Household Ecology. Consumption and Wellbeing in Early Modern Iceland

"HECoW's aims are to quantify and qualify an observed increase in domestic consumption in early modern Iceland (1750-1900) in order to assess the effects new household material culture had on gender relations and the wellbeing of families. This will be achieved through an truly interdisciplinary, historical and archaeological, methodology applied to two different data sources: historical probate inventories and artefact assemblages from archaeological excavations. These sources will provide information on what new materials were consumed by families during this period, how their introduction and spread varied across the social spectrum, from poorer labourers to land owning farmers, and how they were distributed through time.

The project will be supervised by Prof. Lucas, who is a leading thinker in archaeological theory and practice. His supervision will provide the applicant with new abilities in archaeological analysis and increase her confidence in interpretation and communication of archaeological data. Specifically, his expertise in materially focused approaches and relational archaeology will guide the candidate in the application of the project's central theoretical concept of ""household ecology"" through which the affects of new material culture on gender relations and the wellbeing of households will be assessed.

The project's co-supervisor is Prof. Jónsson, who will train the applicant in historical approaches and the quantitative and qualitative analysis of probate inventories. Prof. Jónsson is an expert in Icelandic medieval and late medieval history and has studied Icelandic probate inventories and their use in historical research. His guidance will supply the applicant with new transferable skills in historical research, which will increase her employability and competence as a researcher.

The University of Iceland will provide a stimulative research environment and the necessary facilities to carry out this research successfully."

Household Ecology, Consumption and Wellbeing in Early Modern Iceland (HECoW) is a research project at the faculty of Humanities at the University of Iceland funded by a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship. HECoW’s aims are to quantify and qualify an observed increase in domestic consumption in early modern Iceland (1750-1900) in order to assess the effects new household material culture had on gender relations and the wellbeing of families. This will be achieved through an interdisciplinary, historical and archaeological, methodology applied to two different data sources: historical probate inventories and artefact assemblages from archaeological excavations.

The project is conducted by Dr Ágústa Edwald Maxwell under the guidance of Professor Gavin Lucas and Professor Már Jónsson.

The first task undertaken was to complete a list of all the probate inventories from a single county, which are archived at the National Archives of Iceland. In total, 2283 individuals were listed, whose probate inventories are preserved from the county of Skagafjarðarsýsla, dating to the period 1760-1910. The second stage was to sort the list by decade of creation and by value and select one inventory from each wealth quarterly from the decades 1770s-1900s. These records were then photographed for further analysis at the University of Iceland. This included listing all the items probated by category and type (i.e. kitchen things, bedding, clothing, agricultural implements) and breaking down all further information given into different categories, such as raw materials (e.g. ceramic, metal, wool), colour, age/condition and value. A total of 14224 objects were listed from 56 inventories.

The second task was to analyse the ceramic content of archaeological assemblages from the period. A total of five sites, which had a relatively large ceramic assemblage and were dated to the 19th century, were chosen for analysis. A total of 11459 sherds were catalogued. A selection of sherds was photographed in publication quality to show the variety of decoration and ware types present. The photographs were published on the project´s website.