In the 8th century, Norse settlers moved to the Orkney Islands (now a part of Scotland), bringing some aspects of their own agriculture and adapting to the new island environment in order to provide for themselves. By the 13th century, they had a system of intensive agriculture that included soil fertilization regimes, a thriving proto-commercial long-distance trade in dried fish, and herds of cattle managed for dairy production.

Overhead view of Quoygrew taken with a kite and remote-controlled camera

The transition from a community feeding itself to a community producing a surplus of products for regional and international trade involved substantial management choices; trade-offs and delicate scheduling were necessary as farmers decided how to allocate labor and resources across the farm to achieve surpluses. Many questions remain about the motivations for increasing production, how the increase took place, and what consequences the increase had on the people of Orkney and the island environment.

My dissertation is a close study of activity involving plants at Quoygrew, an Orkney farm occupied from 800 AD to 1600 AD. By studying archaeological remains of seeds, I track changes in fuel use, land management, field systems, harvesting technologies, the introduction of crops, as well as increases and decreases in individual crops (mainly barley, oat, and flax) over time and between areas of the site.

With context provided by published reports on soils, mollusks, and mammal and fish bone gathered by an interdisciplinary team working at Quoygrew, I am able to describe the process of food production, track its trajectory, and compare with historically known events in Orkney, such as the institution of taxes and tithes and the Black Death. Careful study of one site is an important way to generate new hypotheses about the motivations behind increased food production, the means of establishing and maintaining a complex management system, and the end result of surplus production on humans and the environment.