A 9,000 Year History of Seal Hunting on Lake Baikal, Siberia: The Zooarchaeology of Sagan-Zaba II.

Sagan-Zaba II, a habitation site on the shore of Siberia's Lake Baikal, contains a record of seal hunting that spans much of the Holocene, making it one of the longest histories of seal use in North Asia. Zooarchaeological analyses of the 16,000 Baikal seal remains from this well-dated site clearly show that sealing began here at least 9000 calendar years ago. The use of these animals at Sagan-Zaba appears to have peaked in the Middle Holocene, when foragers used the site as a spring hunting and processing location for yearling and juvenile seals taken on the lake ice.