation of ancient DNA in archaeological fish bone
The field of ancient DNA is dominated by studies focusing on terrestrial vertebrates. This taxonomic bias limits our understanding of endogenous DNA preservation for species with different bone physiology, such as teleost fish. Teleost bone is typically brittle, porous, lightweight, and is characterized by a lack of bone remodeling during growth. All of these factors potentially affect DNA preservation. Using high-throughput shotgun sequencing, w…
Interpreting archaeological site-formation processes at a mountain ice patch
In the context of global warming, ice patches are increasingly important foci of high-elevation archaeology. Langfonne in Jotunheimen, central southern Norway, is uniquely suited to provide a window onto site formation processes and taphonomy in this novel archaeological setting. Here the site record from systematic survey includes the largest number of arrows, bones and antlers from a single ice patch worldwide. Combining data from these finds w…
Crossing the ice
Sexing Viking Age horses from burial and non-burial sites in Iceland using ancient DNA
Horses are the most common grave goods found in Icelandic Viking Age graves. Horse skeletons have previously been sexed based on pelvis shape and the presence of canine teeth in male horses over 4–5 years of age. Morphological data has shown that all horses from Icelandic burials that were amenable to sexing were male. Yet the use of morphological methods to determine sex is problematic since they rely on finding a well-preserved pelvis and/or ro…
Maritime Societies of the Viking and Medieval World
Cod and Herring in Medieval Poland
Cod and Herring
Finding Vikings with Isotope Analysis
Identifying people of exotic origins with isotopes depends upon finding isotopic attributes that are inconsistent with the indigenous population. This task is seldom straightforward and may vary with physical geography, through time, and with cultural practices. Isotopes and trace elements were measured in four Viking Age (8th to 10th centuries A.D.) skeletons from Dublin, Ireland, and three from Westness, Orkney. These were compared with other d…
Fish for the city
The growth of medieval cities in Northern Europe placed new demands on food supply, and led to the import of fish from increasingly distant fishing grounds. Quantitative analysis of cod remains from London provides revealing insight into the changing patterns of supply that can be related to known historical events and circumstances. In particular it identifies a marked increase in imported cod from the thirteenth century AD. That trend continued…
Interpreting the expansion of sea fishing in medieval Europe using stable isotope analysis of archaeological cod bones
Species specific marine radiocarbon reservoir effect
Excavation of medieval graves at St Thomas' Kirk, Hall of Rendall, Orkney
In early 2005 a particularly severe storm exposed human bones on the foreshore immediately east of the ruins of St Thomas' Kirk. The subsequent excavation recovered fourteen individual inhumations. The skeletons exhibited a relatively high number of pathological conditions and evidence of a diet that included fish, meat and dairy products. Isotopic analysis confirms that one of the individuals was from either the outer Hebrides or Northern Shetla…
New Excavations at the Brough of Deerness
The grass-covered top of the Brough of Deerness, a small sea stack in Orkney, Scotland, holds the remains of a substantial Viking Age settlement and associated chapel. The chapel was excavated by Christopher Morris in the 1970s and discovered to have two phases, one above and one below an Anglo-Saxon coin minted between 959 and 975. New excavations of two buildings from the surrounding settlement aim to illuminate the function of the site, and to…
What caused the Viking Age
This paper addresses the cause of the Viking episode in the approved Viking manner - head-on, reviewing and dismissing technical, environmental, demographic, economic, political and ideological prime movers. The author develops the theory that a bulge of young males in Scandinavia set out to get treasure to underpin their chances of marriage and a separate domicile
Marine resource intensification in Viking Age Europe
Detecting the medieval cod trade
Fur-bearing species and Scottish islands
Interpreting the Viking Age to Medieval period transition in Norse Orkney through cultural soil and sediment analyses
The transition from the Viking Age (ca. A.D. 800–1050) to the Medieval period (ca. A.D. 1050–1500) saw the development of widening trade activities that incorporated peripheral North Atlantic polities into mainstream Europe and contributed to the intensification of marineresource exploitation and agricultural production in these localities. As yet, there is only limited understanding of these intensification processes and their interrelationships…
Identity, Gender, Religion and Economy
Stable isotope measurements and radiocarbon dates on 54 burials from northern Scotland document trends in marine protein consumption from the late Iron Age to the end of the Middle Ages. They illuminate how local environmental and cultural contingencies interrelated with a pan-European trend towards more intensive fishing around the end of the first millennium AD. Little use was made of marine foods in late Iron Age Orkney despite its maritime se…
Dark Age Economics' revisited
