The Exploitation of Sea-Mammals in Medieval England: Bones and their Social Context

Abstract

There is little evidence for the practice of whaling in Anglo-Saxon or later medieval England, even though whales were caught on the opposite side of the English Channel in Normandy and Flanders. Stranded whales were exploited by coastal communities, but from the eleventh century whales and other cetaceans were claimed by the king as ‘royal fish’. The difficulties of enforcing this claim against, on the one hand the holders of coastal lordships, and on the other against local inhabitants, led to recognition by the king of seigneurial claims. Whales and porpoises were a high-status food, though by the end of the Middle Ages whales may have been declining in popularity. It is argued that sodai aspirations and tensions were expressed in the possession and consumption of cetaceans. The finds of cetacean bone on archaeological sites are interpreted against the changes in their social value. Between about A.D. 1000 and 1300 bones are mainly discovered on high-status sites.