Packing of the Litlibær animal bones

The packing of the animal remains from Litlibær was done according to the rules of the National Museum of Iceland (Þjóðminjasafns Íslands) (Leiðbeiningar um umhirðu forngripa og

frágang sýna, 2013) and all animal remains from the Litlibær excavation are permanently

archived at the National Museum of Iceland.

The animal remains had been cleaned on site and were packed with find numbers in

the format 2012-22-XXX. During analysis all animal bones are re-bagged according to species

identification. Bones which can’t be identified to species go together in a bag (LTM; MTM;

UNIM and UNI). Each bag is labelled with the ÞJMS number, context number and identification code following the NABONE manual 9th edition (North Atlantic Biocultural

Organization Zooarchaeology Working Group, 2010) or full species name. A Tyvek label with

the same information written in pigment ink is also placed in each bone bag. All elements

which are measured as well as mandibles with teeth are bagged separately and they get a

database number and those numbers are written on both the bag and Tyvek label. Any

artefacts found among the animal bones are bagged separately and handed to the excavation

director for analysis.

Figure 3: A typical bag and Tyvek label from the Litlibær animal bone collection. Scale 2 cm. Photo: Albína Hulda Pálsdóttir.