The prelude to industrial whaling: identifying the targets of ancient European whaling using zooarchaeology and collagen mass-peptide fingerprinting.

ABSTRACT: Taxonomic identification of whale bones found during archaeological excavations is problematic due to their typically fragmented state. This difficulty limits understanding of both the past spatio-temporal distributions of whale populations and of possible early whaling activities. To overcome this challenge, we performed zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry on an unprecedented 719 archaeological and palaeontological specimens of probable whale bone from Atlantic European contexts, predominantly dating from ca 3500 BCE to the eighteenth century CE. The results show high numbers of Balaenidae (many probably North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis)) and grey whale (Eschrichtius robustus) specimens, two taxa no longer present in the eastern North Atlantic. This dis

SUBMITTER: van den Hurk Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10498027 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature