What is it about?
Archaeologists, historians and linguists have long debated whether the Vikings settled northern Scotland following a long, perhaps peaceful and trade-focused , relationship with the locals, or suddenly and violently. An important part of the argument was a suggestion that early, local-style combs were made of reindeer antler (which comes from Scandinavia), proving that the two groups were trading early on. However, by using a high-tech protein "fingerprinting" tool (ZooMS) and DNA testing on 20 of these combs, we found that the earlier IDs were incorrect. Every local comb-style was actually made from red deer, while only the "Viking-style" combs were made of reindeer antler. -
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Why is it important?
This discovery debunks the theory of a long history of peaceful trade prior to the start of the Viking Age, and shows that there is no evidence for a Viking presence in Scotland until much later in the 800s.
Perspectives
This was the first paper in which we applied ZooMS to Viking combs. It helped us to answer a question I’d been wrestling with since before my PhD, and we’d expand our use of the technique considerably over the next few years.
Dr Steven P Ashby
University of York
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Searching for Scandinavians in pre-Viking Scotland: molecular fingerprinting of Early Medieval combs, Journal of Archaeological Science, January 2014, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2013.07.026.
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