Constructing chronologies in Viking Age Iceland: Increasing dating resolution using Bayesian approaches

There is a growing body of evidence demonstrating the impacts of human arrival in new “pristine” environments, including terrestrial habitat alterations and species extinctions. However, the effects of marine resource utilization prior to industrialized whaling, sealing, and fishing have largely remained understudied. The expansion of the Norse across the North Atlantic offers a rare opportunity to study the effects of human arrival and early exploitation of marine resources. Today, there is no local population of walruses on Iceland, however, skeletal remains, place names, and written sources suggest that walruses existed, and were hunted by the Norse during the Settlement and Commonwealth periods (870–1262 AD). This study investigates the timing, geographic distribution, and genetic identity of walruses in Iceland by combining historical information, place names, radiocarbon dating, and genomic analyses. The results support a genetically distinct, local population of walruses that went extinct shortly after Norse settlement. The high value of walrus products such as ivory on international markets likely led to intense hunting pressure, which—potentially exacerbated by a warming climate and volcanism—resulted in the extinction of walrus on Iceland. We show that commercial hunting, economic incentives, and trade networks as early as the Viking Age were of sufficient scale and intensity to result in significant, irreversible ecological impacts on the marine environment. This is to one of the earliest examples of local extinction of a marine species following human arrival, during the very beginning of commercial marine exploitation.

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“…2013) with a local delta-R of 111 ± 14 C years taken for Northern Iceland (Ascough et al. 2007; Batt et al. 2015).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Norse of the Viking Age (∼700‒1050 AD) were the first people to settle permanently in Iceland around 870 AD (Eldjárn 1956; Einarsson 1995, 2019; Batt et al. 2015; Zori 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disappearance of Icelandic Walruses Coincided with Norse Settlement

Keighley

Pálsson

Einarsson

et al. 2019

Molecular Biology and Evolution

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“…The wealth of new archaeological data in Iceland, as well as methodological advances in Bayesian analysis, now make it possible to critically reassess the chronological evidence relating to the settlement of Iceland and to aim for a much improved resolution of the timing and pattern of colonisation within the Viking Age (e.g. Batt et al, 2015).…”

Section: Archaeological Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Tephra isochrons and chronologies of colonisation

Schmid

Dugmore

Vésteinsson

et al. 2017

Quaternary Geochronology

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This paper demonstrates the use of tephrochronology in dating the earliest archaeological evidence for the settlement of Iceland. This island was one of the last places on Earth settled by people and there are conflicting ideas about the pace and scale of initial colonisation. Three tephra layers, the Landnám ('land-taking') tephra layer (A.D. 877 ± 1), the Eldgjá tephra (A.D. 939) and the recently dated V-Sv tephra (A.D. 938 ± 6) can be found at 58% of 253 securely-dated early settlement sites across the country. The presence of the tephras permits both a countrywide comparison, and a classification of these settlement sites into pre-Landnám, Landnám and post-Landnám. The data summarised here for the first time indicate that it will be possible to reconstruct the tempo and development of the colonisation process in decadal resolution by more systematically utilising the dating potential of tephrochronology.

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“…A ∆R value of 111 ± 10 14 C years has been obtained from multiple paired measurements on terrestrial mammals and marine molluscs from Viking Age archaeological deposits in northern Iceland, and is used here (Ascough et al 2007). Although 111 ± 10 14 C is currently the best estimate, Batt et al (2015) suggest it could be improved through evaluation of other parts in Iceland.…”

Section: Reservoir Offsetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing Radiocarbon Chronologies of Colonization: Chronometric Hygiene Revisited

et al. 2019

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Accurately dating when people first colonized new areas is vital for understanding the pace of past cultural and environmental changes, including questions of mobility, human impacts and human responses to climate change. Establishing effective chronologies of these events requires the synthesis of multiple radiocarbon (14C) dates. Various “chronometric hygiene” protocols have been used to refine 14C dating of island colonization, but they can discard up to 95% of available 14C dates leaving very small datasets for further analysis. Despite their foundation in sound theory, without independent tests we cannot know if these protocols are apt, too strict or too lax. In Iceland, an ice core-dated tephrochronology of the archaeology of first settlement enables us to evaluate the accuracy of 14C chronologies. This approach demonstrated that the inclusion of a wider range of 14C samples in Bayesian models improves the precision, but does not affect the model outcome. Therefore, based on our assessments, we advocate a new protocol that works with a much wider range of samples and where outlying 14C dates are systematically disqualified using Bayesian Outlier Models. We show that this approach can produce robust termini ante quos for colonization events and may be usefully applied elsewhere.

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Constructing chronologies in Viking Age Iceland: Increasing dating resolution using Bayesian approaches

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Cited by 16 publications

References 43 publications

Disappearance of Icelandic Walruses Coincided with Norse Settlement

Disappearance of Icelandic Walruses Coincided with Norse Settlement

Tephra isochrons and chronologies of colonisation

Enhancing Radiocarbon Chronologies of Colonization: Chronometric Hygiene Revisited

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