Islands of change vs. islands of disaster: Managing pigs and birds in the Anthropocene of the North Atlantic

Brewington, S; Hicks, H; Edwald, Á; Einarsson, Á; Anamthawat-Jónsson, K; Cook, G; Ascough, P; Sayle, KL; Arge, SV; Church, MJ; Bond, J; Dockrill, S; Friðriksson, A; Hambrecht, G; Juliusson, AD; Hreinsson, V; Hartman, S; Smiarowski, K; Harrison, R; McGovern, TH

doi:10.1177/0959683615591714

Islands of change vs. islands of disaster: Managing pigs and birds in the Anthropocene of the North Atlantic

Brewington, S; Hicks, H; Edwald, Á; Einarsson, Á; Anamthawat-Jónsson, K; Cook, G; Ascough, P; Sayle, KL; Arge, SV; Church, MJ; Bond, J; Dockrill, S; Friðriksson, A; Hambrecht, G; Juliusson, AD; Hreinsson, V; Hartman, S; Smiarowski, K; Harrison, R; McGovern, TH

Authors

S Brewington

H Hicks

Á Edwald

Á Einarsson

K Anamthawat-Jónsson

G Cook

P Ascough

KL Sayle

SV Arge

Professor Mike Church m.j.church@durham.ac.uk
Professor

J Bond

S Dockrill

A Friðriksson

G Hambrecht

AD Juliusson

V Hreinsson

S Hartman

K Smiarowski

R Harrison

TH McGovern

Abstract

The offshore islands of the North Atlantic were among some of the last settled places on earth, with humans reaching the Faroes and Iceland in the late Iron Age and Viking period. While older accounts emphasizing deforestation and soil erosion have presented this story of island colonization as yet another social–ecological disaster, recent archaeological and paleoenvironmental research combined with environmental history, environmental humanities, and bioscience is providing a more complex understanding of long-term human ecodynamics in these northern islands. An ongoing interdisciplinary investigation of the management of domestic pigs and wild bird populations in Faroes and Iceland is presented as an example of sustained resource management using local and traditional knowledge to create structures for successful wild fowl management on the millennial scale.

Citation

Brewington, S., Hicks, H., Edwald, Á., Einarsson, Á., Anamthawat-Jónsson, K., Cook, G., …McGovern, T. (2015). Islands of change vs. islands of disaster: Managing pigs and birds in the Anthropocene of the North Atlantic. Holocene, 25(10), 1676-1684. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683615591714

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	May 15, 2015
Online Publication Date	Jul 1, 2015
Publication Date	Jul 1, 2015
Deposit Date	Jul 8, 2015
Publicly Available Date	Jul 15, 2016
Journal	Holocene
Print ISSN	0959-6836
Electronic ISSN	1477-0911
Publisher	SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	25
Issue	10
Pages	1676-1684
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683615591714
Public URL	https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1402699

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