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13 - Feasts, Food and Fodder: Viking and Late Norse Farming Systems in Scotland
- Edited by Tom Horne, University of Glasgow, Elizabeth Pierce, University of Glasgow, Rachel Barrowman, University of Glasgow
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- Book:
- The Viking Age in Scotland
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 20 October 2023
- Print publication:
- 31 January 2023, pp 170-188
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- Chapter
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Summary
When Vikings in Scotland was first published, consideration of human– animal interactions was largely focused on agricultural interpretations. Since the late 1980s, there has been a shift in zooarchaeology away from purely economic interpretations towards perspectives encompassing the materiality of animals, animals in identity, ritual and so on. At the same time there has been an expansion in the application of scientific approaches within archaeology – most notably palaeodietary techniques, but also increasingly aDNA. The last thirty years have also witnessed new excavations of significant Viking and Late Norse settlements not only in Scotland but across the North Atlantic, providing many new insights into farming practices and other human–animal interactions across the Viking ‘diaspora’. This chapter explores how some of these diverse sources of evidence have transformed our understanding of the agricultural economy and the role of animals in Viking and Late Norse society within Scotland, situating this within the wider context of Scandinavian North Atlantic settlement during the end of the 1st and early 2nd millennium AD.
Data sets and approaches to human–animal interactions in Viking and Late Norse Scotland
The animal faunas arising from Viking and Late Norse Orkney and Shetland has generated considerable archaeological interest over the last forty years, with major environmental archaeology programmes undertaken on earldom sites featured in the Orkneyinga Saga (OS), including residences of the Orkney Earls on the Brough of Birsay (Morris, this volume) and at the Earl’s Bu in Orphir (Batey, this volume), those of their chieftains, or goðing, at Tuquoy in Westray (Owen, this volume) and Skaill in Deerness, and increasingly at other locations across the islands: Pool (Sanday), Quoygrew (Westray), Old Scatness (Shetland), Snusgar (Sandwick) and Skaill (Rousay). The preceding Late Iron-Age or ‘Pictish’ settlements have been less systematically targeted but have benefited from the multi-period nature of many of the Orcadian sites, which afford insight into the transition between Pictish and Viking at several locations, including the Birsay Bay area and Deerness on the Mainland of Orkney, Pool, Westness/Swandro in Rousay and Old Scatness. There has been less sustained interest in human–animal interactions in the areas of Viking settlement on the mainland of Scotland, with few sites additional to those summarised in Vikings in Scotland; however, the publication of large faunal assemblages from Bornais (Sharples 2020) and Cille Phedair (Mulville et al. 2018) have added significantly to our understanding of Viking farming in the Western Isles.
To Cut a Long Story Short: Formal Chronological Modelling for the Late Neolithic Site of Ness of Brodgar, Orkney
- Nick Card, Ingrid Mainland, Scott Timpany, Roy Towers, Cathy Batt, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Elaine Dunbar, Paula Reimer, Alex Bayliss, Peter Marshall, Alasdair Whittle
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- Journal:
- European Journal of Archaeology / Volume 21 / Issue 2 / May 2018
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 05 April 2017, pp. 217-263
- Print publication:
- May 2018
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- Article
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In the context of unanswered questions about the nature and development of the Late Neolithic in Orkney, we present a summary of research up to 2015 on the major site at the Ness of Brodgar, Mainland Orkney, concentrating on the impressive buildings. Finding sufficient samples for radiocarbon dating was a considerable challenge. There are indications, from both features and finds, of activity pre-dating the main set of buildings exposed so far by excavation. Forty-six dates on thirty-nine samples are presented and are interpreted in a formal chronological framework. Two models are presented, reflecting different possible readings of the sequence. Both indicate that piered architecture was in use by the thirtieth century cal bc and that the massive Structure 10, not the first building in the sequence, was also in existence by the thirtieth century cal bc. Activity associated with piered architecture came to an end (in Model 2) around 2800 cal bc. Midden and rubble infill followed. After an appreciable interval, the hearth at the centre of Structure 10 was last used around 2500 cal bc, perhaps the only activity in an otherwise abandoned site. The remains of some 400 or more cattle were deposited over the ruins of Structure 10: in Model 2, in the mid-twenty-fifth century cal bc, but in Model 1 in the late twenty-fourth or twenty-third century cal bc. The chronologies invite comparison with the near-neighbour of Barnhouse, in use from the later thirty-second to the earlier twenty-ninth century cal bc, and the Stones of Stenness, probably erected by the thirtieth century cal bc. The Ness, including Structure 10, appears to have outlasted Barnhouse, but probably did not endure as long in its primary form as previously envisaged. The decay and decommissioning of the Ness may have coincided with the further development of the sacred landscape around it; but precise chronologies for other sites in the surrounding landscape are urgently required. The spectacular feasting remains of several hundred cattle deposited above Structure 10 may belong to a radically changing world, coinciding (in Model 2) with the appearance of Beakers nationally, but it was arguably the, by now, mythic status of that building which drew people back to it.