Preliminary Assessment of the faunal remains from the 2007 Midden Excavation in Eyri, Westfjords (lab report)

Summary

In 2007 area G of the Eyri site in Ísafjörður, NW Iceland was object of a midden

assessment undertaken by the Archaeological Institute of Iceland. The midden mound in

area G is associated with the farm mound at Eyri in downtown Ísafjörður. The farm

mound was previously trenched for occupational layers in 2003 and 2004 (Taylor et al

2005), yielding an assortment of animal remains that were analyzed in 2005

(Krivogorskaya & McGovern 2005). Upon coring the midden mound to define its edges,

assess its depth, and sample its contents, a large trench (15 m

2

) was opened up to allow

for open area excavation (Lucas 2003). Members of FSÍ and CUNY New York

collaborated on the midden assessment. The 2007 midden excavation yielded a generous

amount of animal bones, domestic and wild. Bone preservation ranges from good to

excellent and the large fish proportion is slightly more varied than witnessed from

roughly contemporaneous faunal collections (i.e. Harrison et al 2007, Hambrecht 2006).

All the bone materials discussed in this preliminary report were from one context (1045).

The total weight of this context’s archaeofauna was more than 11 kg. This archaeofauna

can be placed into the early modern period; it very likely stems from the 19

th

century, the

last century of Eyri farm occupation, as was discussed in the excavation report for the test

trenching at the Eyri farm mound (Taylor et al 2005).

This NORSEC Bone report uses zooarchaeological data from the analyzed faunal

remains gathered during the 2007 midden excavation of the 19th century layers of a

deeply stratified midden mound associated with the Eyri farm mound that may contain

occupational deposits spanning a time from early modern to early medieval times. All the

contexts in area G were either sieved or sampled in bulk for further analysis.

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Ramona Harrison

Contributor(s): Ramona Harrison; Ramona Harrison; Ramona Harrison

Record Identifiers

NORSEC ZOOARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY REPORT No.(s): 42

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