Fish trade in Norse Orkney and Caithness: a zooarchaeological approach

The trade of dried fish played an important role in the transformation from the Viking Age to the Middle Ages in Scandinavian polities such as Arctic Norway. This paper develops zooarchaeological methods to investigate whether similar processes occurred in the less well documented Norse colonies of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Antiquity
Main Author: Barrett, James H.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1997
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0003598x00085367
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0003598X00085367
Description
Summary:The trade of dried fish played an important role in the transformation from the Viking Age to the Middle Ages in Scandinavian polities such as Arctic Norway. This paper develops zooarchaeological methods to investigate whether similar processes occurred in the less well documented Norse colonies of northern Scotland — the joint earldoms of Orkney and Caithness.