Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T08:22:20.287Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fish for the city: meta-analysis of archaeological cod remains and the growth of London's northern trade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2015

David C. Orton ,
James Morris ,
Alison Locker  and
James H. Barrett
David C. Orton
Affiliation:
Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31–34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK (Email: [email protected])
James Morris
Affiliation:
School of Forensic and Investigative Sciences, University of Central Lancashire, J.B. Firth Building, Preston, Lancashire PR1 2HE, UK (Email: [email protected]) Museum of London Archaeology, Mortimer Wheeler House, 46 Eagle Wharf Road, London N1 7ED, UK
Alison Locker
Affiliation:
Escaldes-Engordany, Andorra (Email: [email protected])
James H. Barrett
Affiliation:
McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3ER, UK (Email: [email protected])
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The growth of medieval cities in Northern Europe placed new demands on food supply, and led to the import of fish from increasingly distant fishing grounds. Quantitative analysis of cod remains from London provides revealing insight into the changing patterns of supply that can be related to known historical events and circumstances. In particular it identifies a marked increase in imported cod from the thirteenth century AD. That trend continued into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, after a short downturn, perhaps attributable to the impact of the Black Death, in the mid fourteenth century. The detailed pattern of fluctuating abundance illustrates the potential of archaeological information that is now available from the high-quality urban excavations conducted in London and similar centres during recent decades.

Keywords

Londonmarine fisheriescodzooarchaeologymeta-analysisFish Event Horizonstable isotopesmedieval trade
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 88 , Issue 340 , 01 June 2014 , pp. 516 - 530
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
The online version of this article is published within an Open Access environment subject to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution licence <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/>.
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. The online version of this article is published within an Open Access environment subject to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution licence <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/>;.

