The Giant Canadian Culture Shift for a Better Canadian Society

Your First Culture

People have been surprised by this new culture shift. The move towards recognizing diversity and equity and inclusion. People grow up believing the tenants of Canadian society, that we're the land of the free, we have the right to choose who we are, and so forth.

As the subaltern peoples are raising their voice and demanding real change for equity and inclusion and recognition of Canadian diversity, the People of Privelege are mostly shocked. They believed that they weren't racist, or homophobic, or any of the kyriarchal names attached to them.

The truth of our history has begun to unravel and reveal itself. The people of privelege have seen that it is a lie. Institutions and Governments have been working hard to give people a framework within to work that doesn't upset the status quo. And they did it without consultation, without understanding exactly what the subalter are saying.

Your Beginning:

Clotaire Rapaille said it best:

Most people are exposed to one culture before the age of seven. They spend most of their time at home or in their local environment...

Therefore, the extremely strong imprints placed in their subconscious at this early age are determined by the culture in which they are raised. (p.22)

Your first culture has emotional imprints that affect you throughout your life. They are based on emotion and trust. They are what their parents taught them and so on backward in time until the colonists first arrived.

When it comes to the Canadian culture code, the code is "TO KEEP". Rapaille's explanation is as follows:

Canadians, for instance, seek leaders who are capable of maintaining the culture. As menstioned earlier, the Canadian Code for Canad is TO KEEP. This code evolved from the severe Canadian winters. Canadians learned from the beginning to use what they call "winter energy," to act so as to conserve as much energy as possible. They do not seek leaders with vision, capable of making major breakthroughs. Instead, they elect prime ministers who serve as guardians, who voters believe provide the best chance of keeping the Canadian culture the way it is. (pp187-188)

Our culture was born in colonialism and exploitation of the Indigenous nations. We have worked hard to maintain that cultural history as it is passed down from generation to generation.

While the government teaches us that we have all these freedoms and we are one people, hyphenated Canadians, "a multicultural society, an “ethnic mosaic,” in which people of different backgrounds and heritages are able to live together without losing their distinct identities.

[But] Canada’s policies with respect to the Indigenous Peoples within its borders contradict the idea of protecting the separate identities of minorities under one national umbrella... The ultimate goal of the Indian Act has always been the assimilation of the Indigenous Peoples as separate nations into mainstream Canada. (Facing History and Ourselves, 2021)

What this means today, is that we are still in this place, culturally we are still maintaining the colonial past through our enculturation processes. We don't like change, we keep.

The Culture Shift

So now we are experiencing the culture shift of our lifetime. The subaltern are tired of being subaltern and want to be and equal and included part of Canadian society.

We are discovering as a nation, that not all is equal, not all is fair, not all is inclusive. We're discovering the horrendous behaviour of our forefathers. The residential school system that was established to "...beat the Indian out of the Indian, [and] they had to make us feel ashamed of who we are” [Ellen Gabriel, 2019], in the child and make them White, even though they could never be White. The residential school system that murdered children and buried them in graveyards and unmarked graves. Watching the Canadian police treating Persons of Colour aggressively and disrespectfully.

The Covid-19 Global Pandemic has put us all into the same boat. The popular saying, "we're all in this together" has resounded loudly. But it has been discovered that we're not all in this together equally. And so it is time for all, especially Persons of Colour, collective voices to be heard and force a culture change from the old colonial historical culture, to a new truly inclusive, and equitable future, so that we can all be Canadians together.

Perceived Threat

The demand for culture change has been so loud, that the People of Privelege are beginning to fear that their history and culture is about to be cancelled at their expense. Protective movements, the rise of Aryanism and fascism, very conservative governments, religious groups acting out, are all scrambling to keep the status quo through controlled "change" but still in their colonial world view.

We need to listen for understanding and hear with compassion!

What they are missing is that it is not about culture cancellation, but rather the need to add the other voices, the subaltern voices, to the culture shift. Subaltern peoples are actually playing catch-up to the privilege of society of privelege. Their voice will bring their culture and history for meaning to Canadian culture. For a time, they will accelerate that voice and may seem like they're drowning out the priveleged voice, but it's not. It's actually making sure that they are heard. Canadians need to accept everyone's history and story as part of our country's social fabric.

