Taskscapes of Reindeer Herding: Changes in the Land-Use Dynamics and Campsite Organization of the Sámi Pastoralists of Northern Fennoscandia c. 700–1800 AD

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Empirical Approaches to Mobile Pastoralist Households" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Domestication of reindeer commenced amongst the Sámi of northern Fennoscandia in the 8th century AD, and was accompanied by significant cultural changes. This presentation focuses on diachronic changes in the land-use, inter- and intra-site settlement patterns and human-environmental relations. I focus especially on two pivotal stages: 1) the initial domestication of reindeer within a hunter-fisher-gatherer society (700–1050 AD); and 2) the shift to nomadic large-scale reindeer husbandry (c1500/1600-1800 AD). The initial shift from hunting-gathering and fishing based livelihoods to small-scale reindeer herding in the Middle Iron Age changed people’s everyday lifeworlds, environmental perception and human-reindeer relations. This is mirrored in archaeological record by the changing campsite organization and structures, most importantly by the introduction of so-called rectangular hearths, which are also placed differently in the landscape than the earlier hunter-gatherer sites. Also, the shift to large-scale nomadic pastoralism in the Middle Ages is reflected in the archaeological record. Nomadic pastoralist sites appear at different locations and with differing features than the previous rectangular hearth sites related to small-scale use of domesticated reindeer. The pastoralist landscapes should not be approached as purely anthropogenic constructs, and instead, the agency of animals and things should be acknowledged using a pluralistic perspective.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Empirical Approaches to Mobile Pastoralist Households   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23950