Archaeological Remains Accounting for the Presence and Exploitation of the North Atlantic Right Whale Eubalaena glacialis on the Portuguese Coast (Peniche, West Iberia), 16th to 17th Century
The former occurrence of the North Atlantic right whale Eubalaena glacialis on the Portuguese coast may be inferred from the historical range of that species in Europe and in NW Africa. It is generally accepted that it was the main prey of coastal whaling in the Middle Ages and in the pre-modern per...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:3914782 2023-05-15T16:08:15+02:00 Archaeological Remains Accounting for the Presence and Exploitation of the North Atlantic Right Whale Eubalaena glacialis on the Portuguese Coast (Peniche, West Iberia), 16th to 17th Century Teixeira, António Venâncio, Rui Brito, Cristina 2014-02-05 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3914782 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085971 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3914782 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085971 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Research Article Text 2014 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085971 2014-02-09T01:51:25Z The former occurrence of the North Atlantic right whale Eubalaena glacialis on the Portuguese coast may be inferred from the historical range of that species in Europe and in NW Africa. It is generally accepted that it was the main prey of coastal whaling in the Middle Ages and in the pre-modern period, but this assumption still needs firming up based on biological and archaeological evidence. We describe the skeletal remains of right whales excavated at Peniche in 2001–2002, in association with archaeological artefacts. The whale bones were covered by sandy sediments on the old seashore and they have been tentatively dated around the 16th to 17th centuries. This study contributes material evidence to the former occurrence of E. glacialis in Portugal (West Iberia). Some whale bones show unequivocal man-made scars. These are associated to wounds from instruments with a sharp-cutting blade. This evidence for past human interaction may suggest that whaling for that species was active at Peniche around the early 17th century. Text Eubalaena glacialis North Atlantic North Atlantic right whale PubMed Central (PMC) PLoS ONE 9 2 e85971 |
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Research Article Teixeira, António Venâncio, Rui Brito, Cristina Archaeological Remains Accounting for the Presence and Exploitation of the North Atlantic Right Whale Eubalaena glacialis on the Portuguese Coast (Peniche, West Iberia), 16th to 17th Century |
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Research Article |
description |
The former occurrence of the North Atlantic right whale Eubalaena glacialis on the Portuguese coast may be inferred from the historical range of that species in Europe and in NW Africa. It is generally accepted that it was the main prey of coastal whaling in the Middle Ages and in the pre-modern period, but this assumption still needs firming up based on biological and archaeological evidence. We describe the skeletal remains of right whales excavated at Peniche in 2001–2002, in association with archaeological artefacts. The whale bones were covered by sandy sediments on the old seashore and they have been tentatively dated around the 16th to 17th centuries. This study contributes material evidence to the former occurrence of E. glacialis in Portugal (West Iberia). Some whale bones show unequivocal man-made scars. These are associated to wounds from instruments with a sharp-cutting blade. This evidence for past human interaction may suggest that whaling for that species was active at Peniche around the early 17th century. |
format |
Text |
author |
Teixeira, António Venâncio, Rui Brito, Cristina |
author_facet |
Teixeira, António Venâncio, Rui Brito, Cristina |
author_sort |
Teixeira, António |
title |
Archaeological Remains Accounting for the Presence and Exploitation of the North Atlantic Right Whale Eubalaena glacialis on the Portuguese Coast (Peniche, West Iberia), 16th to 17th Century |
title_short |
Archaeological Remains Accounting for the Presence and Exploitation of the North Atlantic Right Whale Eubalaena glacialis on the Portuguese Coast (Peniche, West Iberia), 16th to 17th Century |
title_full |
Archaeological Remains Accounting for the Presence and Exploitation of the North Atlantic Right Whale Eubalaena glacialis on the Portuguese Coast (Peniche, West Iberia), 16th to 17th Century |
title_fullStr |
Archaeological Remains Accounting for the Presence and Exploitation of the North Atlantic Right Whale Eubalaena glacialis on the Portuguese Coast (Peniche, West Iberia), 16th to 17th Century |
title_full_unstemmed |
Archaeological Remains Accounting for the Presence and Exploitation of the North Atlantic Right Whale Eubalaena glacialis on the Portuguese Coast (Peniche, West Iberia), 16th to 17th Century |
title_sort |
archaeological remains accounting for the presence and exploitation of the north atlantic right whale eubalaena glacialis on the portuguese coast (peniche, west iberia), 16th to 17th century |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2014 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3914782 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085971 |
genre |
Eubalaena glacialis North Atlantic North Atlantic right whale |
genre_facet |
Eubalaena glacialis North Atlantic North Atlantic right whale |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3914782 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085971 |
op_rights |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085971 |
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PLoS ONE |
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9 |
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2 |
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e85971 |
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