If you’re curious about how we combined zooarchaeology and medieval documents to trace porpoises across time, check out the new volume:
📖 Subsistence Whaling: Past History and Contemporary Issues
🔗 link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
🧵 That’s a wrap on porpoise pasts 🐬
From Mesolithic hunters to medieval status, harbour porpoises have had a long and symbolic journey through European history.
Thanks for following along! Feel free to ask questions and share thoughts!
🇳🇱 Dutch nobles, clergy, and even soldiers ate porpoise during sieges
🇵🇱 Porpoise hunting was taxed and commercialized in late medieval Poland
🇧🇪 Flanders saw porpoise tributes, gifts to abbots, and even a harpooned porpoise on a coat of arms
The harbour porpoise wasn’t just food — it was status
3. England wasn’t alone. Porpoises were important across medieval Northern Europe:
🛡 Vikings hunted them in the Irish Sea
🇫🇷 French cookbooks instructed noblewomen how to butcher and serve porpoise
🇩🇰 Denmark had winter porpoise hunts, royal laws, and porpoise steak in castle larders
2. Porpoises, peasants, and prestige recipes
🐖 Called mereswyn (sea pig), they were offered for rent, taxed, and even poached from bishops
👑 Edward III claimed stranded porpoises as royal property
🍽 The first English cookbook, from 1390, lists porpoise in porridge and stew.
1. Before porpoises were posh.
In the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, porpoises were hunted in the Baltic Region
Zooarchaeological finds show they were part of coastal diets. No banquets, just subsistence
That changed over time. Porpoises declined in later periods, only to reappear on menus
Did you know harbour porpoises were once considered food for kings in Europe? 🐬👑
In a new chapter written with @cetaceanyouri.bsky.social we trace the history of porpoise exploitation across Northern Europe from the Mesolithic to the Medieval
Curious? I’ll be sharing a few highlights 🧵
