Medieval Origins of Commercial Sea Fishing Project
The Medieval Origins of Commercial Sea Fishing Project is a new interdisciplinary and collaborative research project that aims to explore the chronology, causes and implications of the rise of intensive sea fishing in the North Sea, Baltic Sea and North Atlantic from AD 600 to 1600. The project combines existing surveys of the European fish bone record with detailed studies of time-series from long-lived towns (such as York, Southampton, Gent and Ribe) and key collections likely to represent traded material (from Germany, Poland, Sweden and Estonia for example). Collections from major 'stockfish' producing regions such as Norway and the Northern Isles of Scotland are also being considered.
Our methods include traditional zooarchaeology (e.g. element distributions, cut marks and size distributions) and new biomolecular techniques for detecting the broad origin of traded fish. The initial focus of the research is on cod, with herring to be considered in due course. Together, the extraction, processing and trade of these two species had major impacts on European social organisation and political-economy. Moreover, it is important to investigate if the intensive exploitation of cod and herring resulted from, and in turn caused, early human impacts on aquatic ecosystems.
The research is funded by the Leverhulme Trust and forms a project of HMAP, the historical branch of the Census of Marine Life.
