A ‘North Atlantic island signature’ of timber exploitation: Evidence from wooden artefact assemblages from Viking Age and Medieval Iceland

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.05.021Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Wood is vital for fuel and construction even in regions with limited wood resources.

  • Wood remains in such regions can be categorised through taxonomic identification.

  • Exotic woods were essential for construction in the North Atlantic islands.

  • Icelandic wooden artefacts show an ‘island signature’ of driftwood exploitation.

  • Limitations in this method may be addressed by chemical analyses in future studies.

Abstract

Throughout history, wood has been of key importance to many human communities both as a source of fuel and as material for construction. This applies not only in areas with plentiful woodlands or forests, but also in more marginal island environments where limited native wood resources are available. In such environments, the use of ‘exotic’ timber such as driftwood or imported wood plays a key role in resource provision. The exploration of patterns of use of both native and ‘exotic’ woods in wood-poor environments has great potential to contribute to discussions of resource management and control and human response to landscape change. Using Iceland as a case study, this paper compares wood anatomical analyses of artefact assemblages from across Europe to determine the likely origin of wood (native, imported, drifted) from archaeological sites in the North Atlantic islands, and demonstrates the emergence of an ‘island signature’ in wood utilisation patterns in this region. The paper also highlights the potential pitfalls of the categorisation of wood remains through taxonomic determination, and examines how these obstacles might be overcome in future research.

Introduction

Wood has been of vital importance to human communities throughout history. As well as being used as fuel for heat, light, cooking, and industry, it is also a key raw material for the construction of buildings, modes of transportation such as boats, carts, and sleds, and the production of objects, from items of furniture to storage vessels and household utensils. Decorative carving of wood is also frequently employed to create objects of art and of ritual or symbolic significance. For most groups reliant on wood, their needs are met by local forests, however in areas where local wood resources are scarce, these requirements are filled or supplemented by other means, such as the importation of timber or the use of driftwood. In such regions, understanding the use of these non-native wood resources is an integral part of comprehending subsistence strategies, lifeways and world-views. However, the certain identification of these woods can prove challenging. This paper synthesises analyses of uncarbonised archaeological wood remains from the North Atlantic region to demonstrate how the taxonomic identification of archaeological wood remains can be used to categorise the raw materials utilised for wooden artefact production into native, drift, and imported or traded wood. To some extent, this method is applied to both charred and uncarbonised wood assemblages by archaeologists investigating wood utilisation patterns throughout the world (e.g. Tengberg, 2002, Asouti, 2003, Gale, 1994, Caruso Fermé et al., 2015), however it is at its most informative in wood-poor environments. Archaeological studies of wood use among past native populations are well known from tundra environments in North America, in Alaska (e.g. Lepofsky et al., 2003, Alix and Brewster, 2004, Alix, 2012, Shaw, 2012) and the Canadian Arctic (e.g. Dyke and Savelle, 2000, Alix, 2009a, Alix, 2009b, Steelandt, 2014). Timber procurement strategies in the North Atlantic islands have also been investigated by various scholars (e.g. Lawson et al., 2009a, Zutter, 2000, Owen, 1993, Malmros, 1994, Stummann Hansen, 1991, Kristjánsdóttir et al., 2001, Guðmundsdóttir, 2013, Mehler and Eggertsson, 2006, Mooney, 2014, Mooney, 2016), however these studies have in general focused on the economies of individual sites. This paper incorporates the findings of individual studies of assemblages of uncarbonised wooden artefacts from Iceland (Mehler and Eggertsson, 2006, Guðmundsdóttir, 2013, Mooney, 2014, Mooney, 2016) into a discussion of broader regional trends in wood utilisation across the North Atlantic, set against a backdrop of increasing landscape degradation and declining availability of native timber.

Section snippets

The relevance of categorising wood resources into native, imported and drifted wood

While this study focuses on material from Iceland, similar methodologies could easily be applied to Greenland and the Faroe Islands, as well as Shetland, the Orkney Islands and the Hebrides (Fig.1). On all of these islands or island groups, various factors including high latitude and geographical isolation mean that only a limited number of tree species are present, and their harsh climate often leads to small, low and twisted growth forms ill-suited to construction purposes. In many cases,

Perceptions of wood use in Iceland

Over the past 20 years or so, archaeology in Iceland has expanded substantially, and has been the focus of many international projects investigating human-environment interactions (e.g. Dugmore et al., 2014, Harrison, 2014, McGovern et al., 2007). Since the colonisation of Iceland by Norse settlers in the late ninth century AD, the Icelandic landscape has seen huge changes, most notably the decline of native woodlands and rapid soil erosion, and much palaeoenvironmental research has focused on

Limitations and future directions

This paper has demonstrated that it is possible to make reasonable assumptions regarding the utilisation of drift or imported wood resources based on careful analysis of the native tree flora of an island environment, the presence and likely provenance of driftwood, and the likelihood of timber importation to the area in question. However, as has been mentioned above, this method of categorisation is limited by several factors. The first is the fact that the assemblages used as comparison here

Conclusions

This paper has shown how taxonomic identification of archaeological wood remains in wood-poor regions such as the North Atlantic islands can allow for effective categorisation into groups deriving from native wood, imported wood and driftwood. This allows archaeologists to differentiate the raw materials used in construction and artefact production, contributing to discussions of resource choice, management and utilisation, and responses to changes in native wood availability. In Iceland and

Acknowledgements

The research presented in this paper was conducted under a College of Physical Sciences PhD Studentship at the University of Aberdeen, and a Postdoctoral Research Grant from the Centenary Fund of the University of Iceland (Department of Humanities). The author is particularly grateful for the guidance of Dr. Karen Milek and Dr. Andrew Cameron at the University of Aberdeen, and for the help and support of the staff of Fornleifastofnun Íslands in Reykjavík. Thanks are also due to the two

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