Marine Turtle Consumption: From Ancient Taboo to Conservation Management

Summary

Remains of marine turtles occur regularly in the archaeological record. They provide insights into ancient subsistence and community practices. They also contain crucial information that can be used to create baselines for conservation. Their explanatory power is increased when the species exploited are identified. Here we describe an osteomorphological method which allows us to analyze fragmented postcranial elements of common Cheloniidae (Caretta Caretta and Chelonia mydas) to species and reconstruct species-specific exploitation patterns. We focus on two case studies from the Eastern Mediterranean (Turkey and Lebanon) which demonstrate that humans were selective in which sea turtle species they exploited. These multi-period case studies, in combination with published information about marine turtle exploitation in the region, also indicate long discontinuities in the archaeological record, which may be related to food avoidance. Size and sex reconstruction point at differing capturing techniques. Results have interesting implications for understanding human-marine turtle interactions with deep-time perspective.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 19911