Date: June 13, 2018
Source: Uppsala University
The intensive whaling that has
pushed many species to the brink of extinction today may be several centuries
older than previously assumed. This view is held by archaeologists from Uppsala
and York whose findings are presented in the European Journal of
Archaeology.
Museum collections in Sweden
contain thousands of Iron Age board-game pieces. New studies of the raw
material composing them show that most were made of whalebone from the mid-6th
century CE. They were produced in large volumes and standardised forms. The
researchers therefore believe that a regular supply of whalebone was needed.
Since the producers would hardly have found the carcasses of beached whales a
reliable source, the gaming pieces are interpreted as evidence for whaling.
Apart from an osteological
survey, species origin has been determined for a small number of game pieces,
using ZooMS (short for Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometer). The method shows
that all the pieces analysed were derived from the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis), a massive whale
weighing 50-80 tonnes. It got the name because it was the right whale to hunt:
it swam slowly, close to shore, and contained so much blubber as to float after
being killed.
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