Cod Heads, Stockfish, and Dried Spurdog: Unexpected Commodities in Nya Lödöse (1473–1624), Sweden
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Cod Heads, Stockfish, and Dried Spurdog: Unexpected Commodities in Nya Lödöse (1473–1624), Sweden Maltin Emma & Jonsson Leif International Journal of Historical Archaeology ISSN 1092-7697 Int J Histor Archaeol DOI 10.1007/s10761-017-0405-6 1 23 Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media New York. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self- archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com”. 1 23 Author's personal copy Int J Histor Archaeol DOI 10.1007/s10761-017-0405-6 Cod Heads, Stockfish, and Dried Spurdog: Unexpected Commodities in Nya Lödöse (1473–1624), Sweden Maltin Emma1 & Jonsson Leif2 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017 Abstract During medieval and early modern times, fish products were intensively traded over long distances. Fish was an important part of the diet, and there was a wide range of fresh as well as preserved fish for the consumers to choose among. In this article the fish bone assemblage from the town Nya Lödöse (1473–1624), Sweden, is used to explore what kind of fish were available for the inhabitants to buy. Marine fish was generally preferred over freshwater species, and while the deep sea fishing most probably was highly professionalized, fishing in lakes and rivers must have been rare. Most importantly, the article reviews the evidence for different kinds of fish commod- ities identified in the assemblage from Nya Lödöse. Except from stockfish and herring, dried heads from large cod and ling, as well as dried pike, flatfish, and spurdog were also identified. Keywords Fish trade . Dried fish . Spurdog . Cod heads . Hake Fish Remains in the Nya Lödöse Project Food supply is a fundamental prerequisite for the creation and maintenance of urban life. Citizens of early towns often had access to arable plots in or near the city areas, and also pasture for livestock, but that could not fulfill all the needs of the inhabitants. The supply of animal products was crucial and increased in importance as cities grew larger and their inhabitants became more specialized in crafts and trade. The importation of food was a key factor for urbanization. Fresh products were obtained from the neighboring^ hinterland^ but could not fill demand as populations grew. Food had to be obtained from more distant sources. Such commodities had to be preserved in * Maltin Emma [email protected] 1 Bohusläns Museum, Uddevalla, Sweden 2 LJ Osteology, Gothenburg, Sweden Author's personal copy Int J Histor Archaeol various ways to maintain their quality as food during transport and storage. Fish fulfills that purpose perfectly. Large quantities could easily be caught, and the dried or salted product could be stored for a long time without deteriorating. Recent excavations in the town Nya Lödöse (1473–1624), Gothenburg, Sweden, have yielded an extensive assemblage of fishbone that is outstanding in the context of Swedish archaeology. Fish is always underrepresented in zooarchaeological assemblages compared to mammals, but the consistent use of wet-seiving in the project presents us with the opportunity to investigate the role of fish in a late medieval/early modern Swedish town. In this article we hope to contribute to the understanding of the large-scale fish trade, but also to the role of fish in Nya Lödöse. Furthermore, we will explore the presence of traded fish products beyond the well-studied stockfish. Material The excavations in Nya Lödöse are still ongoing, and this study will be limited to the fish bones collected during the first two years of the project. In total approximately 730 kg animal bones were collected during excavations from 2013 to 2014. The site is situated on sandy soil, and is also affected by last century extensive drainage in the area. Bones show signs of leaching, but in general the preservation conditions are quite good. The fish bones are largely well preserved, but there is not a single find of otoliths. Otoliths are small stones formed inside the ear of the fish, and they are not bone but calcium carbonate (Wheeler and Jones 1989: 114). Bones and otoliths preserve differently in various environ- ments, and in this case conditions were more favorable for bones. The bone assemblage is dominated by cattle, pig and sheep, as to be expected from an urban context during this period of time (All species are referred to by their English names. A full list appears in Table 1.) Trade with oxen was an integral part of the economy in Sweden, and is often discussed in zooarchaeological analysis of urban assemblages (cf. Vretemark 2001). Game, which is usually infrequent in early modern urban assemblages, is rare except for roe deer that occurs quite commonly in specific contexts. It appears that roe deer occurs more frequently in cities on the Swedish west coast, e.g., Ny Varberg (Jonsson 1992: 99). There are also occassional findings of hare and fox, and very rare findings of elk, lynx, red deer, red squirrel, common seal, white- tailed eagle, capercaillie, black grouse, dipper and green woodpecker. Method An approach for integrating the retrieval of zooarchaeological material and its subsequent analysis has been developed within the Nya Lödöse project. Zooarchaeologists are always present on site, supervising the collection of bones and sieving samples, as well as recording stratigraphic conditions of deposited bones. A large portion of contexts were sampled for wet sieving with a 1–2mm mesh. The sampling focused on primary deposits, contexts considered to reflect consumption and waste management on the different town plots. This included rubbish deposits between houses, in pits and on backyards, as well as bones dropped on floors. All bones were washed and dried on a daily basis and sorted in taxonomic groups. Our primary observations were taken back to the field team Author's personal copy Int J Histor Archaeol and used in context descriptions, and influenced the way continued investigations of the deposits were performed. The bone fragments were later identified and recorded in the GIS-database shared with the archaeologists, Intrasis. We have seen great advantages in using the same database, since this enables a flow of information between specialists and archaeolo- gists working on site and writing the report throughout the entire process of the project. Using a GIS database also allow us to investigate how specific species or anatomical elements are spatially distributed. The reference collection at the Gothenburg Museum of Natural History has been used to identify the bone fragments; we also have a skeletal reference collection on site. Bones have been identified to element and species, age and sex have been assessed and a selection of measurements have been taken. Unfortunately, the project budget did not extend to measuring all fish bones but samples of fish bones will be measured and studied more closely at a later stage (see Maltin 2017). Isotope analysis on the fish bones are planned for, but have not yet been executed. We consider it important to work in an exploratory and question-driven way. Questions on different levels require different samples to be addressed. The samples relevant to answering general questions about the economy of the entire town are different from those needed to answer questions about households. The analysis spans from the local to the general based on careful selection of samples, avoiding unneces- sary Bstatistical noise.^ Meaningful sampling requires awareness of taphonomic processes. Taphonomy The fish bone collection shows distinct differences in the quantities of species and elements between town plots. It is also evident that the occurrence of fish bones varies between different kinds of archaeological features. Naturally, this is due to the shifting taphonomic history of every feature, but it is still worth remarking. Fish bones are numerous in kitchen waste, in floors close to hearths and sometimes underneath wooden floors (collected by rats). In other features they are rare or absent, e.g., soil used for construction or layers representing demolition or fire. While it is always of greatest importance to work contextually in archaeology, considering all the potential factors affecting the assemblage, interpreting archaeological findings of fish bones illustrates the need ever so clearly for an awareness of how tapho- nomic processes function. The differences we detect are only partly due to disparities in consumption. Some layers or features contain waste associated with the preparation and cooking of fish. Floors connected to hearths in some cases contain fish scales and small bones lost during cooking, and heaps of refuse between houses contain fish-cleaning remains such as parts of the skull, fins, and gills. Bones from some species were consumed by humans and animals, and are only found in latrines. What was left after cooking and eating eventually ended up in the waste or as fodder for pigs and hens. As is demonstrated in experiments, a major part of the bones consumed by humans or other mammals will be destroyed, and never enter the archaeological record (Jones 1984, 1986). It is also evident that waste management in Nya Lödöse was quite effective, and Author's personal copy Int J Histor Archaeol most of the waste was probably brought outside of the town (see also Schager et al.