Transnational Landscapes of Sámi Reindeer: Domestication and Herding in Northernmost Europe 700–1800 A.D.

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper presents the development of Sámi reindeer domestication and pastoralism in northwestern Sápmi, the homeland of the indigenous Sámi people, based on recent surveys in the Gilbbesjávri region, Finland. We have documented about 99 percent of known sites in the study area and present the first radiocarbon dates from herding sites in this part of Finnish Sápmi. Since Sápmi is transnational, archaeological data from the adjoining countries are included in the analyses. The features connected to the early use of domesticated reindeer appear by the 9th century A.D. in a mixed hunter-herder economy and suggest a tethered residential but dynamic logistical mobility. Major changes in site locations and features link with the initiation of nomadic pastoralism by the 15th century A.D., with a high residential mobility. The expansion of both early herding and mobile pastoralism appear to have been conscious, indigenous Sámi responses to wider socio-economic and environmental developments. “The Sámi have always lived in these parts, here in the Sámi homeland.” Sámi author and reindeer herder Johan Turi (2011 [1910], 10)