Late Iron Age Whaling in Scandinavia

• Published in: Journal of Maritime Archaeology
• Main Authors: Hennius, Andreas, Ljungkvist, John, Ashby, Steve, Hagan, Richard, Presslee, Samantha, Christensen, Tom, Peets, Juuri, Rudolf, Gustavsson
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Eubalaena glacialis; North Atlantic; North Atlantic right whale; walrus*
• Online Access: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/194780/; https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/194780/1/s11457_022_09349_w.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1007/s11457-022-09349-w

The use of bone from marine mammals as raw material in the manufacturing of gaming pieces in the Scandinavian late Iron Age have been observed and discussed during the last few years. New empirical studies have created a chronology as well as a typology showing how the design of the gaming pieces is tightly connected to different choices of raw material from antler in the roman and migration period, to whalebone in the 6 th century and walrus in the 10th century. The ocular examination of the whalebone can, however, rarely go beyond a determination of bone from cetaceans. The following article presents the results from 68 samples of whalebone gaming pieces that have been species determined using ZooMSms. The results show a consistent use of bones from North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) and is thus a strong argument for there being an active and largescale hunt for this type of whale starting inthe 6 h century. However, the manufacturing of gaming pieces was most likely not the reason for hunting whales, but merely a by-product that has survived in the archaeological record. Of greater importance was probably baleen, meat and the blubber that could be rendered into oil. The oil might have been an additional trading product on the far-reaching trade networks developing during the period.