scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Author

Ramona Harrison

Bio: Ramona Harrison is an academic researcher from University of Bergen. The author has contributed to research in topics: Zooarchaeology & Population. The author has an hindex of 7, co-authored 21 publications receiving 299 citations. Previous affiliations of Ramona Harrison include City University of New York & Brooklyn College.

Papers
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, 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, allowing to assess the development and relative importance of hunting grounds from the point of view of exported products.
Abstract: 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.

89 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors report on the zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical remains from the initial season of excavations at the Norse period site at Undir Junkarinsflotti in the Faroe islands.
Abstract: This paper reports on the zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical remains from the initial season of excavations at the Norse period site at Undir Junkarinsflotti in the Faroe islands. These remains represent the first zooarchaeological analysis undertaken for the Faroes and only the third archaeobotanical assemblage published from the islands. The excavated deposits are described and the key findings from the palaeoenvironmental remains highlighted within the context of the wider North Atlantic environmental archaeology of the Norse period.

60 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is revealed 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.
Abstract: 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.

38 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors use archaeological data to understand the implications of human decision-making and its impacts on the environment and the resources it provides for human use, which can be used for the management of contemporary and future climate change scenarios because they combine information about human behavior, environmental baselines, and biological systems.

36 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The site of Gasir in Eyjafjorður in northeast Iceland was excavated from 2001-2006, revealing details of one of the larger seasonal trading centers of medieval Iceland as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The site of Gasir in Eyjafjorður in northeast Iceland was excavated from 2001-2006, revealing details of one of the larger seasonal trading centers of medieval Iceland. Interdisciplinary investigations of the site have shed light upon the organization of the site and provided confi rmation of documentary accounts of both prestige items (gyrfalcons, walrus ivory) and bulk goods (sulphur) concentrated for export. Gasir was a major point of cultural contact as well as economic exchange between Icelanders and the world of medieval Europe, and the zooarchaeological analyses indicated a mix of foodways and the presence of exotic animals and a well-developed provisioning system, which supplied high-quality meat and fresh fi sh to the traders. The excavations demonstrated an unexpected regional-level economic impact of the seasonally occupied site on the surrounding rural countryside, and contribute to ongoing investigations of the extent and impact of overseas trade in medieval Iceland.

31 citations


Cited by
More filters
01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: The authors put histories of capitalism in conversation with the histories of the evolution of earth and human beings, and explored the limits of historical understanding by exploring the conversation between recorded histories and deep histories.
Abstract: The science of climate change has important influences on humanist histories of human beings.What scientists have said about climate change challenges not only the ideas about the human that usually sustain the discipline of history but also the analytic strategies that postcolonial and postimperial historians have deployed in the last two decades in response to the postwar scenario of decolonization and globalization.The current construction of historical knowledge presupposes a loss of the old distinction between human and natural histories.The idea of the Anthropocene which considers humans as a geological force severely qualifies humanist histories.This requires us to put histories of capitalism in conversation with the histories of the evolution of earth and human beings.Such conversation between recorded histories and deep histories is one process of exploring the limits of historical understanding.

561 citations

Book Chapter
01 Jan 2005

226 citations

BookDOI
31 Oct 2008
TL;DR: In this paper, the development of nation states (riki) is discussed in the context of the Viking Age in the British Isles and in the North Atlantic region of modern-day Russia and the East.
Abstract: Part 1: Viking Age Scandinavia People, Society and Social Institutions. Living Space. Technology and Trade. Warfare and Weaponry. Pre-Christian Religion and Belief. Language, Literature and Art Part 2: The Viking Expansion The British Isles. Continental Europe and the Mediterranean. The Baltic. Russia and the East. The North Atlantic Part 3: Scandinavia Enters the European Stage The Coming of Christianity. The Development of Nation States (riki)

160 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is argued that the Norse Greenlanders created a flexible and successful subsistence system that responded effectively to major environmental challenges but probably fell victim to a combination of conjunctures of large-scale historic processes and vulnerabilities created by their successful prior response to climate change.
Abstract: Norse Greenland has been seen as a classic case of maladaptation by an inflexible temperate zone society extending into the arctic and collapse driven by climate change. This paper, however, recognizes the successful arctic adaptation achieved in Norse Greenland and argues that, although climate change had impacts, the end of Norse settlement can only be truly understood as a complex socioenvironmental system that includes local and interregional interactions operating at different geographic and temporal scales and recognizes the cultural limits to adaptation of traditional ecological knowledge. This paper is not focused on a single discovery and its implications, an approach that can encourage monocausal and environmentally deterministic emphasis to explanation, but it is the product of sustained international interdisciplinary investigations in Greenland and the rest of the North Atlantic. It is based on data acquisitions, reinterpretation of established knowledge, and a somewhat different philosophical approach to the question of collapse. We argue that the Norse Greenlanders created a flexible and successful subsistence system that responded effectively to major environmental challenges but probably fell victim to a combination of conjunctures of large-scale historic processes and vulnerabilities created by their successful prior response to climate change. Their failure was an inability to anticipate an unknowable future, an inability to broaden their traditional ecological knowledge base, and a case of being too specialized, too small, and too isolated to be able to capitalize on and compete in the new protoworld system extending into the North Atlantic in the early 15th century.

152 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Counter-intuitively, the end of Norse Greenland might not be symptomatic of a failure to adapt to environmental change, but a consequence of successful wider economic developments of Norse communities across North Atlantic.
Abstract: Changing economies and patterns of trade, rather than climatic deterioration, could have critically marginalized the Norse Greenland settlements and effectively sealed their fate. Counter-intuitively, the end of Norse Greenland might not be symptomatic of a failure to adapt to environmental change, but a consequence of successful wider economic developments of Norse communities across North Atlantic. Data from Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and medieval Iceland is used to explore the interplay of Norse society with climate, environment, settlement, and other circumstances. Long term increases in vulnerability caused by economic change and cumulative climate changes sparked a cascading collapse of integrated interdependent settlement systems, bringing the end of Norse Greenland.

145 citations