30 (454)

54 The Viking Age in Denmark

touch, so the political developmcnt we have described in previous chapters could come true only when certain conditions of population and production were fulfilled. If we look to the south of Denmark, the Carolingian expansion also took place during a population growth. A large, dense population may cause problcms of production, but it is nonę the less a prerequisite for the military and economic power of a stable State.

C. Domesticated animals and distribution offood

The data for the study of Iron and Viking Age animals come mostly from refuse of food in the settlement deposits and are madę up of smaller and larger fragments of bonę. Furthermore, some animals come from burials, especially dogs and horses, and to a lesser dcgree sheep, but they havc no interest in a production and consumption contcxt.

The biggest problem, when studying the fragments, is how to relate to the original numbers of cattle, pigs, sheep and horses.²¹ Dogs are rare, like wild mammals, and the ratios of the fragile bones of birds and fish too uncertain to build on, as their rctrieval has varied a great deal. In generał only fragment numbers are published, but in modern investigations other types of analysis are used. The animals in question have practically the same number of bones; but the size of the single bonę varies, and large animals may produce many morę fragments than smali ones. On the other hand, the fragile bones of smaller animals may break morę easily. To avoid these uncertainties some students have used the weight of the bones as a critical factor for interpretation. This measurement probably has some bearing on the amount of meat from an animal, but it is difficult to use for archaeological sites because of the variable weight loss for ditferent species and under different preservation conditions.

A still morę developed and time-consuming methodology cal-culates the minimum number of individuals, a tcchnique independent of the degree of fragmentation. This is probably the most satisfactory treatment, but it has been carried out only on a few samples.

In addition to the study of animal ratios it is important to look into variables such as the age of slaughter, especially with respect to scx, the presence or absence of various parts ot the animal (for instance, the fleshy parts) and even diseases. (Such studics are only rarely madę.) Some anatomical features, however, stand out clearly. The cattle, pigs, sheep/goats and horses were much smaller than today.²² Racial differences may account for some of the variation, but mostly it is due to poorer nutrition of the Viking Age animals. In the Middle Ages cattle, pigs and sheep were even smaller, but the horses were a little larger. Comparcd with the carly Iron Age, Viking Age horses are larger and have longer legs - they probably represent a different race-whilc the cattle are poorcr than the relativcly stout animals from the centuries around the tum of the first millennium B.C., a period of climatic optimum with an extensive use of pastures.

As indicated, if we want to analyse the Viking Age subsistence animals with respect to type of settlement, etc., and, at the same time, have data of some dimension and quality, we are left with bonę fragments. The number ofreliable sites and samplcs are about twenty in all, including a few which datę a little beyond the strict Viking Age in Denmark and adjacent areas; basically they comprise rural settlements, towns and fortresses.

Oftcn fish bones and bones of wild birds are neglected, and only a few sites display morę than one per cent of wild animals. In generał, the towns and fortresses seem to have a slightly higher proportion of wild mammals than the villages. Hunting may perhaps have been the prerogativc of the higher social echelons, but the towns and fortresses may also have been so dependent on outside supplies of meat that they utilised any possibility of self-sufficiency. It is notable, for example, that the Slavonian town fortresses of east Holstein, close to Denmark, have a high percentage of wild mammals.

Dogs also are few; if cattle and minor domestic animals are considered, they amount only rarely to morę than one or one-and-a-half per cent of the bonę fragments. Incidentally, the dogs vary in size and breed, though smali specimens are most common. Cats are known, but they also are rare. Domesticated birds - fowls, geese and possibly ducks — are also relatively rare, but their presence or absence in the materiał, like fish and wild birds, is dependent to a large extent on the conditions of preservation. As to size, the hens too are smaller than today’s specimens.

Horses also are rare, though only in towns, where they obviously have not been eaten. In the rural settlements fragments of horse bones amount to about ten to fifteen per cent of the mammals (not including dogs). In the following discussion the ‘towns’ comprise the settlements of Hedeby, Ribe and Arhus injylland and Lund in Skane. The Viking Age deposits below the medicval town of Viborg in north Jylland seem to stem from a rural settlement. The different freąuency of horse remnants gives rise to a further study of the percentages of cattle, pigs, sheep/goats and horses. It transpires that there is a strong negative correlation between the percentages of cattle and pig bonę fragments for the rural settlements, which means that a high cattle index is followed by a Iow pig index and vice vcrsa (Fig. 13 and Appendix VII). Between sheep/goat and horses a similar link is apparent, but it is less strong. Other possiblc combinations are less, or not at all, significant, and we may reduce the data to two factors, cattle-pigs and shcep/goats-horses. A possiblc explanation of the combinations is that the first group relates primarily to ‘food’ while the second has morę to do with ‘utility’ (wool and transportation).