Alison Locker

The origins of intensive marine fishing in medieval Europe: the English evidence.

The catastrophic impact of fishing pressure on species such as cod and herring is well documented. However, the antiquity of their intensive exploitation has not been established. Systematic catch statistics are only available for ca.100 years, but large–scale fishing industries existed in medieval Europe and the expansion of cod fishing from the fourteenth century (first in Iceland, then in Newfoundland) played an important role in the European colonization of the Northwest Atlantic. History has demonstrated the scale of these late medieval and post–medieval fisheries, but only archaeology can illuminate earlier practices. Zooarchaeological evidence shows that the clearest changes in marine fishing in England between AD 600 and 1600 occurred rapidly around AD 1000 and involved large increases in catches of herring and cod. Surprisingly, this revolution predated the documented post–medieval expansion of Englands sea fisheries and coincided with the Medieval Warm Period—when natural herring and cod productivity was probably low in the North Sea. This counterintuitive discovery can be explained by the concurrent rise of urbanism and human impacts on freshwater ecosystems. The search for ‘pristine’ baselines regarding marine ecosystems will thus need to employ medieval palaeoecological proxies in addition to recent fisheries data and early modern historical records.

'Dark Age Economics' revisited: the English fish bone evidence AD 600-1600

When did the market economy come to Europe? Fish might seem an unlikely commodity to throw light on the matter, but the authors use fish bones from English sites to offer a vivid account of the rise and rise of the market as a factor in European development from the late tenth century.

Stable Isotope Evidence for Late Medieval (14th–15th C) Origins of the Eastern Baltic Cod (Gadus morhua) Fishery

Although recent historical ecology studies have extended quantitative knowledge of eastern Baltic cod (Gadus morhua) exploitation back as far as the 16th century, the historical origin of the modern fishery remains obscure. Widespread archaeological evidence for cod consumption around the eastern Baltic littoral emerges around the 13th century, three centuries before systematic documentation, but it is not clear whether this represents (1) development of a substantial eastern Baltic cod fishery, or (2) large-scale importation of preserved cod from elsewhere. To distinguish between these hypotheses we use stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis to determine likely catch regions of 74 cod vertebrae and cleithra from 19 Baltic archaeological sites dated from the 8th to the 16th centuries. δ13C and δ15N signatures for six possible catch regions were established using a larger sample of archaeological cod cranial bones (n = 249). The data strongly support the second hypothesis, revealing widespread importation of cod during the 13th to 14th centuries, most of it probably from Arctic Norway. By the 15th century, however, eastern Baltic cod dominate within our sample, indicating the development of a substantial late medieval fishery. Potential human impact on cod stocks in the eastern Baltic must thus be taken into account for at least the last 600 years.

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

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.

The estimation of size in sardines (Sardina pilchardus) from amphorae in a wreck at Randello, Sicily

Abstract Large quantities of sardine ( Sardina pilchardus ) bones from amphorae in a wreck at Randello, Sicily, were examined. Methods of estimation of size of the fish represented using the lower jaw bone (dentary) and the gill cover (operculum) by comparison with those of modern fish are given. Both methods give comparable results; from dentaries 108–171 mm and from opercular bones 116–176 mm total length.

The Holocene occurrence of Acipenser spp. in the southern North Sea: the archaeological record

Archaeological sturgeon remains from the southern North Sea basin used to be automatically attributed to Acipenser sturio, since this was the only acipenserid species believed to occur there. These species identifications, however, were in need of revision after a growing number of indications were found for the historical presence of Acipenser oxyrinchus in western Europe. In this study, morphological and genetic data on sturgeon remains from archaeological sites along the southern North Sea are revised. A large number of Dutch, Belgian, British and some French archaeological sturgeon remains, dating from the Mesolithic up to Late Modern times, are morphologically examined and fish sizes are reconstructed. This study of >7000 acipenserid bones proves the sympatric occurrence of European sturgeon A. sturio and Atlantic sturgeon A. oxyrinchus in the southern North Sea at least since the Neolithic (fourth millennium BC onwards), with A. oxyrinchus remains always outnumbering those of A. sturio. Human influence is documented by the decrease in finds through time, but no clear evidence was found for a diachronic change in fish lengths that could possibly be related to fishing pressure.