On the Hunt for Medieval Whales: Zooarchaeological, historical and social perspectives on cetacean exploitation in medieval northern and western Europe

Abstract

Medieval cetacean exploitation has been connected to various societies, including the Basques, Norse, Normans, Portuguese, Frisians, and Flemish. The extent to which active whaling was practiced however remains unclear. The possibility has even been raised that many of these cultures relied on the opportunistic exploitation of stranded cetaceans in order to acquire the meat, bone, oil, and other resources that could be stripped from the carcasses. Furthermore, primarily for the ninth to the twelfth centuries AD, it has been argued that the symbolic significance of cetaceans surpassed their utilitarian value and that their consumption was restricted to the social elite. For many European regions, laws were set in place ensuring that any stranded cetacean was the property of the social elite (“wreck of sea right”). Both the nobility and clergy of medieval Europe are frequently associated with the consumption of cetacean meat, presumably the result of Christian dietary restrictions, as well as the development of salting as a method of preservation, making cetacean meat more easily accessible. Zooarchaeology offers the possibility to reconstruct which species were exploited and whether the social elite did indeed monopolize this. However, little research has been conducted on zooarchaeological cetacean remains. The identification of cetacean fragments to the species level is hard and specimens are frequently merely identified as “whale”, “cetacean” or even “marine mammal” resulting in a poor understanding of human-cetacean interaction in the past. As part of this study, a literature review was undertaken for which medieval sites from Northern and Western Europe where cetacean remains have been found were assessed. A total of 406 medieval sites with cetacean remains have been identified, with a total of 5528 cetacean specimens (NISP), representing at least eighteen different species. The context and the taphonomy of these specimens were assessed and a select number of remains were re-examined and Zooarchaeology by Mass-Spectrometry (ZooMS) was performed 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 medieval archaeological record, indeed suggesting that many cultures performed active hunting on cetaceans. This was especially the case for the period of AD 1000-1350 and for this period cetacean remains are frequently recovered from high-status and ecclesiastical sites, suggesting that the exploitation and consumption of cetaceans was restricted to the social elite. However, cetacean remains have also been recovered from “rural” site types, signifying peasant efforts to undermine elite control of stranded cetaceans. As a result of the collapse of the North Atlantic right whale population in the fourteenth century, many cultures ceased their whaling activities. Several specimens of the grey whale (Eschrichtius robustus) were also identified, suggesting that active whaling might also have resulted in the extirpation of this species from the North Atlantic. The Medieval Period can therefore be seen as the dawn of a period of centuries of relentless and decimating whaling activities.