Thomas H Mcgovern
Biographic Data
| ID | 627605 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas H Mcgovern |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas H |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcgovern |
| SIGNATURE | MCGOVERN T H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hunter College |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 586 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 16 |
Past Answers to Present Concerns. The Relevance of the Premodern Past for 21st Century Policy Planners: Comments on the State of the Field
How is history relevant to the present, or indeed the future? Governments around the world have used history to inform planning and decision‐making in various fields for years, but more recently it has taken on a renewed importance as governments grapple with increasingly complex challenges arising from the impacts of climatic change. Yet identifying “lessons from the past” is not straightforward. Especially in the case of big questions about his…
Community and Conservation: Documenting Millennial Scale Sustainable Resource Use at Lake Mývatn, Iceland
n recent decades, sustainability research and historical ecology research have made the incorporation of local and traditional ecological knowledge (LTK) a priority for the purpose of understanding recent environmental change and achieving long-term perspectives on local resource interactions. This chapter brings together the evidence from archaeological, ecological, historical, and ethnographic sources to document the 1,100 year management of wi…
Global Perspectives on Long Term Community Resource Management
Burning Libraries: A Community Response
The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen a growing recognition that widespread impacts of climate change (erosion, sea level rise, wildfires, warming soil temperatures) are rapidly destroying archaeological sites and permanently wiping out millennia of cultural heritage and important scientific data on a global scale. This paper provides a brief overview of the efforts of the international archaeological community and its allies to o…
The Wide Lens in Archaeology
This book honors the memory of Brian Hesse, a scholar of Near Eastern archaeology, a writer of alliterative and punned publication titles, and an accomplished amateur photographer. Hesse specialized in zooarchaeology, but he influenced a wider range of excavators and ancient historians with his broad interpretive reach. He spent much of his career analyzing faunal materials from different countries in the Middle East-including Iran, Yemen, and Is…
Flair of the Dog The Philistine Consumption of Canines
This book honors the memory of Brian Hesse, a scholar of Near Eastern archaeology, a writer of alliterative and punned publication titles, and an accomplished amateur photographer. Hesse specialized in zooarchaeology, but he influenced a wider range of excavators and ancient historians with his broad interpretive reach. He spent much of his career analyzing faunal materials from different countries in the Middle East-including Iran, Yemen, and Is…
Climate challenges, vulnerabilities, and food security
Significance Climate-induced disasters are impacting human well-being in ever-increasing ways. Disaster research and management recognize and emphasize the need to reduce vulnerabilities, although extant policy is not in line with this realization. This paper assesses the extent to which vulnerability to food shortage, as a result of social, demographic, and resource conditions at times of climatic challenge, correlates with subsequent declines i…
Deciphering diet and monitoring movement: Multiple stable isotope analysis of the viking age settlement at H ofstaðir, L ake M ývatn, I celand
OBJECTIVES: A previous multi-isotope study of archaeological faunal samples from Skútustaðir, an early Viking age settlement on the southern shores of Lake Mývatn in north-east Iceland, demonstrated that there are clear differences in δ(34)S stable isotope values between animals deriving their dietary protein from terrestrial, freshwater, and marine reservoirs. The aim of this study was to use this information to more accurately determine the die…
Islands of change vs. islands of disaster: Managing pigs and birds in the Anthropocene of the North Atlantic
The offshore islands of the North Atlantic were among some of the last settled places on earth, with humans reaching the Faroes and Iceland in the late Iron Age and Viking period. While older accounts emphasizing deforestation and soil erosion have presented this story of island colonization as yet another social–ecological disaster, recent archaeological and paleoenvironmental research combined with environmental history, environmental humanitie…
