Palaeoproteomics identifies beaver fur in Danish high-status Viking Age burials - direct evidence of fur trade
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Palaeoproteomics identifies beaver fur in Danish high-status Viking Age burials - direct evidence of fur trade. / Brandt, Luise Ørsted; Taurozzi, Alberto J.; Mackie, Meaghan; Sinding, Mikkel Holger S.; Vieira, Filipe Garrett; Schmidt, Anne Lisbeth; Rimstad, Charlotte; Collins, Matthew J.; Mannering, Ulla.
In: PLoS ONE, Vol. 17, No. 7, e0270040, 2022.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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T1 - Palaeoproteomics identifies beaver fur in Danish high-status Viking Age burials - direct evidence of fur trade
AU - Brandt, Luise Ørsted
AU - Taurozzi, Alberto J.
AU - Mackie, Meaghan
AU - Sinding, Mikkel Holger S.
AU - Vieira, Filipe Garrett
AU - Schmidt, Anne Lisbeth
AU - Rimstad, Charlotte
AU - Collins, Matthew J.
AU - Mannering, Ulla
N1 - Publisher Copyright: Copyright: © 2022 Brandt et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Fur is known from contemporary written sources to have been a key commodity in the Viking Age. Nevertheless, the fur trade has been notoriously difficult to study archaeologically as fur rarely survives in the archaeological record. In Denmark, fur finds are rare and fur in clothing has been limited to a few reports and not recorded systematically. We were therefore given access to fur from six Danish high status graves dated to the Viking Age. The fur was analysed by aDNA and palaeoproteomics methods to identify the species of origin in order to explore the Viking Age fur trade. Endogenous aDNA was not recovered, but fur proteins (keratins) were analysed by MALDI-TOF-MS and LC-MS/MS. We show that Viking Age skin clothing were often composites of several species, showing highly developed manufacturing and material knowledge. For example, fur was produced from wild animals while leather was made of domesticates. Several examples of beaver fur were identified, a species which is not native to Denmark, and therefore indicative of trade. We argue that beaver fur was a luxury commodity, limited to the elite and worn as an easily recognisable indicator of social status.
AB - Fur is known from contemporary written sources to have been a key commodity in the Viking Age. Nevertheless, the fur trade has been notoriously difficult to study archaeologically as fur rarely survives in the archaeological record. In Denmark, fur finds are rare and fur in clothing has been limited to a few reports and not recorded systematically. We were therefore given access to fur from six Danish high status graves dated to the Viking Age. The fur was analysed by aDNA and palaeoproteomics methods to identify the species of origin in order to explore the Viking Age fur trade. Endogenous aDNA was not recovered, but fur proteins (keratins) were analysed by MALDI-TOF-MS and LC-MS/MS. We show that Viking Age skin clothing were often composites of several species, showing highly developed manufacturing and material knowledge. For example, fur was produced from wild animals while leather was made of domesticates. Several examples of beaver fur were identified, a species which is not native to Denmark, and therefore indicative of trade. We argue that beaver fur was a luxury commodity, limited to the elite and worn as an easily recognisable indicator of social status.
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0270040
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0270040
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 35895633
AN - SCOPUS:85135077114
VL - 17
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
SN - 1932-6203
IS - 7
M1 - e0270040
ER -
ID: 316060209