Integrating cultural and biological perspectives on long-term human-walrus (Odobenus rosmarus rosmarus) interactions across the North Atlantic

Abstract

The hunting of marine mammals as a source of subsistence, trade, and commercial revenue has formed an important part of human cultures across the North Atlantic. One important prey species has been the Atlantic walrus (Odobenus rosmarus rosmarus), sought after for meat, skin, blubber, ivory, and bone. Unfortunately, biological studies of current walrus populations and studies across the humanities and social sciences into past use and hunting of walruses, have been poorly integrated. Disciplinary boundaries have left a gap in understanding the reciprocal effects of human-walrus interactions. Emerging interdisciplinary methods offer new opportunities to write the historical ecology of Atlantic walruses. The integration of methods such as ancient DNA, isotopes, past population modelling, zooarchaeological assemblages, and ethnographic interviews can now be used to answer previously intractable questions. For example, how has walrus hunting shaped and been influenced by changes in human settlement and trade, what have been the cumulative impacts on walrus populations, the extent of anthropogenic selective pressures or the effect of changing hunting regimes on particular populations of walruses? New, collaborative research approaches applied to the wealth of Arctic archaeological faunal remains already housed in museum collections offer a unique chance to explore the past dynamics of human-animal interactions.

What about Exotic Species? Significance of Remains of Strange and Alien Animals in the Baltic Sea Region, Focusing on the Period from the Viking Age to High Medieval Times (800–1300 CE)

“…People from Scandinavia first encountered the walrus (Odobenus rosmarus) when they reached and then settled in Iceland around 870 CE, and then moved to Greenland [72,73]. In the following centuries, walrus tusk ivory became a highly desired product in the Viking Age and early Medieval north-west Europe.…”

Introduction to the Paleoecology of Subarctic and Arctic Seas (PESAS)

“…Biogeographically isolated in each ocean basin, but with shared evolutionary histories, respectively, walrus and cod were, and in some cases still are, highly utilized resources in both the subsistence and commercial realms of the subarctic North Atlantic and North Pacific. Xénia Keighley and colleagues (2019) frame a series of vital questions about human-walrus interactions through time in the North Atlantic based on a deep literature review of Atlantic walrus research from aDNA to faunal analyses. Despite in-depth modern biological and ecological research on walruses, the authors highlight how poorly we understand the role of past human hunting (at both the subsistence and commercial levels) and it's impacts on our current “baseline” for walrus populations.…”

Predicting sample success for large‐scale ancient DNA studies on marine mammals

“…Bro‐Jørgensen et al, 2018; Keighley, Pálsson, et al, 2019; Larson et al, 2007; Star et al, 2017). Such information is often not discernible from modern material as genetic signatures of the past are increasingly likely to be lost with time, particularly when lineages go extinct (e.gKeighley et al, 2019; McLeod et al, 2014; Palkopoulou et al, 2018), populations undergo bottlenecks (e.gAlter et al, 2012; Palkopoulou et al, 2015) or are subject to selective sweeps (Foote et al, 2012; Leonardi et al, 2017). These processes all contribute uncertainty and a lack of resolution for analyses or projections based upon modern samples.…”