On the Hunt for Medieval Whales

Medieval people in northern and western Europe hunted and ate whales, dolphins and porpoises, and this practice has been linked with Basque, Norse, Norman and Flemish societies. The study focuses mainly on the ninth to twelfth centuries AD.

A key argument is that cetaceans may have carried more symbolic weight than practical value, and that their consumption may have been limited to the social elite. Whether active whaling took place remains unclear. One problem is that bone fragments are often labelled simply 'whale', because they are hard to identify to species, which hides what people were really hunting.

Zooarchaeological work for the book found that cetacean exploitation was widespread, with the harbour porpoise, the common bottlenose dolphin and the North Atlantic right whale frequently targeted. BAR Publishing released the book in 2020.ISBN-13: 9781407357201.