Was it for walrus? Viking Age settlement and medieval walrus ivory trade in Iceland and Greenland
Walrus-tusk ivory and walrus-hide rope were highly desired goods in Viking Age north-west Europe. New finds of walrus bone and ivory in early Viking Age contexts in Iceland are concentrated in the south-west, and suggest extensive exploitation of nearby walrus for meat, hide and ivory during the first century of settlement. In Greenland, archaeofauna suggest a very different specialized long-distance hunting of the much larger walrus populations …
Utilization of δ13C, δ15N, and δ34S Analyses to Understand 14C Dating Anomalies within a Late Viking Age Community in Northeast Iceland
Previous stable isotope studies of modern and archaeological faunal samples from sites around Lake Mývatn, within the Mývatnssveit region of northeast Iceland, revealed that an overlap existed between the δ 15 N ranges of terrestrial herbivores and freshwater fish, while freshwater biota displayed δ 13 C values that were comparable with marine resources. Therefore, within this specific ecosystem, the separation of terrestrial herbivores, freshwat…
Utilization of δ 13 C, δ 15 N, and δ 34 S Analyses to Understand 14 C Dating Anomalies within a Late Viking Age Community in Northeast Iceland
Previous stable isotope studies of modern and archaeological faunal samples from sites around Lake Mývatn, within the Mývatnssveit region of northeast Iceland, revealed that an overlap existed between the δ 15 N ranges of terrestrial herbivores and freshwater fish, while freshwater biota displayed δ 13 C values that were comparable with marine resources. Therefore, within this specific ecosystem, the separation of terrestrial herbivores, freshwat…
Stable Isotopic (δ13C and δ15N) Characterization of Key Faunal Resources from Norse Period Settlements in North Iceland
During the Viking Age, Norse peoples established settlements across the North Atlantic, colonizing the pristine and near-pristine landscapes of the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, and the short-lived Vinland settlement in Newfoundland. Current North Atlantic archaeological research themes include efforts to understand human adaptation and impact in these environments. For example, early Icelandic settlements persisted despite substantial envir…
In the Footsteps of Vebæk Vatnahverfi Studies 2005-2011
Cultural adaptation, compounding vulnerabilities and conjunctures in Norse Greenland
Norse Greenland has been seen as a classic case of maladaptation by an inflexible temperate zone society extending into the arctic and collapse driven by climate change. This paper, however, recognizes the successful arctic adaptation achieved in Norse Greenland and argues that, although climate change had impacts, the end of Norse settlement can only be truly understood as a complex socioenvironmental system that includes local and interregional…
Reply to Comments from James H. Barrett, Kevin J. Edwards, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir and Przemysław Urbańczyk
Radiocarbon reservoir effects in human bone collagen from northern Iceland
The Peopling of Iceland
In recent years intensive archaeological research on the Viking Age in Iceland has produced much new evidence supporting a late 9th century colonization of the country. It can now be stated not only that people had arrived in Iceland before AD 870 but also that comprehensive occupation only took place after that date. The increased temporal resolution of the new archaeological data not only allows the characterization of different phases of the c…
An Icelandic freshwater radiocarbon reservoir effect: Implications for lacustrine 14 C chronologies
A freshwater radiocarbon ( 14 C) reservoir effect (FRE) is a 14 C age offset between the atmospheric and freshwater carbon reservoirs. FREs can be on the order of 10 000 14 C yr in extreme examples and are a crucial consideration for 14 C dating of palaeoenvironmental and archaeological samples. Correction for a FRE may be possible, provided the FRE and the proportion of FRE-affected carbon within a sample can be accurately quantified. However, a…
Seals and Sea Ice in Medieval Greenland
Multidisciplinary approaches are used to examine possible changes in North Atlantic sea-ice cover, in the context of seal hunting, during the period of the Norse occupation of Greenland (ca. 985–1500). Information from Iceland is also used in order to amplify and illuminate the situation in Greenland. Data are drawn mainly from zooarchaeological analyses, but written records of climate and sea-ice variations, as well as paleoclimatic data sets ar…
