Project member Dr. Emily J. Ruiz-Puerta is first author of the new research article Greenland Norse walrus exploitation deep into the Arctic.
New high-resolution genetic sourcing methods indicate that walrus ivory traded into Europe from the Norse settlements in Greenland was harvested from very remote High Arctic hunting grounds, indicating that Norse interacted with Arctic Indigenous peoples and probably exchanged ivory in some of the earliest ‘full circle’ globalized encounters. The main finding shows that much of the walrus ivory traded to medieval Europe came from remote hunting grounds in High Arctic Greenland and possibly Canada, areas inhabited by Arctic Indigenous peoples. The new research indicates that theywere probably meeting and trading ivory several centuries before Christopher Columbus “discovered” North America.
The article is open-access, and you can find it here Greenland Norse walrus exploitation deep into the Arctic.pdf
The research team extracted ancient DNA from museum colelctions (Emily Ruiz-Puerta sampling at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa), Photograph: Emily Ruiz-Puerta