The North Atlantic Wool Trade, ca. 1000–1400: A Strontium Isotope Approach

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeology in the North and North Atlantic (SANNA 3.0): Investigating the Social Lives of Northern Things" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

North Atlantic islands were colonized by settlers from Norway and the British Isles in the ninth century, bringing agricultural practices from Northern Europe. Wool and fish dominated exports from Iceland from the Viking Age, although the impact of the wool trade remains understudied. We examine textile collections from museums to explore the intensity and extent of this trade by strontium isotope analysis. The data we find provide us with information about how wool moved across the North Atlantic during this period. In turn, this helps us understand when and how wool began to connect very distant communities. We draw on our specific case study to offer suggestions on how to better use strontium isotope data for archaeological purposes and how to improve our methods of data collection and analysis. We furthermore view our archaeological and geochemical data in tandem with historical sources that deal with medieval North Atlantic woolen cloth. Our paper focuses especially on the challenges of reconciling archaeological, geochemical, and historical methods, approaches, and data.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Social Archaeology in the North and North Atlantic (SANNA 3.0): Investigating the Social Lives of Northern Things   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33322