PREHISTORIC ESKIMO WHALING IN THE ARCTIC - SLAUGHTER OF CALVES OR FORTUITOUS ECOLOGY

Two series of bowhead whale skulls were measured independently in 1977 -1978 at historical Eskimo whaling sites in the Siberian and Canadian Arctic. Both show a predominance of juveniles and/or sucklings in the prehistoric harvest, which is supported by postcontact ethnographic da ta and local oral traditions. The same was true for the prehistoric an d contact era indigenous gray whale hunting off the Chukchi Peninsula, Siberia. Whether such a selective extraction of calves was an ecologi cally disruptive activity or an efficient form of game management rema ins a matter of considerable controversy. This paper offers a new inte rpretation of this phenomenon as an outcome of a highly pragmatic stra tegy used by the indigenous arctic whalers in order to minimize the ri sk, time, and labor-investment of pursuing, killing, and processing th eir game. Some aspects of Eskimo whaling and bone utilization resemble the strategies used by Upper Paleolithic mammoth hunters of the Centr al Russian Plain.