SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Over the past 40 years, archaeology in the North and the North Atlantic has seen increasingly productive inter-disciplinary work crosscutting local, national, and regional boundaries. Significant advances in methodology, collaboration, and zooarchaeological, paleoecological, and human-ecodynamic interpretations have come from research grounded in environmental archaeology. However, approaches to the study of material culture in the North have been comparatively neglected. Relegated often to the field of "small finds" or examined solely for functional, chronological, or typological analyses, Northern material culture participates only infrequently in global theoretical discussions on materiality, the social lives of objects, symbolism, etc. – despite often amazing preservation – and have rarely been used to generate innovative methodologies or collaborations. SANNA (from Old Norse, "to prove, make good, affirm") brings together northern archaeologists interested in seeing beyond the immediate or visible characteristics of material culture on multiple scales – from artifacts and architecture to constructed landscapes. SANNA v2.2 builds on last year's successful Forum to encourage data-rich presentations on ways that material culture can be used to develop new ideas about the social contexts within which humans exploited their environments, made the North in their images and imaginations, and continue to use its material remains for contemporary needs.

Other Keywords
arctic • Archaeometry & Materials Analysis • Fishing • Ritual • Mortuary Analysis • Paleoethnobotany • Iron Production • Trade and exchange • Craft Production • Household Archaeology

Geographic Keywords
Department of Martinique (Country) • Republic of El Salvador (Country) • Department of Guadeloupe (Country) • Cayman Islands (Country) • Antigua and Barbuda (Country) • Turks and Caicos Islands (Country) • Bermuda (Country) • Belize (Country) • Anguilla (Country) • Republic of Guatemala (Country)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-7 of 7)

  • Documents (7)
Documents
  • Alaskan Legacy Collections Outside Alaska: Challenges, Opportunities and Potential (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Annalisa Hppner.

    This is an abstract from the "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Alaskan "legacy collections" are housed at many American institutions outside of Alaska. These collections contain great potential for object-focused analysis, looking toward specific object classes, or even individual objects for in-depth review. This poster will present a summary of the locations of...

  • Everyday Objects and the Lived Experience: Inhabiting Gufuskálar, a Late Medieval Icelandic Fishing Station (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sant Mukh Khalsa.

    This is an abstract from the "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Early Icelandic fishing stations are understood primarily through the shifting role of fishing within the Icelandic economy and the importance of fish provisioning within the North Atlantic. Thus, less focus has been placed on studying the lived experiences and domestic lives of people who worked at and...

  • Human Interment and Making Memory in Viking Age Iceland (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Erica Hill.

    This is an abstract from the "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over 300 Viking Age (AD 871–1000) human interments are known from Iceland, many with accompanying dogs and horses. Though these interments are similar to those of elites in Scandinavia, inhumation burial in Iceland apparently served a different purpose — to demarcate boundaries in a landscape devoid of...

  • Imagined Forests: Woodlands and Wood Resources in Medieval Icelandic Literary, Documentary and Archaeological Sources (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Elise Mooney.

    This is an abstract from the "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Medieval literary sources describe the Icelandic landscape when the first settlers arrived as ‘forested from the mountains to the shores’. It had previously been thought that the island was rapidly deforested after settlement, but recent research gives a much more nuanced picture of woodland history. It...

  • New Interpretations of Medieval Norse Artifacts from the Tasikuluulik (Vatnahverfi) Area, South Greenland (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Nielsen.

    This is an abstract from the "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The goal in this Master’s Thesis is to collect and systematize data from eight medieval Norse sites in the Tasikuluulik peninsula and use these data to compare with past interpretations regarding the use and purpose of these Norse sites. In past research projects, the eight sites under investigation have...

  • Norse Exploitation of Wooden Resources in North America: Determining Wood Provenance Using Isotopic Analysis (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Elie Pinta. Sofia Pacheco-Fores. Euan P. Wallace.

    This is an abstract from the "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From historic sources we know the inhabitants of the North Atlantic islands relied on importations of timber from Northern Europe in order to supplement their resource deficit. In the case of the Greenland Settlements, we know Norse Greenlanders organized expeditions to North American shores where they...

  • The Socio-economic Dynamics of Iron Production in Viking Age Northern Iceland (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Zeitlin.

    This is an abstract from the "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding how an agricultural society organized the production of iron and the trade of farming implements allows us to describe how they managed natural resources and non-agricultural activities as a community. In the North Atlantic region known for its ephemeral material culture, slags and other...