Desirable teeth

The medieval trade in Arctic and African ivory

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12876320
AutoresKirsten A Seaver (Stanford University, autor correspondente)
Ano2009
Volume4
Fascículo2
Páginas271-292
Data de publicação2009-06-08
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Global History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1740-0228 • E-ISSN: 1740-0236
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1740022809003155
OpenAlexW1974813263
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas14
Referências citadas8

This article examines the Danish archaeologist Else Roesdahl’s hypothesis that, by the early fourteenth century, an abundance in Europe of elephant ivory from Africa caused a price drop that edged out walrus ivory, with a devastating economic impact on Norse Greenland that directly contributed to the colony’s collapse. While it seems clear that artisanal use of walrus ivory fell from the late fourteenth century onward, and that Greenland exports of walrus ivory decreased in the fourteenth century, evidence for a pre-1500 price drop for African elephant ivory in the European market is lacking. Nor can it be demonstrated that European demand for walrus tusks shrank prior to 1500. Roesdahl’s speculations about changes in the ivory trade and their effect on the Norse Greenland colony are therefore open to question as an explanation for the colony’s demise. An alternative view is proposed, namely that reduced export of Greenland walrus ivory was initiated by the Greenlanders themselves in response to political and economic changes in the Atlantic and North Sea region, at a time when codfish drew English fishermen and fish merchants ever farther west into the North Atlantic, and that the Greenlanders took part in that westward movement

African elephant · Arctic · Biology · Cartography · Demise · Ethnology · Fell · Geography · Political science · Financial Crisis of the 21st Century · History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Ecology