Provenance, management and process of wooden resources in the Greenland Norse society (10th-15th century) : crossover analysis of stave-built and monoxyle vessels from the Eastern (Eystribyggð) and the Western (Vestribyggð) Settlements

• Main Author: Pinta, Élie
• Other Authors: Archéologie des Amériques (ArchAm), Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (UP1)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - Paris I, Brigitte Faugère-Kalfon, Claire Alix
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: French
• Published: HAL CCSD 2022
• Subjects: Wood crafts; Norse greenlanders; Greenland; Provenance analysis; Material culture; Textual sources; Isotopic analyse; Driftwood; Artisanat du bois; Norrois; Groenland; Analyses de provenance; Culture matérielle; Sources textuelles; Analyse isotopique; Bois flotté; [SHS.ARCHEO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Archaeology and Prehistory; [SHS.ART]Humanities and Social Sciences/Art and art history; greenlander*; greenlandic; groenlandaise; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://theses.hal.science/tel-04052201; https://theses.hal.science/tel-04052201/document; https://theses.hal.science/tel-04052201/file/PINTA.pdf

An interdisciplinary study of wooden vessels used by Norse Greenlanders offers an overview of the raw material management strategies, as well as the day-to-day organization of domestic and specialized craft activities. This research provides a fresh perspective on wood use in the North Atlantic during medieval times, from the selection and transformation of raw material to the production, utilization, and recycling of vessels. Additionally, we offer an evaluation of the significance of forests, trees, and wood for the Norse Greenlanders, through the study of several textual sources, including the so-called Vínland Sagas. A total of 750 stave-built and monoxyle vessel components uncovered in domestic contexts, areas where agropastoral activities took place, as well as middens, are submitted to a typo- techno-functional and a xylo-dendrological analysis. The corpus is composed of objects from seven sites distributed across the two main population areas of the Norse Greenlandic Settlements, and represents the entire occupational sequence, from the late 10th to the mid-15th century. Results of the typo-morphological analysis identify a wide variety of vessel forms, most of which are associated with foodways and agropastoral activities possibly connected to dairy products. However, the strategies for selecting and transforming the raw material, and the techniques involved in manufacturing the vessels, are quite homogeneous. The dendrological characterization of the remains suggest the predominant use of driftwood materials and, to a much lesser degree, the selection of a few Greenlandic native trees to produce a set of atypical vessels. Lastly, a biogeochemical study was undertaken, using strontium (Sr), oxygen (O) and hydrogen (H) isotopes, to refine the provenance of wooden materials used by Norse Greenlanders. First, a modern baseline was established that demonstrates the parameters for distinguishing between several areas where the wooden materials may have originated. Diagenetic processes, however, tend to ...