The Living and the Dead: The Icelandic Household From Early Medieval to Historic Times.

Kimmarie A Murphy; Guðný Zoëga

The Living and the Dead: The Icelandic Household From Early Medieval to Historic Times.

Author(s): Kimmarie A Murphy; Guðný Zoëga

Year: 2020

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Medieval to Modern Transitions and Historical Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

How does one reconstruct population demography in the past and what lines of evidence exist to assist in these interpretations? The census of 1703 recorded information about household composition in Iceland and this rich resource has been used as a proxy for early population demography. Until recently, actual cemetery data wasn’t available to characterize populations before and after the 1703 census. Bioarchaeological data now exists from early Christian cemeteries such as Keldudalur in the North and Historic cemeteries in Reykjavik giving us the potential to look at patterns of population demography from Early Medieval to Early Historic periods. This paper explores the comparability of census and cemetery data sets. Patterning in demographic characteristics such as age and sex and the overall health status can give us insights into potential stressors associated with particular socio-environmental landscapes and identify segments of the population who may be more resilient in particular contexts.