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This article combines new marine fish faunal data from medieval and early modern Icelandic archaeological sites with previously published data that focused primarily on the Settlement and Commonwealth periods. This synthesis places these new data into the larger scale of Icelandic history and marine conditions (sea-surface temperature and sea ice) to identify patterns and trends across the last 1000 years of the relationship between humans and Icelandic cod populations. We find no direct correlation between zooarchaeological patterns and sea ice or storminess in the medieval period and a possible correlation in the early modern period. We argue that this suggests a nuanced relationship between changing climates and fishing patterns in Icelandic history. While changes in sea temperature and periods of increased storminess might have made fishing productivity more variable and at times more dangerous, it is only in the early modern period that we see change in the marine zooarchaeological record that might indicate a correlation. Instead, we contend that the impacts of the changing climate relative to marine resources were mediated by social, political, economic, and even technological variables.

This thesis invokes Historical Ecology approach to better understand human impacts on marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and the creation of cultural landscapes and seascapes in Norse Greenland. It also investigates climate impacts on human economic strategies, as they vary substantially by island and region in the North Atlantic but were especially important in arctic Greenland. The analysis centers on the animal bone data and uses both existing and newly generated zooarchaeological collections to contribute to the study of Norse Greenland and its place in human ecodynamics research. The newly analyzed archaeofauna shows that the culturally Nordic European settlers used to the life based around domestic livestock and associated foddering rapidly transformed their subsistence strategies to the limits and opportunities of the new environment. Marine fishing was immediately supplanted by intensive communal seal hunting, caribou hunting was rapidly organized by the elite managers, and the herding strategies were adapted to the less productive pastures. At the same time the data shows early prolonged commitment to the Norðursetur walrus hunt, despite the high risks, and does not show evidence for a reduction of the hunting effort after the 1300 CE climate impacts.Climate change played significant role in the Greenlandic adaptations, and intensification of seal hunting and modification of the herding economy after 1300 CE, were successful strategies until a conjunction of environmental and economic events caused the disappearance of the settlements. Different trajectories for large and small farms through time, and elite takeovers of smaller holdings after ca. 1250 CE support the picture of medieval Greenland as fully hierarchical society, which was sustainable for a prolonged period of time. Through fieldwork that generated the new archaeofauna the research community was made aware of current climate change caused degradation of organic preservation at archaeological sites in SW Greenland, and enabled researchers to study these processes, and to organize excavations aimed at saving the remaining fragile sites from complete decomposition in the immediate future. Suggestions for future research to make best use of available sites and materials is also provided.

There is increasing evidence to suggest that arctic cultures and ecosystems have followed non-linear responses to climate change. Norse Scandinavian farmers introduced agriculture to sub-arctic Greenland in the late tenth century, creating synanthropic landscapes and utilising seasonally abundant marine and terrestrial resources. Using a niche-construction framework and data from recent survey work, studies of diet, and regional-scale climate proxies we examine the potential mismatch between this imported agricultural niche and the constraints of the environment from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries. We argue that landscape modification conformed the Norse to a Scandinavian style of agriculture throughout settlement, structuring and limiting the efficacy of seasonal hunting strategies. Recent climate data provide evidence of sustained cooling from the mid thirteenth century and climate variation from the early fifteenth century. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Norse made incremental adjustments to the changing sub-arctic environment, but were limited by cultural adaptations made in past environments.

This paper identifies rare climate challenges in the long-term history of seven areas, three in the subpolar North Atlantic Islands and four in the arid-to-semiarid deserts of the US Southwest. For each case, the vulnerability to food shortage before the climate challenge is quantified based on eight variables encompassing both environmental and social domains. These data are used to evaluate the relationship between the “weight” of vulnerability before a climate challenge and the nature of social change and food security following a challenge. The outcome of this work is directly applicable to debates about disaster management policy.

Domestic dogs have been central to life in the North American Arctic for millennia. The ancestors of the Inuit were the first to introduce the widespread usage of dog sledge transportation technology to the Americas, but whether the Inuit adopted local Palaeo-Inuit dogs or introduced a new dog population to the region remains unknown. To test these hypotheses, we generated mitochondrial DNA and geometric morphometric data of skull and dental elements from a total of 922 North American Arctic dogs and wolves spanning over 4500 years. Our analyses revealed that dogs from Inuit sites dating from 2000 BP possess morphological and genetic signatures that distinguish them from earlier Palaeo-Inuit dogs, and identified a novel mitochondrial clade in eastern Siberia and Alaska. The genetic legacy of these Inuit dogs survives today in modern Arctic sledge dogs despite phenotypic differences between archaeological and modern Arctic dogs. Together, our data reveal that Inuit dogs derive from a secondary pre-contact migration of dogs distinct from Palaeo-Inuit dogs, and probably aided the Inuit expansion across the North American Arctic beginning around 1000 BP.

