When archaeologist Natalia Khamaiko first began digging in a vacant lot at 35 Spaska Street in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2007, her expectations have been low. Previous archaeological surveys had yielded little, regardless of the location’s location alongside what had as soon as been a thriving medieval waterfront, the place Norse retailers from Scandinavia traded furs for silver minted within the Islamic world.
Khamaiko and her colleagues had higher luck. They unearthed layer after layer of latest finds, preserved by periodic flooding from the Dniepr River. A layer relationship to the 1100s C.E. yielded gold wire, glass fragments, bits of carved ivory, an iron sword from Germany, and 1000’s of animal bones, together with 9 large fragments that turned out to be walrus snouts. Those snouts and carvings, historical DNA reveals, got here from a genetic group of walruses discovered solely within the western Atlantic Ocean. They counsel a thriving 4000-kilometer commerce route stretched from Greenland and Canada to the muddy banks of the Dniepr.
The discover “adds something very important and unexpected” to researchers’ understanding of commerce within the Viking age and early medieval interval, says Søren Sindbæk, an archaeologist at Aarhus University who was not concerned within the analysis.
Walrus ivory was one of the vital prized commodities in medieval occasions, valued throughout Europe and the Islamic world for its use in sword hilts, gaming items, and sacramental objects. Walrus tusks have been transported nonetheless hooked up to the animal’s snout, then damaged off as soon as they have been able to be carved. Scholars beforehand thought the medieval ivory commerce was regional, with artisans in Scandinavia utilizing tusks from Greenland and people in modern-day Russia and Ukraine sourcing ivory from the Russian Arctic. “Eastern European finds were from Eastern European walruses,” says James Barrett, an archaeologist on the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.
But the walrus skulls in Kyiv confirmed one thing else. When Khamaiko, Barrett, and different colleagues analyzed DNA preserved within the dense bone, they discovered the animals have been from a bunch identified to dwell solely in Greenland and jap Canada. “We were very surprised. We have never known before that there are finds like these in Kyiv,” Khamaiko, now an archaeologist on the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, wrote in an e mail.
Chemical traces within the walrus bone additionally matched walrus samples from Greenland and Iceland, however not samples from the Barents Sea north of Kyiv. And lower marks on the cranium fragments, maybe made as ornament or to assist snap out the tusks, resembled related marks on Scandinavian finds. Finally, close to the walrus snouts, Khamaiko’s staff recovered a handful of gaming items from a hnefatafl set, a chesslike board recreation widespread in northern Europe on the time; one was produced from walrus ivory. “They look exactly like similar pieces that were found in the Scandinavian countries,” Khamaiko wrote.
Archaeologists discovered these walrus cranium fragments in Kyiv, Ukraine, seemingly discarded after the valuable tusks have been snapped off for carving.James H. Barrett and Natalia Khamaiko
Together, the proof suggests the Kyiv walrus bones originated in Greenland and even the islands of the Canadian Arctic, somewhat than northern Russia, the researchers write this month within the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. “It’s a convincing result, and a surprising one,” Sindbæk says.
In an earlier examine, a number of the identical authors confirmed that Greenlandic walrus skulls in Europe obtained progressively smaller between 1000 C.E. and 1400 C.E., suggesting Norse hunters have been resorting to females and smaller animals as walrus populations declined. The new outcomes assist clarify why Greenland walruses could have been overhunted, Barrett says. “The poor walruses in Greenland … are not just supplying Western Europe. It was Eastern Europe, too, and also Byzantium via Kyiv, and possibly demand in the Islamic world.”
The walrus inhabitants’s decline may assist clarify the abandonment of Norse colonies in Greenland within the 1300s and 1400s, as hunters have been compelled into harmful voyages to chase ever-dwindling—and ever-more-distant—walrus populations. “It’s an extraordinary example of human exploitation,” Sindbæk says. “We’ve known walrus ivory was an important commodity, but it was difficult to see what scale we were talking about.”
The finds additionally help historic data of Viking-era commerce networks. Norse walrus hunters shipped ivory from Greenland to cities on the western fringe of Europe, together with Trondheim and Dublin. From there, the ivory would have been shipped throughout the Baltic Sea and down the Volga and Dniepr rivers to the Black Sea. Strategically positioned on the Dniepr, “Kyiv … was a hub for trade between Europe and the east,” Barrett says, and the center of the Kyivan Rus’ state that arose within the ninth century.
Fedir Androschuk, an archaeologist and head of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine who was not concerned within the analysis, says the brand new finds are richer than typical commerce items. He argues that 35 Spaska Street was owned by the Rurik dynasty that dominated Kyivan Rus’, whose royal residences have been simply up the hill. “There is written evidence about contacts between the Danish royal court and Kyiv princes in the 12th century,” Androschuk writes. “I think the walrus ivory is … a gift indicating connections between Danish and Rus’ elites.”
Excavations at 35 Spaska Street ended a decade in the past. But analyses of its finds proceed to inform a strong story of a well-connected early medieval metropolis. “Kyiv was an extremely large trade center,” Khamaiko says. “The owners of these houses had contact with the wide world.”