A Case Study of Medieval Diet in the Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland
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Environmental Archaeology The Journal of Human Palaeoecology ISSN: 1461-4103 (Print) 1749-6314 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/yenv20 Mixed Livelihood Society in Iin Hamina – a Case Study of Medieval Diet in the Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland Maria Lahtinen & Anna-Kaisa Salmi To cite this article: Maria Lahtinen & Anna-Kaisa Salmi (2018): Mixed Livelihood Society in Iin Hamina – a Case Study of Medieval Diet in the Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland, Environmental Archaeology, DOI: 10.1080/14614103.2018.1444695 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14614103.2018.1444695 © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 06 Mar 2018. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 365 View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=yenv20 ENVIRONMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1080/14614103.2018.1444695 Mixed Livelihood Society in Iin Hamina – a Case Study of Medieval Diet in the Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland Maria Lahtinen a,b* and Anna-Kaisa Salmib aFinnish Museum of Natural History, Laboratory of Chronology, Helsingin, Finland; bDepartment of Archaeology, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY A stable isotope investigation of a large Medieval population buried in Iin Hamina, northern Received 4 May 2017 Finland, has been used to reconstruct palaeodiet. Iin Hamina is situated approximately 30 km Accepted 20 February 2018 away from the modern city Oulu, in close proximity to the Bothnian Bay coast and the river KEYWORDS Ii. The material used in this study is human skeletal material from an Iin Hamina cemetery Light stable isotopes; carbon; dated as 15 to 17th centuries AD and animal bones excavated in Northern Ostrobothnia nitrogen; archaeology; diet; from pre-industrial contexts. Stable isotope analysis of well-preserved collagen indicate that Finland; Medieval; Baltic sea; both freshwater and marine fish was the dominant protein source for the people buried at Northern Ostrobothnia the Iin Hamina cemetery. Introduction Cultivation and subsistence history in Northern Ostrobothnia FinlandissituatedonthenorthernperipheryofEurope’s cultivation zone. The northern border of cultivation and, In our study period, the 15 and 16th centuries AD, it thus, the most northern limit of cereal ripening in was particularly difficult to obtain food by farming. Europe is placed within the country (Peltonen-Sainio Even though no paleoclimate data is available from 2012). Even though it was possible to have a successful Northern Ostrobothnia itself, several tree ring studies harvest in favourable years in the Nordic climate, agricul- from Finnish and Swedish Lapland suggest that the cli- ture was always a risky way of living. Although the tim- mate at the time was characterised by the Little Ice Age ing is still uncertain, it is assumed that farming reached anomaly (Helama et al. 2009; McCarroll et al. 2013). Northern Ostrobothnia (see Figure 1) either during the This cold anomaly affected northern Finland during Iron Age (500 BC – AD 1200) or the Medieval period the 15 and 16th centuries AD (Luoto 2012) and com- (AD 1300 – 1500) (Koivunen 1992;Vahtola1992). It pared to previous, relatively warmer periods, late frosts is also unclear how important domesticated animals would have been more common, shortening the grow- and plants were to the farming communities in Finland ing season and thus affecting cultivation (Luoto 2012). and what proportion they represented in the human diet. Julku (1985) suggests that even in the sixteenth century In order to address this question, we investigated the diet AD, it was not possible to survive purely as a traditional in northern Finland during the Medieval period by farming-based society in Northern Ostrobothnia and undertaking stable isotope analysis of the population that the economy was mainly based on hunting and fish- buried in the large cemetery at Iin Hamina, in Northern ing; small fields and cattle herding provided only a minor Ostrobothnia. Subsistence based solely on terrestrial wild input into the diet. However, direct evidence of this is still animals is unknown in northern Fennoscandia, and diets lacking and Julku (1985), a historian, does not mention his are usually supplemented either by freshwater or marine source material. Nevertheless, hunting is documented in resources or by farmed foods. The aim of this study was records from the