The Archaeology of Global Change: The Impact of Humans on Their Environment edited by Charles L. Redman, Steven R. James, Paul R. Fish, and J. Daniel Rogers
World of the Vikings. Richard Hall
Cod Fish, Walrus, and Chieftains: Economic intensification in the Norse North Atlantic
Reservoirs and Radiocarbon: 14 C Dating Problems in Mývatnssveit, Northern Iceland
This paper examines 2 potential sources of the radiocarbon offset between human and terrestrial mammal (horse) bones recovered from Norse (∼AD 870–1000) pagan graves in Mývatnssveit, north Iceland. These are the marine and freshwater 14 C reservoir effects that may be incorporated into human bones from dietary sources. The size of the marine 14 C reservoir effect (MRE) during the Norse period was investigated by measurement of multiple paired sam…
Bloody slaughter: Ritual decapitation and display at the Viking settlement of Hofstaðir, Iceland
This article attempts an interpretation of an unusual assemblage of cattle skulls recovered from recent excavations at the Viking Age monumental hall of Hofstaðir in Iceland. Osteological analysis of the skulls indicates ritual decapitation and display of cattle heads, and this article seeks to explore the meanings of this practice in relation to the context of the site and the wider historical and ethnographic literature. It is argued that the b…
Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland: Historical Ecology of Human Impact and Climate Fluctuation on the Millennial Scale
Early settlement in the North Atlantic produced complex interactions of culture and nature. The sustained program of interdisciplinary collaboration is intended to focus on ninth- to 13th-century sites and landscapes in the highland interior lake basin of Mývatn in Iceland and to contribute a long-term perspective to larger issues of sustainable resource use, soil erosion, and the historical ecology of global change
Was it for walrus? Viking Age settlement and medieval walrus ivory trade in Iceland and Greenland
Walrus-tusk ivory and walrus-hide rope were highly desired goods in Viking Age north-west Europe. New finds of walrus bone and ivory in early Viking Age contexts in Iceland are concentrated in the south-west, and suggest extensive exploitation of nearby walrus for meat, hide and ivory during the first century of settlement. In Greenland, archaeofauna suggest a very different specialized long-distance hunting of the much larger walrus populations …
Raiding the Landscape: Human Impact in the Scandinavian North Atlantic
Interdisciplinary investigations of the end of the Norse Western Settlement in Greenland
The loss of the Norse Western Settlement in Greenland around the mid-fourteenth century has long been taken as a prime example of the impact of changing climate on human populations. This study employs an interdisciplinary approach combining historical documents, detailed archaeological investigations, and a high-resolution proxy climate record from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) to investigate possible causes for the end of this settl…
Bloody slaughter: Ritual decapitation and display at the Viking settlement of Hofstaðir, Iceland
This article attempts an interpretation of an unusual assemblage of cattle skulls recovered from recent excavations at the Viking Age monumental hall of Hofstaðir in Iceland. Osteological analysis of the skulls indicates ritual decapitation and display of cattle heads, and this article seeks to explore the meanings of this practice in relation to the context of the site and the wider historical and ethnographic literature. It is argued that the b…
Fuel resource utilisation in landscapes of settlement
The Role of Climate in Settlement and Landscape Change in the North Atlantic Islands: An Assessment of Cumulative Deviations in High-Resolution Proxy Climate Records
In order to assess possible contributions of climate change to the human ecology of the Faroe Islands, proxy climate data from the Greenland Icesheet Project 2 (GISP2) are evaluated in relation to settlement and landscape \nchanges in the Faroes and other North Atlantic islands. Our aim is to identify \ntimes of unpredictable change in the context of cultural and environmental \n'memories'. A pan-Atlantic perspective is used to assess the utility…
Radiocarbon reservoir effects in human bone collagen from northern Iceland
Reservoirs and Radiocarbon: 14 C Dating Problems in Mývatnssveit, Northern Iceland
This paper examines 2 potential sources of the radiocarbon offset between human and terrestrial mammal (horse) bones recovered from Norse (∼AD 870–1000) pagan graves in Mývatnssveit, north Iceland. These are the marine and freshwater 14 C reservoir effects that may be incorporated into human bones from dietary sources. The size of the marine 14 C reservoir effect (MRE) during the Norse period was investigated by measurement of multiple paired sam…
