Chapter Two. Viking Age Economics And The Origins Of Commercial Cod Fisheries In The North Atlantic

Abstract

Th e origins of commercial fi shing: old problems and new insights Th is paper presents the results of sustained investigations in Iceland over the past two decades, which have produced large archaeofauna from both coastal and inland sites dating from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries. It seeks to place these collections in the wider context provided by new inter-regional syntheses and to present a series of analytical approaches to understanding patterning within fi sh-dominated archaeo-fauna. A multi-indicator approach is applied to the complex issues of distinguishing fi sh consumer and fi sh producer sites, and the still more complex problems of distinguishing probable subsistence production from possible market production on coastal sites. Nearly a decade of investigation of Viking-age inland sites around the highland lake Mývatn in northeastern Iceland has produced archaeo-fauna rich in domestic mammals and freshwater fi sh, but also containing signifi cant amounts of apparently preserved salt water fi sh.2 Work in the West Fjords of northwestern Iceland has produced fi sh-rich archaeofauna 1 We would like to thank the many scholars who have so kindly provided practical assistance, data, and sound advice in the fi eld and in the laboratory, both in the US and in Europe. We would also like to thank the many student assistants who contributed

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