Scotland has over a thousand-year history of marine mammal exploitation dating back to the Stone Age. For example, cetacean bone was used as a building material in the wood-impoverished Orkney Islands; whale mandibles were used as rafters and in walls at the Neolithic site at Skara Brae in Orkney (Childe 1931). Sperm whale and bottlenose whale specimens were found at a Bronze Age site and sperm whale, minke whale, bottlenose whale and bottlenose dolphin artifacts have been found at a variety of Iron Age sites in South Uist (Mulville 2002). There is little evidence to suggest that these whales were butchered for food, but rather their bones used as building materials, turned into tools or utensils, and even burnt as fuel (Mulville 2002). Moreover a lack of harpoons or other tools to catch cetaceans suggest that these animals were stranded or very occasional catches rather than actively hunted (Mulville 2002).
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