The Final Report on the Archaeofauna from Context 147 at the Medieval Fishing Station at Gufuskálar, Western Iceland.

The 15th century commercial fishing station at Gufuskálar is anomalous among fishing stations in Iceland - at least those have been excavated thus far. Rich in imported artifacts and well-provisioned with expensive foods the fishers at Gufuskálar were clearly not only impoverished tenant farmer/fishers as was often the case in better documented early modern times. This report details the zooarchaeological analysis of one of the contexts excavated during the 2013 field season from a dense midden deposit dated to the early to mid-15th century CE. The large number of bones analyzed gives us a clear picture of the commercial processing of cod (Gadus morhua) as well as the provisioning of the fishers. Gufuskálar primarily produced the more desirable stockfish (large cod dried “in the round” or without being slit open and dried flat) and that the fishers were provisioned with choice cuts of sheep and probably dried haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus). Gufuskálar represents an important resource for understanding Icelandic fisheries history and for broader issues of North Atlantic Maritime Historical Ecology.

commercial fishing fishing station Iceland Medieval North Atlantic zooarchaeology

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