When did the market economy come to Europe? Fish might seem an unlikely commodity to throw light on the matter, but the authors use fish bones from English sites to offer a vivid account of the rise and rise of the market as a factor in European development from the late tenth century
Contact, Continuity, and Collapse
Farmers, Monks and Aristocrats
The environmental archaeological evidence from the site of Flixborough (in particular the animal bone assemblage) provides a series of unique insights into Anglo-Saxon life in England during the 8th to 10th centuries. The research reveals detailed evidence for the local and regional environment, many aspects of the local and regional agricultural economy, changing resource exploitation strategies and the extent of possible trade and exchange netw…
Interpreting the expansion of sea fishing in medieval Europe using stable isotope analysis of archaeological cod bones
Identity, Gender, Religion and Economy
Stable isotope measurements and radiocarbon dates on 54 burials from northern Scotland document trends in marine protein consumption from the late Iron Age to the end of the Middle Ages. They illuminate how local environmental and cultural contingencies interrelated with a pan-European trend towards more intensive fishing around the end of the first millennium AD. Little use was made of marine foods in late Iron Age Orkney despite its maritime se…
Detecting the medieval cod trade
Archaeo-ichthyological Evidence for Long-term Socioeconomic Trends in Northern Scotland
What caused the Viking Age
This paper addresses the cause of the Viking episode in the approved Viking manner - head-on, reviewing and dismissing technical, environmental, demographic, economic, political and ideological prime movers. The author develops the theory that a bulge of young males in Scandinavia set out to get treasure to underpin their chances of marriage and a separate domicile
Marine resource intensification in Viking Age Europe
Dark Age Economics' revisited
When did the market economy come to Europe? Fish might seem an unlikely commodity to throw light on the matter, but the authors use fish bones from English sites to offer a vivid account of the rise and rise of the market as a factor in European development from the late tenth century
Fish for the city
The growth of medieval cities in Northern Europe placed new demands on food supply, and led to the import of fish from increasingly distant fishing grounds. Quantitative analysis of cod remains from London provides revealing insight into the changing patterns of supply that can be related to known historical events and circumstances. In particular it identifies a marked increase in imported cod from the thirteenth century AD. That trend continued…
Diet and ethnicity during the Viking colonization of northern Scotland
Diet and ethnicity are strongly related. Recent work on fish-bone ratios and stable carbon isotopes suggest that the Vikings increased the fish contribution to the diet of Orkney and Shetland by a greater investment in deep-sea fishing
Fish trade in Norse Orkney and Caithness
The trade of dried fish played an important role in the transformation from the Viking Age to the Middle Ages in Scandinavian polities such as Arctic Norway. This paper develops zooarchaeological methods to investigate whether similar processes occurred in the less well documented Norse colonies of northern Scotland - the joint earldoms of Orkney and Caithness
Species specific marine radiocarbon reservoir effect
What Was the Viking Age and When did it Happen? A View from Orkney
The Viking Age was an important watershed in European history, characterized by the centralization of authority, the adoption of Christian ideology, the growth of market trade, the intensification of production and the development of urbanism. Together, these phenomena mark the beginning of Scandinavian state formation. However, the dates at which each occurred - and the unequal rates at which different state attributes were adopted in 'cores' an…
Interpretation of Midden Formation Processes at Robert's Haven, Caithness, Scotland using Thin Section Micromorphology
Sexing Viking Age horses from burial and non-burial sites in Iceland using ancient DNA
Horses are the most common grave goods found in Icelandic Viking Age graves. Horse skeletons have previously been sexed based on pelvis shape and the presence of canine teeth in male horses over 4–5 years of age. Morphological data has shown that all horses from Icelandic burials that were amenable to sexing were male. Yet the use of morphological methods to determine sex is problematic since they rely on finding a well-preserved pelvis and/or ro…
Radiocarbon dating and marine reservoir correction of Viking Age Christian burials from Orkney
Finding Vikings with Isotope Analysis
Identifying people of exotic origins with isotopes depends upon finding isotopic attributes that are inconsistent with the indigenous population. This task is seldom straightforward and may vary with physical geography, through time, and with cultural practices. Isotopes and trace elements were measured in four Viking Age (8th to 10th centuries A.D.) skeletons from Dublin, Ireland, and three from Westness, Orkney. These were compared with other d…
Interpreting the Viking Age to Medieval period transition in Norse Orkney through cultural soil and sediment analyses
The transition from the Viking Age (ca. A.D. 800–1050) to the Medieval period (ca. A.D. 1050–1500) saw the development of widening trade activities that incorporated peripheral North Atlantic polities into mainstream Europe and contributed to the intensification of marineresource exploitation and agricultural production in these localities. As yet, there is only limited understanding of these intensification processes and their interrelationships…
