Pottery Consumption in the 17th & 18th Centuries in Iceland

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Poverty And Plenty In The North", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This presentation will introduce some of the results of the presenter’s recent Doctoral dissertation which explored questions surrounding the consumption of imported goods in Iceland during its Monopoly Trade Period, which has been seen as a time of economic stagnation and material impoverishment while under the rule of a foreign power, by studying the relative presence and frequency of pottery in archaeological assemblages. Employing a statistical approach these were used to create ‘consumption profiles’ which were compared with each other, drawing out differences, or lack thereof, between different assemblages in Iceland, as well as comparing the Icelandic consumption to profiles from sites in North-Western Europe.

This data was then employed in discussion of whether Iceland can be considered to have been, or to have become a consumer society in this time, or whether a different approach is indicated, and if and how Icelandic pottery consumption differed from European consumption.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Poverty And Plenty In The North   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow