Saving Siglunes from the Sea

Summary

Siglunes is one of a series of endangered sites in N Iceland where we investigate: the emergence and long-term development of Icelandic fisheries and marine mammal hunting, the changing connections between Eyjafjörður and the larger North Atlantic trade and exchange during the Viking Age and medieval times, processes of marine erosion and its effect on archaeological sites for heritage management efforts in Iceland and the wider region. The site’s archaeological and environmental samples can provide us with information on Viking Age fishing strategies in the North of Iceland, and serve as a case study on the origins and subsequent development from artisanal to larger-scale commercial fishing enterprise in the 13th and 14th c. Thus fueling a growing industry that transformed Atlantic economies in the 17th-18th c. and underwrote emergence of the early modern world system. However this site is in immediate danger from ongoing coastal erosion and some of the structures observed in 2008 on the fishing site have since been truncated by the sea. This paper presents new results from ongoing analysis and contributes to the discussion on addressing ongoing cultural heritage as well as scientific data loss due to erosion forces magnified by global climate change effects.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20059