We have to learn from our history. Colonial culture and history is brutal, divisive and soul destroying. We need to learn from our history and ensure that it isn't repeated, but changed for the better. If we change to be accepting of all people, all Canadians, we can create a new Canadian culture that is truly inclusive, equitable and diversity-ready. Then the Charter of Freedoms and Rights will apply to everyone, equally and we can develop our new culture on a people positive stance.

Something TO KEEP.

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References: Rapaille, Clotaire. The Culture Code: An Ingenous Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do.2006. Random House: USA.

Perez, Alexander. 2019. "Indigenous Women Say Canada’s Legislative is Discriminatory: Indian Act Continues to Harm First Nations Women, Petition Launched" in The Link. February 18, 2019. Concordia University: Montreal. source: https://thelinknewspaper.ca/article/indigenous-women-say-canadas-legislative-is-discriminatory

Facing History and Ourselves. 2021.Stolen Lives: The Indigenous Peoples of Canada and the Indian Residential Schools Examine the Indian Residential Schools and their long-lasting effects on Indigenous Peoples of Canada.16 Hurd Road, Brookline, MA. source: https://www.facinghistory.org/purchase-stolen-lives

Community Development and Anthropology -- it's all about the people Pt2

Yesterday I spoke about my interest in Anthropology and the successes I've had in using it throughout my life. But it has also set me up for successful community development. I have worked with a lot of grassroots organizations and individuals trying to use my background in Anthropology to build sustainable development in organizations by addressing certain issues as they arise.

Community Development is the capacity of people to work collectively in addressing their common interest. This is what it looks like building from the grassroots to political will.

1.Proactive People: Goal: People work together. Action:Creating clubs, groups, organizations that furthers their specific needs and goals. Such as afterschool groups, seniors groups, etc.

2.Leadership: Goal: Building leadership and skills development for community members. Action:Using human capital, community education. Such as group facilitation, project leadership, self-help groups.

3.Community Action: Goal:Being aware of a need and taking action. Community development and community organizing. Action: Communities taking action on the sustainable development goals such as climate or poverty.

4.Strenthening Community Connectedness: Goal: Creating connections between people, building connecctions and developing community identity. Action: Using social capital to create community and neighbourhood activities as well as participating in other community's and neighbourhood's activities.

5.Building Service Networks and Organizationa Infrastructure:Goal: Strong services network, via network building service systems (i.e. referrals), staff skill development, development of the network as a whole. Action: Develop interagency, multi-lateral partnerships; staff peer support projects; and, restructuring roles and responibilities across organizations.

This now becomes the community capacity building part of community development. Building community capacity is engaging community members in identifying challenges and building on the strengths that exist withing their community.

6.Community Building through Community Service Partnerships: Goal: Build community through partnerships: learning, gathering, idenfitying issues and community assets, dreaming to planning, action and outcomes. Action: Create partnerships, value participation, shared power driven by organizations and community equally

7. Economic Development: Goal: Economic capital, economic growth and justice driven by business and/or by people. Action: attend to poliltical needs or political community needs such as a new shopping development needed in the area, or a housing cooperative.

Community building works by building community in individual neighbourhoods -- neighbours learning to rely on each other, working together on concrete tasks that take advantage of new self-awareness of their collective and individual assets and in the process, creating human, family and socal capital that provides a new base for a more promising future and reconnection to the larger community.

Community Development and Anthropology -- it's all about the people Pt1

I built a strong base in my anthropological endeavours. Having interest in 3 areas of Anthropology has been fulfilling.

My first area of interest is my concentration on Socio-Cultural Anthropology. Learning about people, communities, societies and the enculturation and cultural development of people has developed from marginalization and immigrant communities, to exploring equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), human rights and the sustainable development goals agenda for 2030. In Canada, we are experiencing a huge culture-shift through the impetus of #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, the Residential School graves, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls enquiry, and so much more. All of these inputs have stronger voices and still have a fight on their hands for things like basic human rights, safe places, proper housing, job equity, and all the things that have been historically excluded in an ablest, white, male-dominated, heterosexual society that favours urbanism. We call it intersectionality. I have developed and taken many courses relating to intersectionality, equity, diversity, inclusion, gender-based analysis plus, sustainable development and human rights.

