Disequilibrium, adaptation, and the Norse settlement of Greenland
Abstract
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.
Citation
Jackson , R , Arneborg , J , Dugmore , A , Madsen , C , McGovern , T , Smiarowski , K & Streeter , R 2018 , ' Disequilibrium, adaptation, and the Norse settlement of Greenland ' , Human Ecology , vol. 46 , no. 5 , pp. 665-684 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-018-0020-0
Publication
Human Ecology
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0300-7839Type
Journal article
Rights
© The Author(s) 2018. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Description
This research was supported by the University of Edinburgh ExEDE Doctoral Training Studentship and NSF grant numbers 1202692 and 1140106.Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.