Interim Report of Animal Bones from the 2002 Excavations at Gásir, Eyjafjörður, N Iceland

Archaeological excavations carried out in the summer of 2002 at the site of Gásir in Eyjafjörður near the modern city of Akureyri directed by Howell Roberts of Fornleifastofnun lslands (Archaeological Institute Iceland, FSl) for Minjasafnið á Akureyri (Akureyri Museum) produced a substantial number of animal bones, whose initial analysis is reported here. Analysis has been carried out by Dr.s Jim Woollett and Tom McGovern at the CUNY Northern Science & Education Center laboratories as part of the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization cooperative effort, with funding from the UK Leverhulme Trust. The 2002 excavations were part of a larger scale long term effort to investigate the remains of the early trading center at Gásir and to place the site in a regional and historical perspective. Investigations will continue at the site, and this report is thus only a working paper to be updated and replaced as more material becomes available for study. The total animal bone collection (archaeofauna) analyzed from the 2002 season comprised 2,101 fragments, of which 848 could be assigned to a taxon. Approximately a third of these bones came from the redeposited backdirt of the 1907 Bruun and Jónsson excavation, and the many remaining in situ contexts freshly excavated in 2002 do not include substantial midden deposits immediately producing sample sizes suitable for full scale zooarchaeological quantification. However, even at this stage the collection as a whole has a number of special characteristics that warrant discussion and comparison with other Icelandic archaeofauna and suggest several potentially productive directions for further research.

The species present include domestic cattle, sheep, goat, horse, and pig as well as seal, whale, bird and fish remains. Domestic mammal bones make up the great majority of the archaeofauna (ca 75%) with fish the next most common taxa (ca 23%). Cattle bones are particularly common (in both redeposited and in situ contexts) and include mature and juvenile individuals but few of the newborn calves normally found on farm sites and associated with dairy production. The high percentage of cattle bone is similar to very high status late medieval sites in S Iceland (Víðey, Bessastaðir), but the dominance of domestic mammal bone is extremely unusual. Dog gnawing is visible on bones, though no dog remains are included in the current collection. The skeletal elements of the domestic stock include all parts of the body, with meat rich upper limb bones well represented. Butchery patterns include typical late medieval Icelandic patterns, except for a puzzling shortage of characteristic biperforated sheep metapodials. Further research questions center on the nature of provisioning of the site, context- specific bone associations and activity areas, bone and horn craftworking, and possible indicators of multiethnic foodways

Archaeofauna Gásir Iceland zooarchaeology

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