The Norse landnám on the North Atlantic islands: An environmental impact assessment
The Norse colonisation or landnám of the North Atlantic islands of the Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland from the ninth century AD onwards provides opportunities to examine human environmental impacts on ‘pristine’ landscapes on an environmental gradient from warmer, more maritime conditions in the east to colder, more continental conditions in the west. This paper considers key environmental contrasts across the Atlantic and initial settlement impa…
Regional zooarchaeology and global change: Problems and potentials
Zooarchaeology is a potentially critical tool for the reconstruction of past regional landscapes. The sub‐field is increasingly being asked to contribute to long‐term studies of human interaction with the environment associated with national and international investigations of past and future global change. Inter‐site comparison of animal bone collections (archaeofaunas) is central to such regional approaches. However, zooarchaeologists have iden…
The Peopling of Iceland
In recent years intensive archaeological research on the Viking Age in Iceland has produced much new evidence supporting a late 9th century colonization of the country. It can now be stated not only that people had arrived in Iceland before AD 870 but also that comprehensive occupation only took place after that date. The increased temporal resolution of the new archaeological data not only allows the characterization of different phases of the c…
An Icelandic freshwater radiocarbon reservoir effect: Implications for lacustrine 14 C chronologies
A freshwater radiocarbon ( 14 C) reservoir effect (FRE) is a 14 C age offset between the atmospheric and freshwater carbon reservoirs. FREs can be on the order of 10 000 14 C yr in extreme examples and are a crucial consideration for 14 C dating of palaeoenvironmental and archaeological samples. Correction for a FRE may be possible, provided the FRE and the proportion of FRE-affected carbon within a sample can be accurately quantified. However, a…
Norse Greenland Settlement: Reflections on Climate Change, Trade, and the Contrasting Fates of Human Settlements in the North Atlantic Islands
Changing economies and patterns of trade, rather than climatic deterioration, could have critically marginalized the Norse Greenland settlements and effectively sealed their fate. Counter-intuitively, the end of Norse Greenland might not be symptomatic of a failure to adapt to environmental change, but a consequence of successful wider economic developments of Norse communities across North Atlantic. Data from Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and me…
Coastal connections, local fishing, and sustainable egg harvesting: Patterns of Viking Age inland wild resource use in Mývatn district, Northern Iceland
The 'Landscapes of Settlement Project' has carried out archaeological and paleoenvironmental research in the Lake Mývatn region of N. Iceland since 1996. Animal bone collections dating from the late 9th century to the early 13th century AD have been recovered from five sites in different ecological zones around the lake, and three of these sites provide multiple phases datable through radiocarbon, artefacts, and volcanic tephra. Modern systematic…
Variability in North Atlantic marine radiocarbon reservoir effects at c. AD 1000
14 C age measurements made on samples from three archaeological sites located on North Atlantic coasts were used to investigate the marine reservoir effect (MRE) at c.AD 1000. This is an important period within human cultural and palaeoenvironmental research as it is a time when Norse expansion to the North Atlantic islands occurred, during what appears to be a period of ameliorating climatic conditions. This makes improved chronological precisio…
Puffins, Pigs, Cod and Barley: Palaeoeconomy at Undir Junkarinsfløtti, Sandoy, Faroe Islands
This paper reports on the zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical remains from the initial season of excavations at the Norse period site at Undir Junkarinsfløtti in the Faroe islands. These remains represent the first zooarchaeological analysis undertaken for the Faroes and only the third archaeobotanical assemblage published from the islands. The excavated deposits are described and the key findings from the palaeoenvironmental remains highlight…
The Archeology of the Norse North Atlantic
