Boom and bust at a medieval fishing port: dietary preferences of fishers and artisan families from Pontevedra (Galicia,
- PDF / 1,580,137 Bytes
- 15 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 59 Downloads / 156 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Boom and bust at a medieval fishing port: dietary preferences of fishers and artisan families from Pontevedra (Galicia, NW Spain) during the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period Olalla López-Costas 1,2,3 & Gundula Müldner 4 Received: 29 March 2018 / Accepted: 3 October 2018 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract Here, we present an investigation of dietary habits in a town whose history is strongly connected to a single food product: fish. Pontevedra (Galicia, Spain) controlled a big part of fish commerce in the Iberian Peninsula during the Late Medieval period, only losing its position with the beginning of modern era. Burials from the churches of Santa María (thirteenth to seventeenth centuries AD), the necropolis of fishers, and San Bartolomé (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries AD), with a parish mostly made up of craftspeople, were studied to address questions of diet and subsistence practices. A total of 89 samples, including 63 humans, 18 terrestrial and 8 marine animals, were analysed for isotopic composition of bone collagen (δ13C and δ15N). The results show that domestic herbivores were fed a fodder almost exclusively based on C3 plants, while dogs and a cat consumed significant quantities of fish. Humans ate a similar, mixed terrestrial/marine diet, but probably also with an important contribution from C4 plants, most likely millet, or, from c. AD 1600 onwards, maize. Fishermen and their families buried at Santa María could have had preferential access to exported target sea products enriched in 15N (salted sardine, conger eel, hake and octopus), while other marine products may have been more common on the rest of the town’s tables. The decline in fishing activity in the sixteenth– seventeenth centuries appears to have been accompanied by a diversification of diet. The dietary habits of the middle-class urban inhabitants of Pontevedra are closely connected to its economic history and environmental changes. Keywords Fish diet . Late Medieval . Paleodiet . Pontevedra . Stable isotopes . Stature
Introduction Diet is a basic aspect of human lifestyle as important as health or social organization (Mintz and Du Bois 2002). In many ways, it defines the relationship between people and their
* Olalla López-Costas [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Present address: Group Earth System Science (GI-1553), Faculty of Biology, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Avda. Lope Gómez de Marzoa s/n, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña, Spain
2
Archaeological Research Laboratory, Stockholm University, Wallenberglaboratoriet, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden
3
Department of Legal Medicine, Laboratory of Anthropology, Toxicology and Physical Anthropology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Granada, 18012 Granada, Spain
4
Department of Archaeology, University of Reading, Whiteknights, PO Box 227, Reading RG6 6AB, UK
environment, as the availability of resources, modified by cultural preferences, often plays a major role in deciding the types and quantities of the f
Data Loading...
