Long Term, Community Level Protection and Management of Waterfowl in Mývatn N. Iceland

Summary

Archaeological, paleo-environmental and ethnographic research in the lakeside community of Mývatn, N. Iceland, is uncovering the millennium-long history of interactions between people and seasonal populations of waterfowl. Protection of waterfowl from hunting seems to have been applied in tandem with annual, managed egg harvesting as a common resource management strategy. The interdisciplinary investigation underway seeks to understand long term norms and local traditional knowledge (LTK) governing wild bird management while investigating the specific components of these economic paractices that contributed to their apparent long term ecological sustainability. As the Mývatn region experiences economic and spatial changes that could interact with views concerning conservation, we aim to understand the changing context of birds as a natural resource and to explore the potential discursive implications of this long term narrative of sustainable paleoeconomy.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• IHOPE (Integrated History and Future of People on Earth) - International and interdisciplinary projects working to make the past better serve the future.   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage