Unveiling the Past: Exploring the Archaeology of Reindeer Domestication in Northern Fennoscandia through Geometric Morphometrics

For centuries, reindeer herding has been an integral part of the lifeway, socio-economy, and cosmology of the Indigenous Sámi of northern Fennoscandia. Despite its importance, the timing and details of reindeer domestication and early reindeer management remain unclear. Identifying domestic individuals in archaeological records remains challenging due to the presence of two interbreeding subspecies in Fennoscandia and a mixed socio-economic organisation of Sámi societies, which mainly combined wild reindeer hunting and small-scale reindeer herding. In recent decades, methodological advances in geometric morphometrics (GMM) have opened up new perspectives for studying domestication from archaeological records. This review summarises recent GMM research on reindeer domestication and examines its potential for the archaeological contexts of northern Fennoscandia. Considering analyses of reindeer bones and teeth, these studies offer valuable insights into changes in mobility and feeding behaviours induced by the domestication process, as well as the origins of domestication and early herd management strategies, contributing to the reconstruction of socio-economic changes within Sámi societies over time.