Strontium isotopes on wool samples from the urban medieval site of Gullskoen, Bergen, Norway, Medieval 13th -15th century

• Main Author: Michele Smith
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Arctic Data Center 2023
• Subjects: strontium isotope results from Gullskoen, Western Norway; Archaeological textiles.; Bergen; Borgund; Norway; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.18739/A2804XM69

The site of Gullskoen is one of the main excavated areas in the medieval town of Bryggen. Data was collected from this site to conduct analysis of strontium isotopes, along with some modern Norwegian wool samples. This material was sampled by the staff of the Bryggen museum as this was during the COVID-19 pandemic and samples were sent to Isobar laboratories in Florida (who were not very familiar with the extraction of sr from wool). This project along with material from Trondheim, Borgund and other sites in the vicinity are part of on going research on the role of trade and nature of trade in Western Norway in the medieval period. For this reason the data is not available at the present time, but will be made available as soon as the project is complete. This material was part of 1733914 “Archaeological Investigations of the Eastern North Atlantic Trade and Globalizing Economic Systems”. The Project: Archaeological Investigations of the Eastern North Atlantic Trade and Globalizing Economic Systems (Award no. 1733914) sought to provide new data on patterns of household-scale production and consumption in the eastern North Atlantic islands and assess the ways that textiles from the rural North Atlantic islands were used, consumed, and traded within the emerging medieval and post-medieval urban harbors of Bergen, Trondheim, and Borgund in Norway. Over the course of 1000 years, trade linking the Norse North Atlantic colonies waxed and waned. Early medieval networks linked the North Atlantic islands primarily with Norway for supplies of key resources, yet archaeological data suggest that by the mid-11th century Icelandic women wove in response to demands for products sold in London and beyond. By the 13th century, these networks expanded, with both the North Atlantic and North Sea integrated into the Hanseatic League's networks linking northern Europe and beyond. From the 17th century onwards, the North Atlantic was integrated into increasingly industrial mercantile networks, controlled through monopolistic practices by the Danish state, linking the cities of northwestern Europe with colonies and consumers across the world. This project was: (1) to assess the regional characteristics and trajectories of eastern North Atlantic women's textile production, (2) connect these collections and patterns with textile assemblages from emerging and central trading harbors in Scandinavia and beyond, and (3) link these results with previous NSF-funded work.