Infrastructures are material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are the physical networks through which goods, ideas, waste, power, people, and finance are trafficked. In this article I trace the range of anthropological ...Read More
Islands of change vs. islands of disaster: Managing pigs and birds in the Anthropocene of the North Atlantic
The offshore islands of the North Atlantic were among some of the last settled places on earth, with humans reaching the Faroes and Iceland in the late Iron Age and Viking period. While older accounts emphasizing deforestation and soil erosion have presented this story of island colonization as yet another social–ecological disaster, recent archaeological and paleoenvironmental research combined with environmental history, environmental humanitie…
Abandoned Farms, Volcanic Impacts, and Woodland Management: "Revisiting Þjórsárdalur, the "Pompeii Of Iceland
Geomorphological maps and nine soil profiles containing 92 tephra layers have been examined to explore the nature of medieval environmental change in Þjórsárdalur, Iceland, where farms are thought to have been abandoned after the massive tephra fall from the eruption of Hekla in 1104 A.D. This paper presents evidence for continued human activity in the area in the two centuries following the 1104 A.D. eruption, indicating that continued utilizati…
Bioarchaeological and climatological evidence for the fate of Norse farmers in medieval Greenland
Greenland, far north land of the Atlantic, has often been beyond the limit of European farming settlement. One of its Norse settlements, colonized just before AD 1000, is - astonishingly - not even at the southern tip, but a way up the west coast, the 'Western Settlement'. Environmental studies show why its occupation came to an end within five centuries, leaving Greenland once more a place of Arctic-adapted hunters
Utilization of δ 13 C, δ 15 N, and δ 34 S Analyses to Understand 14 C Dating Anomalies within a Late Viking Age Community in Northeast Iceland
Previous stable isotope studies of modern and archaeological faunal samples from sites around Lake Mývatn, within the Mývatnssveit region of northeast Iceland, revealed that an overlap existed between the δ 15 N ranges of terrestrial herbivores and freshwater fish, while freshwater biota displayed δ 13 C values that were comparable with marine resources. Therefore, within this specific ecosystem, the separation of terrestrial herbivores, freshwat…
Deciphering diet and monitoring movement: Multiple stable isotope analysis of the viking age settlement at H ofstaðir, L ake M ývatn, I celand
OBJECTIVES: A previous multi-isotope study of archaeological faunal samples from Skútustaðir, an early Viking age settlement on the southern shores of Lake Mývatn in north-east Iceland, demonstrated that there are clear differences in δ(34)S stable isotope values between animals deriving their dietary protein from terrestrial, freshwater, and marine reservoirs. The aim of this study was to use this information to more accurately determine the die…
Seals and Sea Ice in Medieval Greenland
Multidisciplinary approaches are used to examine possible changes in North Atlantic sea-ice cover, in the context of seal hunting, during the period of the Norse occupation of Greenland (ca. 985–1500). Information from Iceland is also used in order to amplify and illuminate the situation in Greenland. Data are drawn mainly from zooarchaeological analyses, but written records of climate and sea-ice variations, as well as paleoclimatic data sets ar…
Fishing Booths and Fishing Strategies in Medieval Iceland: An Archaeofauna from the of Akurvík, North-West Iceland
Excavations in 1990 in North-West Iceland documented a stratified series of small turf structures and associated midden deposits at the eroding beach at Akurvík which date from the 11th–13th to the 15th–16th centuries AD. The site reflects a long series of small discontinuous occupations, probably associated with seasonal fishing. The shell sand matrix had allowed excellent organic preservation and an archaeofauna of over 100, 000 identifiable fr…
Cows, harp seals, and churchbells: Adaptation and extinction in Norse Greenland
The archaeozoology of the Norse Site Ø 17a Narssaq district, Southwest Greenland
Archaeological excavations in 1954, 1958, and 1962 directed by Dr. C.L. Vebaek of The Danish National Museum at the Norse site 0 17a in the modern Greenlandic town of Narssaq revealed a farmstead apparently occupied from the 11th century into the later phases of the Eastern Settlement. The excavations recovered a quantifiable amount of animal bone from well‐defined strata within and immediately around the main structure. These collections were an…
The Vikings and America, by Erik Wahlgren and Response from the author
