Dear Colin,
You could try contacting Alexei Yurchenko at The Center for
Environmental and Technological History at the European University at
St. Petersburg, who works on the White Sea region in the Middle Ages.
You must already be familiar with Novgorod. Mark Maltby is the person to
contact about the faunal remains and I think his final report will be
submitted in 2006, but you can see an early version in Maltby, M. and
Brisbane, M. 2002. 'Love Letters to Bare Bones: A Comparison of Two
Types of Evidence for the Use of Animals in Medieval Novgorod',
Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 18, 100-118.
Regarding fox skinning in particular, have a look for the report on the
castle of the Livonian Order at Rakvere where fox remains supposedly
made up 80% of represented wild species. There is a reference to this in
Paaver, K. 1965. Forminovanie teriofauny i izmencivost' mlekopitajusih
Pribaltiki v golocene, Tartu. See Mugurevics's paper in Medieval Europe
Basel 2002 for more discussion of fur-bearer exploitation in the
medieval eastern Baltic.
You could try looking through Martin's 'Treasure of the Land of
Darkness: the Fur Trade and its Significance for Medieval Russia' (1986,
CUP), which may give you some more specific regional cues, but it's
based exclusively on written evidence, as is Delort's seminal work 'Le
commerce des fourrures en occident á la fin du Moyen âge : (vers 1300 -
vers 1450) ' (2 volumes, 1978, École Française de Rome).
I'd love to hear more about your site and any other other sites
associated with the medieval fur trade!
Aleks
Colin P. Amundsen wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I'm trying to find references for archaeological sites and hopefully
> zoo-archaeological references for sites involved in the trade of
> furs-especially Russian sites in the White Sea region. Although, any
> references to any sites involved in the fur trade would be helpful.
>
> I'm working on a site in North Norway (ca. AD 1200 -1600) where we
> are finding a few articulated fox skeletons and assorted bits of
> articulated paws-we're not talking about hundreds of individuals
> unfortunately. Signs of butchery are lacking and these individuals
> are all in association with an outside area of cook/smoking pits.
>
> Thank you for the help!
>
> Colin
>
>
> Graduate Center, CUNY
> Anthropology (Ph.D. program)
> 365 5th Avenue
> NewYork, N.Y. 10016
> USA
>
> Mailing Address
> Tromsø University
> Institute of Archaeology
> Tromsø 9037
> NORWAY
>
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