Congratulations, you found me!
Hello, sheeple, I am Jonas, a lowly (but very grateful) PhD fellow trying to make his way in biomolecular archaeology at the University of Copenhagen.
My PhD project, Shearing Trough Time - Biomolecular Insights Into Viking Age Sheep Husbandry in Denmark (title is subject to change depending on my mood and levels of ambition), is one of several cogs making up the Textile Resources in Viking Age Landscapes-project (or TRiVAL for short) hosted at the Centre for Textile Research, SAXO, UCPH. The entire project is funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (grant no. DFF-2027-00204B) - for which I am forever grateful - and I have been fortunate enough to receive a generous grant from the Elisabeth Munksgaard Foundation as well.
My research
But now to the serious part. So, within the academic confines of the Danish Late Iron Age and Viking Age (c. AD 400-1050) textile archaeology there were two major developments (well, there were others, obviously, but these are the ones that currently keep me up late at night):
1) Around the 7th or 8th centuries AD we started to put sails on our ships and boats.
2) And with the Viking Age we (i.e. the textile experts of which I am not) can detect an overall change in wool quality from finer to coarser fibres. Weird, right? Why would the fibres become coarser of all things? And why did it happen to, basically, all the wool fabrics?
And this is where the plot starts to thicken a bit. So, with the genius idea of outfitting a mast with a large piece of fabric and thus harnessing the awesome power of Njord to push your longboats, we (and this includes me) postulate that the newfound love of large textiles must have had a rather significant impact on the demand for raw materials. And thus: sheep. However, as with loads of other things in archaeology (biomol-, zoo-, and textile ditto) this is something that is rather poorly understood or at least under-studied in my opinion. And it leads to a number of questions such as: was this change in fibre quality related to an introduction of new kinds of sheep? Perhaps sheep with different wool qualities than the “standard” Bronze Age and Iron Age sheep? Were these (hypothetical) new breeds better suited for producing sailcloth? Perhaps they provided more wool albeit of a different quality? Or could this be explained as simply a change in sheep husbandry practices where the sheep farmer sought to optimise their flocks for quantity rather than quality? And with an increased demand for wool did the number of sheep in pre-Medieval Denmark increase?
So, in order to not stay awake for prolonged periods of time when I am supposed to sleep and gather physical and mental strength, I take advantage of some of the 21st century’s finest biomolecular tools: ZooMS and ancient DNA analyses. First off, ZooMS is a top-notch tool to identify what are actually sheep and what are goats (who are a notoriously bad choice for making stuff like sailcloth). Secondly, aDNA is going to tell us what the proverbial genetic nuts and bolts of the actual sheep were and possibly answer questions such as what kinds of breeds were present and if they were “optimised” for wool production of a certain variety through selective breeding. High-tech stuff, people. And the coolest part is this: as far as I have become aware through my research, this kind of study combining textile archaeology, zooarchaeology and biomolecular archaeology has never been attempted - at least not on this scale - in a Danish, archaeological context. So if all goes well, Shearing Through Time is going to give unprecedented insights into Late Iron Age and Viking Age sheep husbandry and wool production. And who knows where this might take us? Maybe we’ll even become more knowledgeable about more sustainable modern sheep husbandry in a world where changing climates ostensibly provide a serious challenge for keeping modern sheep breeds (with zero genetic diversity) healthy and, you know, alive. But that is a story for a different time.
My teaching
Yes, I am a teacher too. At least that’s how I’d like to think about myself. During the autumn semester of 2023, as part of my duties as a PhD fellow, I had the opportunity to teach an undergraduate course, Advanced Archaeological Methods, which is part of the master’s programme in prehistoric archaeology at UCPH. It’s a two-parter: the first is based on a two-week field school where the students get their hands dirty through excavation as well as getting acquainted with different types of geological sampling techniques (basically drilling holes and looking very closely at dirt and what have you). The second part (where I come in) is a very benign intro to various natural science-based methods considered “advanced”. These include palaeoproteomics, ancient and environmental DNA, various shades of stable isotope analyses as well as a significant number of scanning-based tools such as uCT- and CT-scanning, photogrammetry and different kinds of laser and structured light scanning.
On the side, I currently supervise a BA student writing her thesis on ZooMS analyses of Early Iron Age faunal assemblages from the Northern parts of Sjælland. Off the books, I have provided a bit of guidance for students who are interested in looking into ancient proteins.
About me
Before I went down the rabbit hole of writing a PhD thesis I got both my BA and MA degrees in prehistoric archaeology at the University of Copenhagen. Here, I wrote an okay BA thesis on a very old-school topic: early Mesolithic settlement dynamics on the basis of (parts) of the lithic assemblage from the famous Danish site, Mullerup. Later I wrote my MA thesis on ZooMS analyses of Swedish ovicaprine remains (of which my PhD thesis seems like a sequel). Apart from this, I also spent my years as an undergrad delving into other areas of archaeology such as zooarchaeology, biological anthropology, experimental archaeology and funerary archaeology as well as forensic archaeology. However, I finally found my niche within palaeoproteomics and biomolecular archaeology on an unremarkable Thursday in 2013 when, as a BA student, I took part in an MA course on ancient DNA. And I haven’t really looked back since.
Oh, and sidebar: both during and after my years as a student I worked either part-time or full-time as a field archaeologist here in Denmark. During that time, close to 10 years, I tried my hands at almost every part of the field archaeologist’s experience from doing smaller or larger test surveys, full-on excavations of course, registration work, excavation management as a field leader and I even did a year as a maritime archaeologist - though I didn’t get to dive (something about needing to have a commercial diver’s license or something like that).
Nowadays I live an otherwise quiet life in the beautiful countryside of Northwestern Sjælland in a small-ish house I share with my wife (who is also an archaeologist - obviously), our son Eske, our Finnish Lapphund, Jukka, our four chickens and four goats. In what little spare time I have left between my research and taking care of an old house (and being a responsible family man) I enjoy spending time in nature either running, hiking or kayaking, camping, mountain biking, rock climbing, hunting (relatively successful) or fishing (absolutely unsuccessful).
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The horrors persist but so do I,
~ Jonas Holm Jæger