eighteenth century AD and it was con- therefore to investigate if terrestrial farmed foods are sidered as an essential part of an economy otherwise identifiable in human diets at Iin Hamina and to what based on farming (Soininen 1974). Moreover, non-dom- extent the population constitute an isotopically homo- esticated animal bones have been discovered in large quan- geneousgroup.Thisstudycontributestoabetterunder- tities in Northern Ostrobothnian towns and settlements in standing of early economies in the little-known region of contexts dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries AD, the Northern Ostrobothnia and, more generally, of Euro- and from rural settlement sites dating from the 16th to pean populations living near the Arctic Circle. the 18th centuries AD (Puputti 2008;Salmi2011a). In CONTACT Maria Lahtinen [email protected] *Present address: Department of Archaeology, University of Turku, Turku, Finland. © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. 2 M. LAHTINEN AND A.-K. SALMI Figure 1. A map of Finland showing the site locations in Northern Ostrobothnia discussed in the text: Rovaniemi, Kuusamo, Tornio, Ii (Ii Hamina) and Oulu. archaeological animal bone assemblages from Northern The village of Ii and the Iin Hamina cemetery FinlandandSweden,upto30%oftheidentifiedspecimens The village of Ii (65° 19′ 0′′ N, 25° 22′ 0′′) is in the and up to 70% of the minimum number of individuals are Northern Ostrobothnian region approximately 35 km non-domesticated animal species (Salmi 2011a, 2011b). north of the city of Oulu (see Figure 1). It is currently Fur-bearing species are not commonly found, and the not known where the earliest occupation around Ii was remains are generally from domestic assemblages, indicat- located, or when the parish of Ii was established. How- ing that these wild animals were utilised primarily for food ever, the presence of a chapel in Ii was mentioned for not hunted for fur (Puputti 2010). The overall good dental the first time in documents dating from AD 1374 health, including low caries rates, that characterise the (Elo, Satokangas, and Jouko 1998; Vahtola 1992). humanskeletalmaterialfromIinHaminasuggeststhat Even though there was a chapel, there is no historical the population’s diet contained a high level of protein or archaeological evidence for a settlement from this whereas carbohydrate consumption was low (Vilkama period (Tanska 2011). Based on the assumption that 2010; Lahtinen, Salmi, and Vilkama 2013). ENVIRONMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY 3 a church or chapel would not be built without a congre- rapidly growing tissues (Sealy et al. 1987; Ambrose gation, it has been postulated that there was a perma- 1991; Fuller et al. 2005; Mekota et al. 2006) although nent settlement in the town of Ii by this period the long term effects on bone collagen composition (Tanska 2011). However, in seventeenth century Fin- are not known. Other factors, such as climatic affect nish Lapland, churches were also established in places on δ13C values (Ambrose 1991). The δ13C values in where people gathered for other reasons, such as tem- C3 plants vary by as much as 1 – 2 ‰ depending on porary markets or along the annual reindeer migration climatic conditions, growing environment and within routes (Kylli 2005, 2012). plan parts (Heaton 1999). Therefore, it is important The cemetery at Iin Hamina is situated at the mouth to have appropriate comparative faunal samples from of the River Ii on a small peninsula in the modern town the same environment when reconstructing human of Ii. The cemetery was initially discovered in AD 1898, diet, in our case northern Finland terrestrial and the and in the 1960s it was partly damaged during pipe Bothnian Bay marine sources. construction work (Kallio-Seppä 2010). In the summer The Baltic Sea is a brackish body of water with five of 2009, a rescue excavation was undertaken by the major basins; the Bothnian Bay; the Bothnian Sea; the Finnish National Board of Antiquities directed by Baltic Sea Proper; the Gulf of Riga; and the Gulf of Fin- Titta-Kallio Seppä (Kallio-Seppä 2010). In total, 70 land. It has been observed that the isotope composition in-situ burials were found, of which 60 individuals of organic sediments in the Baltic Sea varies between were excavated. The majority of the skeletal remains basins and that their carbon isotope composition (at least 160 individuals) come from a charnel pit strongly correlates with salinity (Rolff and Elmgren and individual bones, which were discovered from 2000; Emeis et al. 2003). This strong link between sal- the boundaries of the excavated