Alien invasions: modernization and the dispersal of insect pests in Iceland

Summary

The development of the modern western world was characterized by technological advances in farming and shipping, the globalization of trade and the ongoing densification of urban spaces such as villages, towns and cities. These phenomena, which caused dramatic changes in people’s lifeways, also affected insect populations around the world by enabling the global dispersal of pest species, some of which successfully established permanent populations in new territories. Recent investigations of insect assemblages from 19th- and 20th-century Icelandic archaeological sites have yielded the earliest records of now-cosmopolitan insect species including cattle ectoparasites as well as stored food pests originally found in tropical and subtropical regions. This paper uses these records as a basis for exploring the potential of archaeoentomology to contribute to a clarification of the timing and processes by which Iceland and individual sites began tapping into international trade networks and how farming came to be modernized.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014   •
• Environmental Archaeology: Building from Successes

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-55,06