As a search and rescue search manager I have been a part of the recovery of the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Recovering their bodies gives me great satisfaction. They get their humanity back, they get their identity back, their families can better confront their grief and loss. There is no judgement from any of the responders about who they were but rather a sense of relief that another human has been found and will go through their human rite funerary process.

My second area of interest is Language and Linguisics. I have a larger than normal English language vocabulary which can be frustrating when trying to communicate with people. I incidently use a word that people don't understand and have to stop and explain myself. I'm working towards a regular vocabulary between grade 6 and grade 8 level to match the media's level of broadcast information. It's a challenge.

Not satisfied with all those English words, I dabble in learning other languages. Being a polyglot, means I never have to shut up and always have an opinion. :) I've learned to various fluencies about 15 languages, maybe more. I will stand by English as my go-to mother tongue and German as my second language. Then it gets a bit fuzzy. I'm conversational in Arabic, French, Signing Exact English (SEE2); I have basic Russian, Scottish Gaelic and Spanish; and, a smattering of Cree, Hawaiian, Hungarian, Japanese, Latin, Malay, Mandarin, Polish and Welsh. Whew! That's a lot of communicating and talking!

I have undertaken a research project in Afghanistan that involves deciphering ancient glyphs written on the stones just south of where the giant Buddha's used to be. In chalk, there is modern Persian but in red there are representatives of 3 languages and what looks like a family Tamga (crest). The three languages all were in use about or before the 4th century BC (Before Covid or BCE Before Common Era) and reflect the transience of a nation. The first language is Bactrian. It's what you'd expect in Afghanistan. The second language is Kharosthi, a language that soon merged with the Pamir language in the region. The third language is mind-blowing, but feasible. It's Ogham (ancient Irish). It supports the theory that the Celtic people emerged from the Caucasus Mountains and went east and west across Eurasia. The theory is still backed up by artifacts demonstrating language use in various places, particularly the Tarim Basin mummies found in Western China.

My third area of interest is forensic anthropology/archaeology. I am fortunate to indulge in this interest through ground search and rescue (or recovery), looking for deceased individuals. I have developed extensive knowledge in human osteology and comparitive osteology, looking for deceased people and reading on the subject. I even developed a course: Human Remains Site Management for Search & Rescue, that I have delivered to law enforcement and other search and rescue teams. As I said above in regards to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, I see that they get their humanity back, they get their identity back, their families can better confront their grief and loss.

That is essentially what makes me tick. It's my three areas of research and practice. I don't get paid for my anthropology, but then again it's my vocation, my calling.

Tomorrow, I'll draw the lines between my anthropology and community development.

Mapping the elephant ivory trade: New evidence revealed

Archaeologists from the University of York have conducted pioneering analysis on historic ivory, revealing where East African elephants roamed and where they were hunted in the 19th century.

Eastern Africa has been a major source of elephant ivory for millennia, with a sharp increase in trade witnessed during the 19thcentury fuelled by escalating demand from Europe and North America.

Desirable objects such as cutlery-handles, piano keys and billiard balls drove the extension of global trade networks and the industrialisation of the ivory-working industry. However, little was previously known about the precise origins of the hunted elephants and the trade-routes of primary suppliers at the time.

Conducting isotope analysis on historic East African ivory and skeletal remains, providing information about an elephant's diet and therefore likely habitat, scientists were able to determine the origin of previously un-localised ivory and map elephant geography in the region.

They found that ivory samples traded after 1890 match values of elephants living in forested interior regions of East Africa.

This supports previous evidence suggesting that an increase in hunting resulted in the eradication of elephants from along the coast of southern Kenya and northern Tanzania by the mid-19thcentury, driving trade inland.

Dr Ashley Coutu, lead researcher on the study and a Marie Curie Outgoing Global Fellow between York's Department of Archaeology and the University of Cape Town, South Africa, said: "Our results shed light on the significant historic ecological and socio-economic impact of the ivory trade, in addition to informing contemporary elephant conservation strategies.

"Today, elephants live in national parks and game reserves in these same landscapes, but are more restricted in terms of their movement than they would have been in the 19th century. Our database provides information on the historical ecology of these animals before there were regulations on their protection. By understanding elephant movement in the past, our research could potentially provide data to improve wildlife corridors for the movement of elephants between national parks and game reserves, which can often cause human-elephant conflict in these regions."