The preservation of ancient DNA in archaeological fish bone
The field of ancient DNA is dominated by studies focusing on terrestrial vertebrates. This taxonomic bias limits our understanding of endogenous DNA preservation for species with different bone physiology, such as teleost fish. Teleost bone is typically brittle, porous, lightweight, and is characterized by a lack of bone remodeling during growth. All of these factors potentially affect DNA preservation. Using high-throughput shotgun sequencing, w…
Fur-bearing species and Scottish islands
The York System
This article presents the York System, a database used for recording animal bones. It is based on the recording protocol used at the Department of Archaeology, University of York, and incorporates that used at the former Environmental Archaeology Unit. The York System has been designed in Access 2000 and includes the commonly identified British mammal, bird, fish, reptile and amphibian species. Emphasis has been placed on database flexibility, wi…
Interpreting archaeological site-formation processes at a mountain ice patch
In the context of global warming, ice patches are increasingly important foci of high-elevation archaeology. Langfonne in Jotunheimen, central southern Norway, is uniquely suited to provide a window onto site formation processes and taphonomy in this novel archaeological setting. Here the site record from systematic survey includes the largest number of arrows, bones and antlers from a single ice patch worldwide. Combining data from these finds w…
New Excavations at the Brough of Deerness
The grass-covered top of the Brough of Deerness, a small sea stack in Orkney, Scotland, holds the remains of a substantial Viking Age settlement and associated chapel. The chapel was excavated by Christopher Morris in the 1970s and discovered to have two phases, one above and one below an Anglo-Saxon coin minted between 959 and 975. New excavations of two buildings from the surrounding settlement aim to illuminate the function of the site, and to…
Ötzi, 30 years on
When Ötzi, the Iceman, was found in a gully in the Tisenjoch pass in the Tyrolean Alps in 1991, he was a huge surprise for the archaeological community. The lead initial investigator of the find argued that it was unique, preserved by serendipitous circumstances. It was hypothesised that the mummy with associated artefacts had been quickly covered by glacier ice and stayed buried until the melt-out in 1991. It is now more than 30 years since Ötzi…
Ancient DNA sequence quality is independent of fish bone weight
The field of ancient DNA (aDNA) typically uses between 50 and 200 mg of minimum input weight of bone material for the extraction of DNA from archaeological remains. While laboratory and analysis techniques have focused on improved efficiency of extracting useable sequence data from older and poorer quality remains, bone material input requirements have rarely been critically evaluated. Here, we present the aDNA analysis of 121 size-constrained At…
Excavation of medieval graves at St Thomas' Kirk, Hall of Rendall, Orkney
In early 2005 a particularly severe storm exposed human bones on the foreshore immediately east of the ruins of St Thomas' Kirk. The subsequent excavation recovered fourteen individual inhumations. The skeletons exhibited a relatively high number of pathological conditions and evidence of a diet that included fish, meat and dairy products. Isotopic analysis confirms that one of the individuals was from either the outer Hebrides or Northern Shetla…
Bone weight, meat yield estimates and cod (Gadus morhua)
Past approaches to the Weight Method (use of the weight of excavated bone assemblages to evaluate the relative potential meat yield of the animals from which they came) are critically reviewed. They do not account for both inter-taxon and intra-taxon variability in the relationship between bone weight and total body or soft tissue weight. Critics of the Weight Method have assumed that these problems are insurmountable. It is argued here that they…
Interpretation of Midden Formation Processes at Robert's Haven, Caithness, Scotland using Thin Section Micromorphology
World Music, nation and postcolonialism
While there has been a degree of discussion about World Music by musicologists and sociologists, the subject has long remained under-theorized. Most cultural theorists have confined their music interests to the pop end of the spectrum, and, more specifically, most music writing about marginalized ethnic communities has been about African-Caribbean rap (see, for example, Baker, 1993; Gilroy, 1995; Lipsitz, 1994). World Music sits in an impossible,…
Fish trade in Norse Orkney and Caithness
The trade of dried fish played an important role in the transformation from the Viking Age to the Middle Ages in Scandinavian polities such as Arctic Norway. This paper develops zooarchaeological methods to investigate whether similar processes occurred in the less well documented Norse colonies of northern Scotland - the joint earldoms of Orkney and Caithness
Archaeo-ichthyological Evidence for Long-term Socioeconomic Trends in Northern Scotland
What Was the Viking Age and When did it Happen? A View from Orkney
