Walruses on the Dnieper: new evidence for the intercontinental trade of Greenlandic ivory in the Middle Ages

Abstract

Mediaeval walrus hunting in Iceland and Greenland—driven by Western European demand for ivory and walrus hide ropes—has been identified as an important pre-modern example of ecological globalization. By contrast, the main origin of walrus ivory destined for eastern European markets, and then onward trade to Asia, is assumed to have been Arctic Russia. Here, we investigate the geographical origin of nine twelfth-century CE walrus specimens discovered in Kyiv, Ukraine—combining archaeological typology (based on chaîne opératoire assessment), ancient DNA (aDNA) and stable isotope analysis. We show that five of seven specimens tested using aDNA can be genetically assigned to a western Greenland origin. Moreover, six of the Kyiv rostra had been sculpted in a way typical of Greenlandic imports to Western Europe, and seven are tentatively consistent with a Greenland origin based on stable isotope analysis. Our results suggest that demand for the products of Norse Greenland's walrus hunt stretched not only to Western Europe but included Ukraine and, by implication given linked trade routes, also Russia, Byzantium and Asia. These observations illuminate the surprising scale of mediaeval ecological globalization and help explain the pressure this process exerted on distant wildlife populations and those who harvested them.

Holocene deglaciation drove rapid genetic diversification of Atlantic walrus

“…The lack of detectable declines in effective population size and genetic diversity in the eastern clade is surprising given the substantial Norse exploitation of walruses and complete eradication of populations in Iceland [ 33 , 34 , 96 ]. The estimated decline at 2–1 kya in the western clade overlaps partly with the early period of Norse walrus exploitation [ 33 , 95 ], but predates exploitation and eradication of walrus in the Canadian Maritimes by the Basque and other European whalers [ 80 ].…”

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

“…This phenomenon is not without parallels in the annals of human resource exploitation, be it of marine or terrestrial/avian species. The examples of the passenger pigeon [ 29 ], the European sea sturgeon [ 27 ] and the northern cod [ 26 ] were noted above, and it has previously been argued that the Atlantic walruses ( Odobenus rosmarus rosmarus ) of mediaeval Greenland suffered a similar fate [ 31 , 72 ]. In the case of the grey whale and North Atlantic right whale, the process unfolded over centuries and entailed comparatively long-lived migratory taxa, thus making it difficult for a downward trajectory to be fully recognized or successfully reversed.…”

Tracing 600 years of long-distance Atlantic cod trade in medieval and post-medieval Oslo using stable isotopes and ancient DNA

“…Between ca. 400 and 650 mg of bone material was processed following the protocols of Barrett, Khamaiko [55] and references therein, with the exclusion of a lipid removal step (given the negligible level of fat present in archaeological cod bones). For δ 13 C and δ 15 N, the extracted collagen was analysed in triplicate at the Godwin Laboratory, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, using a Costech elemental analyser coupled to a Thermo Finnigan Delta V IRMS.…”