A 9,000 Year History of Seal Hunting on Lake Baikal, Siberia: The Zooarchaeology of Sagan-Zaba II

International audienceSagan-Zaba II, a habitation site on the shore of Siberia’s Lake Baikal, contains a record ofseal hunting that spans much of the Holocene, making it one of the longest histories of sealuse in North Asia. Zooarchaeological analyses of the 16,000 Baikal seal remains from thiswell-dated site clearly show that sealing began here at least 9000 calendar years ago. Theuse of these animals at Sagan-Zaba appears to have peaked in the Middle Holocene, whenforagers used the site as a spring hunting and processing location for yearling and juvenileseals taken on the lake ice. After 4800 years ago, seal use declined at the site, while the relativeimportance of ungulate hunting and fishing increased. Pastoralists began occupyingSagan-Zaba at some point during the Late Holocene, and these groups too utilized thelake’s seals. Domesticated animals are increasingly common after about 2000 years ago, apattern seen elsewhere in the region, but spring and some summer hunting of seals wasstill occurring. This use of seals by prehistoric herders mirrors patterns of seal use amongthe region’s historic and modern groups. Overall, the data presented in the paper demonstratethat Lake Baikal witnessed thousands of years of human use of aquatic resources