The Viking Age was an important watershed in European history, characterized by the centralization of authority, the adoption of Christian ideology, the growth of market trade, the intensification of production and the development of urbanism. Together, these phenomena mark the beginning of Scandinavian state formation. However, the dates at which each occurred - and the unequal rates at which different state attributes were adopted in 'cores' an…
Radiocarbon dating and marine reservoir correction of Viking Age Christian burials from Orkney
Diet and ethnicity during the Viking colonization of northern Scotland
Diet and ethnicity are strongly related. Recent work on fish-bone ratios and stable carbon isotopes suggest that the Vikings increased the fish contribution to the diet of Orkney and Shetland by a greater investment in deep-sea fishing
Contact, Continuity, and Collapse
Contact, Continuity, and Collapse
The York System
This article presents the York System, a database used for recording animal bones. It is based on the recording protocol used at the Department of Archaeology, University of York, and incorporates that used at the former Environmental Archaeology Unit. The York System has been designed in Access 2000 and includes the commonly identified British mammal, bird, fish, reptile and amphibian species. Emphasis has been placed on database flexibility, wi…
Identity, Gender, Religion and Economy
Stable isotope measurements and radiocarbon dates on 54 burials from northern Scotland document trends in marine protein consumption from the late Iron Age to the end of the Middle Ages. They illuminate how local environmental and cultural contingencies interrelated with a pan-European trend towards more intensive fishing around the end of the first millennium AD. Little use was made of marine foods in late Iron Age Orkney despite its maritime se…
Dark Age Economics' revisited
When did the market economy come to Europe? Fish might seem an unlikely commodity to throw light on the matter, but the authors use fish bones from English sites to offer a vivid account of the rise and rise of the market as a factor in European development from the late tenth century
Interpreting the Viking Age to Medieval period transition in Norse Orkney through cultural soil and sediment analyses
The transition from the Viking Age (ca. A.D. 800–1050) to the Medieval period (ca. A.D. 1050–1500) saw the development of widening trade activities that incorporated peripheral North Atlantic polities into mainstream Europe and contributed to the intensification of marineresource exploitation and agricultural production in these localities. As yet, there is only limited understanding of these intensification processes and their interrelationships…
Fur-bearing species and Scottish islands
Marine resource intensification in Viking Age Europe
Detecting the medieval cod trade
What caused the Viking Age
This paper addresses the cause of the Viking episode in the approved Viking manner - head-on, reviewing and dismissing technical, environmental, demographic, economic, political and ideological prime movers. The author develops the theory that a bulge of young males in Scandinavia set out to get treasure to underpin their chances of marriage and a separate domicile
Excavation of medieval graves at St Thomas' Kirk, Hall of Rendall, Orkney
In early 2005 a particularly severe storm exposed human bones on the foreshore immediately east of the ruins of St Thomas' Kirk. The subsequent excavation recovered fourteen individual inhumations. The skeletons exhibited a relatively high number of pathological conditions and evidence of a diet that included fish, meat and dairy products. Isotopic analysis confirms that one of the individuals was from either the outer Hebrides or Northern Shetla…
New Excavations at the Brough of Deerness
The grass-covered top of the Brough of Deerness, a small sea stack in Orkney, Scotland, holds the remains of a substantial Viking Age settlement and associated chapel. The chapel was excavated by Christopher Morris in the 1970s and discovered to have two phases, one above and one below an Anglo-Saxon coin minted between 959 and 975. New excavations of two buildings from the surrounding settlement aim to illuminate the function of the site, and to…
Species specific marine radiocarbon reservoir effect
Interpreting the expansion of sea fishing in medieval Europe using stable isotope analysis of archaeological cod bones
Finding Vikings with Isotope Analysis
Identifying people of exotic origins with isotopes depends upon finding isotopic attributes that are inconsistent with the indigenous population. This task is seldom straightforward and may vary with physical geography, through time, and with cultural practices. Isotopes and trace elements were measured in four Viking Age (8th to 10th centuries A.D.) skeletons from Dublin, Ireland, and three from Westness, Orkney. These were compared with other d…
Fish for the city
The growth of medieval cities in Northern Europe placed new demands on food supply, and led to the import of fish from increasingly distant fishing grounds. Quantitative analysis of cod remains from London provides revealing insight into the changing patterns of supply that can be related to known historical events and circumstances. In particular it identifies a marked increase in imported cod from the thirteenth century AD. That trend continued…
Maritime Societies of the Viking and Medieval World
Archaeology (27 works) · Geography (25 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (21 works) · Biology (18 works) · History (15 works) · Fishery (14 works) · Fish (12 works) · Geology (11 works) · Ecology (8 works) · Isotope Analysis in Ecology (7 works)