On the Hunt for Medieval Whales:Zooarchaeological, Historical, and Social Perspectives on Cetacean Exploitation in Medieval Northern and Western Europe

Medieval cetacean exploitation has been connectedto various societies, including the Basques, Norse,Normans, Portuguese, Frisians, and Flemish. The extentto which active whaling was practiced however remainsunclear. The possibility has even been raised that manyof these cultures relied on the opportunistic exploitationof stranded cetaceans in order to acquire the meat, bone,oil, and other resources that could be stripped from thecarcasses. Furthermore, primarily for the ninth to thetwelfth centuries AD, it has been argued that the symbolicsignificance of cetaceans surpassed their utilitarian valueand that their consumption was restricted to the socialelite. For many European regions, laws were set in placeensuring that any stranded cetacean was the property ofthe social elite (“wreck of sea right”). Both the nobilityand clergy of medieval Europe are frequently associatedwith the consumption of cetacean meat, presumablythe result of Christian dietary restrictions, as well asthe development of salting as a method of preservation,making cetacean meat more easily accessible.Zooarchaeology offers the possibility to reconstruct whichspecies were exploited and whether the social elite didindeed monopolize this. However, little research has beenconducted on zooarchaeological cetacean remains. Theidentification of cetacean fragments to the species levelis hard and specimens are frequently merely identified as“whale”, “cetacean” or even “marine mammal” resultingin a poor understanding of human-cetacean interaction inthe past.As part of this study, a literature review was undertaken forwhich medieval sites from Northern and Western Europewhere cetacean remains have been found were assessed.A total of 406 medieval sites with cetacean remains havebeen identified, with a total of 5528 cetacean specimens(NISP), representing at least eighteen different species.The context and the taphonomy of these specimens wereassessed and a select number of remains were re-examinedand Zooarchaeology by Mass-Spectrometry (ZooMS) wasperformed in order to identify the remains to species level.This study indicated that especially the harbour porpoise(Phocoena phocoena), North Atlantic right whale(Eubalaena glacialis), and the common bottlenose dolphin(Tursiops truncatus) are well represented in the medievalarchaeological record, indeed suggesting that manycultures performed active hunting on cetaceans. This wasespecially the case for the period of AD 1000-1350 and forthis period cetacean remains are frequently recovered fromhigh-status and ecclesiastical sites, suggesting that theexploitation and consumption of cetaceans was restrictedto the social elite. However, cetacean remains have alsobeen recovered from “rural” site types, signifying peasantefforts to undermine elite control of stranded cetaceans.As a result of the collapse of the North Atlantic rightwhale population in the fourteenth century, many culturesceased their whaling activities. Several specimens of thegrey whale (Eschrichtius robustus) were also identified,suggesting that active whaling might also have resulted inthe extirpation of this species from the North Atlantic. TheMedieval Period can therefore be seen as the dawn of aperiod of centuries of relentless and decimating whalingactivities