Walrus-tusk ivory and walrus-hide rope were highly desired goods in Viking Age north-west Europe. New finds of walrus bone and ivory in early Viking Age contexts in Iceland are concentrated in the south-west, and suggest extensive exploitation of nearby walrus for meat, hide and ivory during the first century of settlement. In Greenland, archaeofauna suggest a very different specialized long-distance hunting of the much larger walrus populations in the Disko Bay area that brought mainly ivory to the settlement areas and eventually to European markets. New lead isotopic analysis of archaeological walrus ivory and bone from Greenland and Iceland offers a tool for identifying possible source regions of walrus ivory during the early Middle Ages. This opens possibilities for assessing the development and relative importance of hunting grounds from the point of view of exported products.

The offshore islands of the North Atlantic were among some of the last settled places on earth, with humans reaching the Faroes and Iceland in the late Iron Age and Viking period. While older accounts emphasizing deforestation and soil erosion have presented this story of island colonization as yet another social–ecological disaster, recent archaeological and paleoenvironmental research combined with environmental history, environmental humanities, and bioscience is providing a more complex understanding of long-term human ecodynamics in these northern islands. An ongoing interdisciplinary investigation of the management of domestic pigs and wild bird populations in Faroes and Iceland is presented as an example of sustained resource management using local and traditional knowledge to create structures for successful wild fowl management on the millennial scale.

Domestic dogs have been central to life in the North American Arctic for millennia. The ancestors of the Inuit were the first to introduce the widespread usage of dog sledge transportation technology to the Americas, but whether the Inuit adopted local Palaeo-Inuit dogs or introduced a new dog population to the region remains unknown. To test these hypotheses, we generated mitochondrial DNA and geometric morphometric data of skull and dental elements from a total of 922 North American Arctic dogs and wolves spanning over 4500 years. Our analyses revealed that dogs from Inuit sites dating from 2000 BP possess morphological and genetic signatures that distinguish them from earlier Palaeo-Inuit dogs, and identified a novel mitochondrial clade in eastern Siberia and Alaska. The genetic legacy of these Inuit dogs survives today in modern Arctic sledge dogs despite phenotypic differences between archaeological and modern Arctic dogs. Together, our data reveal that Inuit dogs derive from a secondary pre-contact migration of dogs distinct from Palaeo-Inuit dogs, and probably aided the Inuit expansion across the North American Arctic beginning around 1000 BP.

Walrus-tusk ivory and walrus-hide rope were highly desired goods in Viking Age north-west Europe. New finds of walrus bone and ivory in early Viking Age contexts in Iceland are concentrated in the south-west, and suggest extensive exploitation of nearby walrus for meat, hide and ivory during the first century of settlement. In Greenland, archaeofauna suggest a very different specialized long-distance hunting of the much larger walrus populations in the Disko Bay area that brought mainly ivory to the settlement areas and eventually to European markets. New lead isotopic analysis of archaeological walrus ivory and bone from Greenland and Iceland offers a tool for identifying possible source regions of walrus ivory during the early Middle Ages. This opens possibilities for assessing the development and relative importance of hunting grounds from the point of view of exported products.

Walrus-tusk ivory and walrus-hide rope were highly desired goods in Viking Age north-west Europe. New finds of walrus bone and ivory in early Viking Age contexts in Iceland are concentrated in the south-west, and suggest extensive exploitation of nearby walrus for meat, hide and ivory during the first century of settlement. In Greenland, archaeofauna suggest a very different specialized long-distance hunting of the much larger walrus populations in the Disko Bay area that brought mainly ivory to the settlement areas and eventually to European markets. New lead isotopic analysis of archaeological walrus ivory and bone from Greenland and Iceland offers a tool for identifying possible source regions of walrus ivory during the early Middle Ages. This opens possibilities for assessing the development and relative importance of hunting grounds from the point of view of exported products. (Author abstract)