Professor Matthew Collins, Founder of BioArCh at York's Department of Archaeology and co-author of the paper, added: "Our findings help us to understand the interactions between humans and elephants during a time when there was an exponential demand for ivory from this region of Africa.

"Isotope and DNA analysis is often used to track the source of illegal ivory today. Our database of isotope values for both modern and historic East African elephants will add to the body of growing data to help us understand and track elephant populations on the African continent."
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Reference:

Science Daily. Past Horizons. 2016. “Mapping the elephant ivory trade: New evidence revealed”. Science Daily. Posted: October 19, 2016. Available online: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161019150915.htm

The fight against deforestation: Why are Congolese farmers clearing forest?

Only a small share of Congolese villagers is the driving force behind most of the deforestation. They're not felling trees to feed their families, but to increase their quality of life. These findings are based on fieldwork by bioscience engineer Pieter Moonen from KU Leuven (University of Leuven), Belgium. They indicate that international programmes aiming to slow down tropical deforestation are not sufficiently taking local farmers into account.

Forests, and especially centuries-old primeval forests such as in the Congo Basin in Africa, are huge CO2 reservoirs. When trees are cut down, large amounts of greenhouse gases are released. This contributes to climate change - both regional and global.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is in the world's top five in terms of amount of deforested land per year. According to the government, this is mostly due to subsistence farming and population growth. The argument is that small farmers grow crops to feed their own families. As there is a rise in population, farmers have to keep on clearing forest to increase the area under cultivation.

Bioscience engineer Pieter Moonen is preparing a PhD on land use and climate change in the DRC. He examined whether subsistence farming really is the main culprit for deforestation. For a year, he did fieldwork in 27 Congolese villages and questioned 270 households in a survey about agriculture and deforestation.

"Most of the people surveyed are farmers, and only half of them deforest. A very small group is behind most of the deforestation. Their motive is not self-sufficiency, but earning money. After all, selling crops on the market is one of the few ways to get cash. They need this money to cover the increasing cost of education and health care or to buy western consumer goods. The image of the poor farmer felling trees to feed his family is therefore incorrect. The slightly richer farmers are the ones deforesting to sell their agricultural produce on the market- although 'rich' is very relative in this case." A second important motive for deforestation is the possibility to claim the land that has become available as your property.

These findings are important for the implementation of the United Nations REDD+ programme. REDD+ stands for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. This initiative aims to slow down or end deforestation in developing countries by means of financial incentives.

"Now that the Paris Agreement on climate change is about to take effect, REDD+ is receiving a lot of attention. The Democratic Republic of Congo is interested in taking part: they want to fight deforestation in exchange for financial compensation. But their response to deforestation focuses too much on intensifying agriculture - increasing the amount of produce per hectare. The reasoning is that felling trees is no longer necessary if existing fields yield more produce. This is an effective strategy when dealing with subsistence farming, but it may have a perverse effect when applied to commercial agriculture. After all, it may stimulate the wealthier farmers to deforest more land, so that they have even more produce to sell. Therefore, without local support for forest preservation, the outcome of such interventions is very uncertain. In that case, we risk wasting money and valuable time with REDD+."

This study once again shows that a simple government approach to deforestation is not effective, Moonen continues. "A more effective and fair approach requires that you and the local communities reach a consensus on a sustainable system. This means that you have to agree on which areas are protected forest. You also have to set aside the necessary resources to support development: provide basic facilities and create opportunities to increase revenues, in the agricultural system and beyond."
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Reference:

EurekAlert. 2016. “The fight against deforestation: Why are Congolese farmers clearing forest?”. EurekAlert. Posted: October 21, 2016. Available online: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-10/kl-tfa102016.php

Recommendations for secure and sustainable European cultural landscapes

Following its final conference that took place in Brussels on 4 October 2016, the EU HERCULES consortium has provided stakeholders with a detailed set of policy recommendations that will preserve Europe's diverse heritage in cultural landscapes.

Over millennia, we have created and maintained cultural landscapes. They provide us with a variety of values and services that are essential for human societies to function and grow. These include cultural and recreational facilities, tourism opportunities, ecological and environmental knowledge, the ability to grow food, use medicinal resources, and extract raw materials. Cultural landscapes adapt over time, though with the dawn of the modern age, many have changed rapidly through factors such as deforestation and urbanisation. This has impacted their sustainability and raised concerns over the need to effectively preserve cultural heritage.

