Everyday Objects and the Lived Experience: Inhabiting Gufuskálar, a Late Medieval Icelandic Fishing Station

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Early Icelandic fishing stations are understood primarily through the shifting role of fishing within the Icelandic economy and the importance of fish provisioning within the North Atlantic. Thus, less focus has been placed on studying the lived experiences and domestic lives of people who worked at and inhabited these sites. The 15th-17th century site of Gufuskálar has produced material culture that offers a rare glimpse at the durable everyday objects used by non-elite Icelanders before the Early Modern period. The extensive collection of everyday objects from Gufuskálar – such as hair pins, padlocks, candle holders, cutlery, cooking pots and gaming pieces – gives us insight into the personal and embodied daily lives of inhabitants. This poster will examine the material culture from Gufuskálar to explore tensions between narratives of the economic and the personal at Gufuskálar.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25869