The migrations of sperm whales are impressive, and so, too, are the travels of their teeth.
In 2018, a team of archaeologists discovered a fragment of a sperm whale tooth at Valencina, a Copper Age archaeological site near Seville in southwest Spain. Deposited at the site over 4,000 years ago, the find represented one of the first discoveries from a Copper Age site in Spain, but its arrival at the site — some 40 miles from the sea — remained something of a mystery.
A new study in PLOS One solves much of this mystery. Tracing the tooth’s trip from the sea to the site, the analysis suggests that the ocean played an important part in the culture of Valencina.
“The sperm whale tooth studied in this paper is the only of its kind ever found in Copper Age Iberia,” the study authors stated. “The discovery of this piece underlines the presence of the sea in the worldview of the communities that lived or frequented Valencina.”
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Following Ivory From the Sea
Positioned on the plains of the Guadalquivir River, the Valencina site is a substantial Copper Age settlement, which was occupied between 5,300 and 4,200 years ago. Spread over 1,100 acres, it spans a larger area than any other Copper Age site in Iberia (and a larger area than most other Copper Age sites in Europe, too). The settlement itself includes dozens of buildings and thousands of basins, ditches, and pits, and it also boasts an impressive collection of Copper Age ivory.
Ivory was a valuable material in the Copper Age, thanks to its aesthetic appeal and its resistance to wear and tear. At the time, it was used to create a wide range of objects, including personal ornaments (such as necklaces), art (such as sculptures), and musical instruments. Because of this, its presence at a Copper Age site is often seen by archaeologists as an indicator of the artistic and cultural complexity of the community that settled there.
In Europe, the majority of Copper Age ivory was taken from land animals like elephants. In recent years, however, more and more ivory has turned up from marine mammals (including whales, walruses, and seals), meaning that the discovery of the sperm whale tooth was a special one, providing new insights into the Valencina community’s connection to the sea.
Combining 3D modeling with paleontological, taphonomic, technological, and contextual techniques, the study authors conducted a complete analysis of the tooth’s travels, spanning its journey from the death and deposition of the whale to its disarticulation, to its collection and modification in Valancina. The research revealed that the tooth traversed a complicated path to arrive at its burial place — a pit about a yard across — where it was intentionally placed, potentially indicating its meaning.
“It was intended as a votive offering,” the study authors stated. “This places the sperm-whale tooth in line with other highly-valuable and symbolically-charged artefacts.”
Tooth Travels
Taken together, the techniques applied to the tooth indicate that it probably came from an adult sperm whale, which died and descended to the seafloor, where it was colonized and scavenged by a variety of ocean organisms. Indeed, the apparent traces of mollusks and the probable bite marks of sharks suggest that the tooth spent some amount of time at the bottom of the sea before being transported to the coast by ocean currents.
Washing ashore, the tooth was covered with a crust of sediment and subsequently collected and cut. “This piece arrived to Valencina as an exotic product,” the study authors stated. “After its collection, it was manipulated, perhaps with the aim of using some parts of it as a raw material to manufacture other objects (such as personal ornaments) or to transform it into a symbolically-charged artefact.”
Whatever the purpose of the modification, the tooth was buried in a pit, where it waited to be discovered for over 4,000 years. Waiting to be discovered, too, were the cultural connections between Valentina and the sea, whatever, specifically, they might mean.
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Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
PLOS One. From the Jaws of the “Leviathan”: A Sperm Whale Tooth from the Valencina Copper Age Megasite
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. Valencina: A Copper Age Polity
Sam Walters is a journalist covering archaeology, paleontology, ecology, and evolution for Discover, along with an assortment of other topics. Before joining the Discover team as an assistant editor in 2022, Sam studied journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