The three-year HERCULES project was formed to empower public and private actors to protect, manage, and plan for sustainable landscapes of significant cultural, historical, and archaeological value at local, national, and pan-European scales. But what exactly is a cultural landscape? The HERCULES project utilised the definition of landscape within the Council of Europe's European Landscape Convention (ELC): 'An area as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors.' At the heart of the ELC therefore is the premise that all places – be they natural, rural, urban and marine – are 'cultural landscapes', and are inherently dynamic.

A landscape approach to governance

Through their research, the HERCULES project team found that Europeans tend to feel that their landscapes are threatened, culturally, economically and environmentally. In Europe there tends to be a natural sense of conservatism with regards to the landscape and how it changes. Even in cases where landscapes were/are more or less stable, the team found that people still tended to believe that their landscape was threatened.

This is one of the key reasons as to why the project recommends a 'landscape approach' to environmental governance, an approach which is participative and transdisciplinary. This avoids the pitfalls of single-sector or single-discipline approaches and encourages the active participation of local citizens in finding the best means to not only protect and preserve their environment but also to help them embrace positive change to their landscapes.

Specifically from a policy perspective, the project recommends that EU policies impacting all land (urban, rural and marine) should be harmonised to avoid the ineffectiveness of policies that concentrate too narrowly on single sectors of economic land use, or that impact on sections of society that are too narrowly defined.

HERCULES also advocates that the landscape approach should be considered at every stage of the policy and decision-making process. This includes the development of policy areas and tools that have a direct or indirect bearing on the natural and/or human factors of the landscape.

A HERCULES Knowledge Hub to inform policymaking

The project team arrived at these recommendations by setting up nine 'study landscapes' that were located across Europe. They were selected to ensure a balanced representation of environmental and land use gradients within Europe and to encompass diverse European cultural landscapes. The data collected was also fed into the HERCULES 'Knowledge Hub', an online two-component system that allows users to view, explore, extrapolate and interact with the data collected from the nine sites.

The Hub also contains a wealth of further information that will be of great benefit to policymakers and other stakeholders, including examples of best practices for cultural landscape management, the lessons learnt from the 'Cultural Landscape Days' organised in five of the study landscapes, and evaluations of the potential threats to European cultural landscapes on a European scale.

With the project due to end in November 2016, HERCULES has been successful in bringing back landscapes to the forefront of the political agenda, arguing that an interdisciplinary and inclusive landscape approach is the best means to preserve Europe's vast cultural heritage and diverse environments.

Indeed the project has acted as a trailblazer, with further calls within the Horizon 2020 programme due in the near future for large demonstration projecting linking heritage and landscape preservation.
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Reference:

Phys.org. 2016. “Recommendations for secure and sustainable European cultural landscapes”. Phys.org. Posted: October 11, 2016. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2016-10-sustainable-european-cultural-landscapes.html

Piecing together bits of Norway’s medieval history

The National Archives of Norway’s stores some of its property three stories underground, beneath 25 metres of granite bedrock. Walls are thick around the seemingly endless shelves of books and documents. Pipes full of cables and wiring feed into holes in the walls.  Before these perforations were made for electronics and power, the walls were capable of withstanding a nuclear attack.

A shower head protrudes incongruously from a white wall.  You would not like to see it drenching all this valuable paper and parchment. But of course it was designed for washing off radioactive fallout on any survivors if the Cold War got hot. The thick walls and the unused shower tell the story of an earlier era.

Much older stories are found down here. The shelves are packed with state documents that have been in the hands of the National Archives since the institution was founded in 1817. Here are protocols from the Fredrikshald [now Halden] Toll Station on the border with Sweden, for instance. Of course census figures and statistics are dominant, just as even the most ancient notations on clay tablets are often linked to taxation and book-keeping.

Fragments of history

Tor Weidling and Espen Karlsen are employed respectively by the National Archives of Norway and the National Library of Norway. Their assignment is to hunt for bits and pieces of documents.

They page through old ledger books, trying to find even older fragments of manuscripts and documents used to bind them. The ledgers were sent from Norway to Copenhagen in the 16th and 17th centuries, when Norwegians were under Danish rule.