Northern Islands, human error, and environmental degradation: A view of social and ecological change in the Medieval North Atlantic
The Archeology of the Norse North Atlantic
Infrastructures are material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are the physical networks through which goods, ideas, waste, power, people, and finance are trafficked. In this article I trace the range of anthropological ...Read More
Regional zooarchaeology and global change: Problems and potentials
Zooarchaeology is a potentially critical tool for the reconstruction of past regional landscapes. The sub‐field is increasingly being asked to contribute to long‐term studies of human interaction with the environment associated with national and international investigations of past and future global change. Inter‐site comparison of animal bone collections (archaeofaunas) is central to such regional approaches. However, zooarchaeologists have iden…
Bioarchaeological and climatological evidence for the fate of Norse farmers in medieval Greenland
Greenland, far north land of the Atlantic, has often been beyond the limit of European farming settlement. One of its Norse settlements, colonized just before AD 1000, is - astonishingly - not even at the southern tip, but a way up the west coast, the 'Western Settlement'. Environmental studies show why its occupation came to an end within five centuries, leaving Greenland once more a place of Arctic-adapted hunters
Interdisciplinary investigations of the end of the Norse Western Settlement in Greenland
The loss of the Norse Western Settlement in Greenland around the mid-fourteenth century has long been taken as a prime example of the impact of changing climate on human populations. This study employs an interdisciplinary approach combining historical documents, detailed archaeological investigations, and a high-resolution proxy climate record from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) to investigate possible causes for the end of this settl…
Raiding the Landscape: Human Impact in the Scandinavian North Atlantic
Landscapes of Power, Landscapes of Conflict: State Formation in the South Scandinavian Iron Age
Landscapes of Power, Landscapes of Conflict: State Formation in the South Scandinavian Iron Age. Tina L. Thurston. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2001. 340 pp
Fuel resource utilisation in landscapes of settlement
Fishing Booths and Fishing Strategies in Medieval Iceland: An Archaeofauna from the of Akurvík, North-West Iceland
Excavations in 1990 in North-West Iceland documented a stratified series of small turf structures and associated midden deposits at the eroding beach at Akurvík which date from the 11th–13th to the 15th–16th centuries AD. The site reflects a long series of small discontinuous occupations, probably associated with seasonal fishing. The shell sand matrix had allowed excellent organic preservation and an archaeofauna of over 100, 000 identifiable fr…
Puffins, Pigs, Cod and Barley: Palaeoeconomy at Undir Junkarinsfløtti, Sandoy, Faroe Islands
This paper reports on the zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical remains from the initial season of excavations at the Norse period site at Undir Junkarinsfløtti in the Faroe islands. These remains represent the first zooarchaeological analysis undertaken for the Faroes and only the third archaeobotanical assemblage published from the islands. The excavated deposits are described and the key findings from the palaeoenvironmental remains highlight…
The Norse landnám on the North Atlantic islands: An environmental impact assessment
The Norse colonisation or landnám of the North Atlantic islands of the Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland from the ninth century AD onwards provides opportunities to examine human environmental impacts on ‘pristine’ landscapes on an environmental gradient from warmer, more maritime conditions in the east to colder, more continental conditions in the west. This paper considers key environmental contrasts across the Atlantic and initial settlement impa…
Coastal connections, local fishing, and sustainable egg harvesting: Patterns of Viking Age inland wild resource use in Mývatn district, Northern Iceland
The 'Landscapes of Settlement Project' has carried out archaeological and paleoenvironmental research in the Lake Mývatn region of N. Iceland since 1996. Animal bone collections dating from the late 9th century to the early 13th century AD have been recovered from five sites in different ecological zones around the lake, and three of these sites provide multiple phases datable through radiocarbon, artefacts, and volcanic tephra. Modern systematic…
