Transdisciplinary Analysis of Marine Mammal Use in the Norse North Atlantic and Subarctic

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Celebrating Anna Kerttula's Contributions to Northern Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This ongoing project, funded in 2015 by Anna Kerttula and the Arctic Social Sciences Program, uses historical, literary, aDNA, ZooMS, and archaeological data to identify patterns in marine mammal exploitation across the North Atlantic and Subarctic from ca. 800 -1800 CE. With over 230 samples of archaeological whale bone from sites in Orkney, the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland, our project has revealed a high number of blue whale remains, along with right whales, grey whales and a range of other species across approximately thirty archaeological sites. New translations of premodern Icelandic historical and natural history texts have revealed specialized knowledge and intensive use of large whale species in periods corresponding with the archaeological evidence. This paper will address the insights gained from transdisciplinary collaboration on reconstructions of premodern marine mammal use, and the complications of aDNA analysis from archaeological assemblages from Norse sites across the North Atlantic. This unconventional transdisciplinary project is one of many supported by Anna Kerttula that addresses critical environmental issues in the premodern and modern Arctic and Subarctic worlds.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Celebrating Anna Kerttula's Contributions to Northern Research

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23708