References

Adams, J. & Flatman, J.. 2013. High to post-medieval, 1000 to 1650, in Ransley, J. & Sturt, F. (ed.) People and the sea: a maritime archaeological research agenda for England: 138–63. York: Council for British Archaeology.Google Scholar
Astill, G. 2009. Medieval towns and urbanization, in Gilchrist, R. & Reynolds, A. (ed.) Reflections: 50 years of medieval archaeology, 1957-2007: 255–70. Leeds: Maney.Google Scholar
Barrett, J.H. 1997. Fish trade in Norse Orkney and Caithness: a zooarchaeological approach. Antiquity 71: 616–38.Google Scholar
Barrett, J.H. (ed.). 2012. Being an islander: production and identity at Quoygrew, Orkney, AD 900-1600. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Barrett, J.H., Nicholson, R. A. & Cerón-Carrasco, R.. 1999. Archaeo-ichthyological evidence for long-term socioeconomic trends in northern Scotland: 3500 BC to AD 1500. Journal of Archaeological Science 26: 353–88. http://dx. doi.org/10.1006/jasc.1998.0336 Google Scholar
Barrett, J. H., Locker, A. M. & Roberts, C.M.. 2004. ‘Dark Age economics’ revisited: the English fish bone evidence AD 600-1600. Antiquity 78: 618–36.Google Scholar
Barrett, J.H., Orton, D.C., Johnstone, C., Harland, J., Neer, W. Van, Ervynck, A., Roberts, C.M., Locker, A.M., Amundsen, C., Enghoff, I.B., Hamilton-Dyer, S., Heinrich, D., Hufthammer, A.K., Jones, A.K.G., Jonsson, L., Makowiecki, D., Pope, P., O’Connell, T.C., Roo, T. De & Richards, M.. 2011. Interpreting the expansion of sea fishing in medieval Europe using stable isotope analysis of archaeological cod bones. Journal of Archaeological Science 38: 1516–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2011.02.017 Google Scholar
Blackmore, L. & A. Vince. 1994. Medieval pottery from south east England found in the Bryggen excavations 1955-68 (Bryggen Papers supplementary series 5). Bergen: Scandinavian University Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, B.M.S., Galloway, J. A., Keene, D. & Murphy, M.. 1993. A medieval capital and its grain supply: agrarian production and distribution in the London region c. 1300. London: Centre for Metropolitan Research.Google Scholar
Candow, J.E. 2009. Migrants and residents: the interplay between European and domestic fisheries in northeast North America, 1502-1854, in Starkey, D. J., Thór, J. T. & Heidbrink, I. (ed.) A history of the North Atlantic fisheries, volume 1: from early times to the mid-nineteenth century: 416–52. Bremen: H. M. Hauschild.Google Scholar
Dollinger, P. 1999. The German Hansa. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dyer, C. 2002. Making a living in the Middle Ages. London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Ervynck, A., Neer, W. Van & Pieters, M.. 2004. How the north was won (and lost again): historical and archaeological data on the exploitation of the North Atlantic by the Flemish fishery, in Housely, R. A. & Coles, G. M. (ed.) Atlantic connections and adaptations: economies, environments and subsistence in lands bordering the North Atlantic: 230–39. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar
Gardiner, M. & Mehler, N.. 2007. English and Hanseatic trading and fishing sites in medieval Iceland: report on initial fieldwork. Germania 85: 385–427.Google Scholar
Gray, T. & Starkey., D.J. 2000. The distant-water fisheries of south west England in the Early Modern period, in Starkey, D. J., Reid, C. & Ashcroft, N. (ed.) England’s sea fisheries: the commercial sea fisheries of England and Wales since 1300: 96–104. London: Chatham.Google Scholar
Gullbekk, S.H. 2009. Pengevesenets Fremvekst og Fall i Norge i Middelalderen. København: Museum Tusculanums.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, R.C. 2001. Frontier foods for late medieval consumers: culture, economy, ecology. Environment and History 7: 131–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.3197/096734001129342432 Google Scholar
Holm, P., Starkey, D.J. & Thór, J.. 1996. The North Atlantic fisheries, 1100-1976: national perspectives on a common resource. Esbjerg: North Atlantic Fisheries History Association.Google Scholar
Hufthammer, A.K. Forthcoming. Fish trade in Norway 800-1400: zooarchaeological evidence, in Barrett, J. H. & Orton, D. C. (ed.) Cod and consequences: the archaeology and history of medieval sea fishing. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar
Hybel, N. 2002. The grain trade in northern Europe before 1350. The Economic History Review 55: 219–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-0289.00219 Google Scholar
Kowaleski, M. & Childs, W.. 2000. The internal and international fish trades of medieval England and Wales, in Starkey, D. J., Reid, C. & Ashcroft, N. (ed.) England’s sea fisheries: the commercial sea fisheries of England and Wales since 1300: 29–35. London: Chatham.Google Scholar
Langdon, J. & Masschaele, J.. 2006. Commercial activity and population growth in medieval England. Past and Present 190: 35–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtj005 Google Scholar
Lloyd, T. H. 1991. England and the German Hanse, 1157-1611. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511560279 Google Scholar
McGhee, R. 2003. Epilogue: was there continuity from Norse to post-medieval exploration of the New World?, in Barrett, J. H. (ed.) Contact, continuity and collapse: the Norse colonization of the North Atlantic: 239–48. Turnhout: Brepols.Google Scholar
Nagaoka, L. 2005. Differential recovery of Pacific Island fish remains. Journal of Archaeological Science 32: 941–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2004.12.011 Google Scholar
Nedkvitne, A. 1994. How important was Hansa trade for the Norwegian economy, in Henn, V. & Nedkvitne, A. (ed.) Norwegen und die Hanse: 9–18 Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Nicholson, R.A. 1998. Bone degradation in a compost heap. Journal of Archaeological Science 25: 393–403. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jasc.1997.0208 Google Scholar
Nielssen, A. R. 2009. Norwegian fisheries c. 1100-1850, in Starkey, D. J., Thór, J. T. & Heidbrink, I. (ed.) A history of the North Atlantic fisheries, volume 1: from early times to the mid-nineteenth century: 83–109. Bremen: H. M. Hauschild.Google Scholar
Perdikaris, S. &Mcgovern., R.H. 2008. Codfish and kings, seals and subsistence: Norse marine resource use in the North Atlantic, in Rick, T. C. & Erlandson, J. M. (ed.) Human impacts on ancient marine ecosystems: a global perspective: 187–214. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Pope, P. 2009. Transformation of the maritime cultural landscape of Atlantic Canada by migratory European fishermen, 1500-1800, in Sicking, L. & Abreu-Ferreira, D. (ed.) Beyond the catch: fisheries of the North Atlantic, the North Sea and the Baltic, 900-1850: 123–54. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Sloane, B. 2011. The Black Death in London. Stroud: History Press.Google Scholar
Starkey, D.J., Thór, J. T. & Heidbrink, I. (ed.). 2009. A history of the North Atlantic fisheries, volume 1: from early times to the mid-nineteenth century. Bremen: H. M. Hauschild.Google Scholar
Stevens, W. &Cumbaa., S.L. 2007. Marine archaeology and zooarchaeology of the 16th-century whaling harbour of Red Bay, in Grenier, R., Bernier, M.-A. & Stevens, W. (ed.) The underwater archaeology of Red Bay: Basque shipbuilding and whaling in the 16th century. Volume I: 189–201. Ottawa: Parks Canada.Google Scholar