The books full of accounting figures were made of animal skin, or parchment. When making a book, the pages of parchment were sewn together with strong thread. Sometimes these threads ripped the parchment. So pieces of older parchment were added as patches to prevent the books from coming apart at the spine.

It is these recycled fragments that Weidling and Karlsen spend their time fitting together. Some of them contain texts and comprise parts of older manuscripts.

Specifically, the project involves identifying remnants of a book collection from the old Halsnøy Abbey on the Hardangerfjord in Hordaland County. This abbey on the spectacular Norwegian west coast was founded in 1163 and was dissolved with the Reformation in 1536. To date the researchers have found documents comprising nearly 40 books.

“All we have from Halsnøy are these fragments that we have found,” says Karlsen.

Their discoveries are contributing to knowledge about the Middle Ages and Norway’s cultural history.

Made in Norway

Karlsen’s curiosity was roused when he noticed the difference in sizes among the fragments of parchment. While most of the fragments used to strengthen ledgers were little bits, the ones from Halsnøy were fortunately quite large.

Weidling and Karlsen are sure these fragments are from Norway, even though the ledgers were sent to Denmark and spent centuries there. One indication is the discovery of such fragments on Norwegian accounts that had never been shipped south to Denmark. This means the fragments were added to the ledgers in Norway. 

“We have not come across a single fragment which with any certitude was added in Copenhagen. But there are lots that undoubtedly were fitted to the books in Norway,” says Karlsen.

Weidling offers material from Norway’s Akershus County as an example. Feudal overlords, lensherrer in Norwegian, distributed various goods and materials to bailiffs, men in their employ who among other services acted as tax collectors. Each of these had their own way of binding these parchments together and different parts of the country had their disparate methods too. Documents from Akershus are thus physically discernible from documents originating in Bergen or Trondheim.

Weidling doubts that the Danes would have done things this way – using different methods of bookbinding for the different parts of Norway, especially as all of these are unlike the way Danes did these tasks in Denmark. 

The bits of documents from Akershus could come from different churches. There were numerous churches in the county, which covers extensive countryside and towns around Oslo. It is difficult to determine which churches the fragments come from.

It is easier in smaller and more isolated locations, which is why documents from Halsnøy Abbey stand out. It was rather distant and isolated from Bergen and other towns and communities, making it easier to determine exactly where the pieces come from. 

After the Reformation, the administration of the Halsnøy district housed itself in what had formerly been the Abbey, so it is easy to imagine that when old parchments were needed, administrators just took those left by the medieval men who had formed a monastic community living under the rule of St. Augustine.

Recycling

The documents from Halsnøy Abbey were written in Latin, as were all the other bits and pieces that Weidling and Karlsen hunt down. Similar projects have run earlier with fragments of old Norse documents.

The recycled abbey documents were sometimes liturgical, mostly linked to church services. Song books are among them. Fortunately for posterity, as society and religion changed, things that were no longer of any use were not always discarded.

“This is definitely an example of recycling,” says Weidling.

Parchment came in a limited supply and even the elite in Norway who worked for the government centuries ago had to use it sparingly. It is a durable material but expensive, made from an inner layer of hides of calves or sheep. If large parchments were demanded the skin of a whole sheep was needed to make just one page. 

“The most extravagant I have heard of was a book made from 500 sheep,” says Karlsen.

So books were expensive. Of course the meat from the livestock did not go to waste, but plenty of skilled work went into making good parchment. To draw a comparison, the production of a book could represent a cost amounting to tens of thousands of dollars in today’s currency.

A century or two

The practice of recycling parchment was most common in the 16th and 17th centuries. From the mid-1600s it started to decline. 

“Some of the latest documents we have found using remnants from Halsnøy Abbey are from 1647,” says Karlsen.

As the 1700s approached, new parchment was used more often than old here on the Hardangerfjord. Weidling and Karlsen are not entirely sure why, but one explanation comes readily to mind.

“Perhaps the supply of medieval parchment manuscripts was depleted. Even at Halsnøy there had to be a limited number of them,” says Karlsen.
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Reference:

Einarsdóttir, Silja Björklund. 2016. “Piecing together bits of Norway’s medieval history”. Science Nordic. Posted: November 14, 2016. Available online: http://sciencenordic.com/piecing-together-bits-norway%E2%80%99s-medieval-history