Variability in North Atlantic marine radiocarbon reservoir effects at c. AD 1000
14 C age measurements made on samples from three archaeological sites located on North Atlantic coasts were used to investigate the marine reservoir effect (MRE) at c.AD 1000. This is an important period within human cultural and palaeoenvironmental research as it is a time when Norse expansion to the North Atlantic islands occurred, during what appears to be a period of ameliorating climatic conditions. This makes improved chronological precisio…
Medieval Archaeology: Understanding Traditions and Contemporary Approaches
Medieval Archaeology: Understanding Traditions and Contemporary Approaches. Christopher Gerrard. New York: Routledge, 2003. 302 pp
Cod Fish, Walrus, and Chieftains: Economic intensification in the Norse North Atlantic
Reservoirs and Radiocarbon: 14 C Dating Problems in Mývatnssveit, Northern Iceland
This paper examines 2 potential sources of the radiocarbon offset between human and terrestrial mammal (horse) bones recovered from Norse (∼AD 870–1000) pagan graves in Mývatnssveit, north Iceland. These are the marine and freshwater 14 C reservoir effects that may be incorporated into human bones from dietary sources. The size of the marine 14 C reservoir effect (MRE) during the Norse period was investigated by measurement of multiple paired sam…
Bloody slaughter: Ritual decapitation and display at the Viking settlement of Hofstaðir, Iceland
This article attempts an interpretation of an unusual assemblage of cattle skulls recovered from recent excavations at the Viking Age monumental hall of Hofstaðir in Iceland. Osteological analysis of the skulls indicates ritual decapitation and display of cattle heads, and this article seeks to explore the meanings of this practice in relation to the context of the site and the wider historical and ethnographic literature. It is argued that the b…
Abandoned Farms, Volcanic Impacts, and Woodland Management: "Revisiting Þjórsárdalur, the "Pompeii Of Iceland
Geomorphological maps and nine soil profiles containing 92 tephra layers have been examined to explore the nature of medieval environmental change in Þjórsárdalur, Iceland, where farms are thought to have been abandoned after the massive tephra fall from the eruption of Hekla in 1104 A.D. This paper presents evidence for continued human activity in the area in the two centuries following the 1104 A.D. eruption, indicating that continued utilizati…
Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland: Historical Ecology of Human Impact and Climate Fluctuation on the Millennial Scale
Early settlement in the North Atlantic produced complex interactions of culture and nature. The sustained program of interdisciplinary collaboration is intended to focus on ninth- to 13th-century sites and landscapes in the highland interior lake basin of Mývatn in Iceland and to contribute a long-term perspective to larger issues of sustainable resource use, soil erosion, and the historical ecology of global change
Norse Greenland Settlement: Reflections on Climate Change, Trade, and the Contrasting Fates of Human Settlements in the North Atlantic Islands
Changing economies and patterns of trade, rather than climatic deterioration, could have critically marginalized the Norse Greenland settlements and effectively sealed their fate. Counter-intuitively, the end of Norse Greenland might not be symptomatic of a failure to adapt to environmental change, but a consequence of successful wider economic developments of Norse communities across North Atlantic. Data from Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and me…
The Role of Climate in Settlement and Landscape Change in the North Atlantic Islands: An Assessment of Cumulative Deviations in High-Resolution Proxy Climate Records
In order to assess possible contributions of climate change to the human ecology of the Faroe Islands, proxy climate data from the Greenland Icesheet Project 2 (GISP2) are evaluated in relation to settlement and landscape \nchanges in the Faroes and other North Atlantic islands. Our aim is to identify \ntimes of unpredictable change in the context of cultural and environmental \n'memories'. A pan-Atlantic perspective is used to assess the utility…
The Archaeology of Global Change: The Impact of Humans on Their Environment edited by Charles L. Redman, Steven R. James, Paul R. Fish, and J. Daniel Rogers
Geography (34 works) · Archaeology (30 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (29 works) · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research (19 works) · Ecology (17 works) · Biology (16 works) · History (16 works) · Geology (14 works) · Climate change (11 works) · Oceanography (11 works)