Humans are known to exploit plant and animal resources for a variety of purposes. Subsistence is the most obvious of these, but there are also social and technological reasons behind such activities, not to mention ideological and spiritual motives for exploitation. In order to maximise exploitation of resources, human often exploit ecotones, where several ecological zones exist in close proximity. The seashore is such an ecotone, and sea mammals are just one of many groups of resources who are available here. This volume looks to address some of the vast array of coastal adaptations that have occurred during the human past and the role that sea mammals have played in them.
Preface (Umberto Albarella, Keith Dobney and Peter Rowley-Conwy); Foreword; From the Palaeolithic to the present-day: The research value of marine mammal remains from archaeological contexts and the uses of contemporary museum reference collections (Richard Sabin); Retreat and resilience: Fur seals and human settlement in New Zealand (Ian Smith); Archaeofaunal insights on pinniped-human interactions in the northeastern Pacific (Diane Gifford-Gonzalez et al); Aleut sea-mammal hunting: Ethnohistorical and archaeological evidence (Lucy Johnson); Dorset Palaeoeskimo harp seal exploitation at Philip's Garden (Eebi-1), northwestern Noewfoundland (Lisa Hodgetts); Late Neolithic seal hunting in southern Brittany: A zooarchaeological study of the site of Er Yoh (Morbihan) (Kate V. Boyle); Human exploitation and history of seals in the Baltic during the late Holocene (Jan Stora and Lembi Lougas); Prehistoric dolphin hunting on Santa Cruz Island, California (Michael Glassow); Cetaceans and human beings at the uttermost part of America: A lasting relationship in Tierra del Fuego (Ernesto L. Piana); An oil utility index for whale bones (Gregory G. Monks); A whale of a problem: Zooarchaeology and modern whaling (Jacqui Mulville); Discussion: Sea mammals in zooarchaeology AD 2002 (Gregory G. Monks).
edited by Gregory G Monks