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Dear Sheila,
Oh Good, somebody does care! From the description it sounds like stockfish or something very like- for stockfish prep the atlas usually goes with the head (and is missing in the final product) and some of the upper (thoracic) verts tend to go too so our medieval Icelandic producing sites are full of atlas and heads. The size range is just perfect for classic stockfish too, and we know that the dried cod was used extensively for military and naval provisioning in the middle ages, so potentially you are looking a dried stockfish rather than salted cod. If it were flat dried rotscher or flat dried and salted klipfisk you would be missing all the thoracic verts and have only the cleithra and caudal verts. I wonder if the Tudor navy was consuming Nordic stockfish via the Germans or Dutch?
Many thanks, will try to get the volume which sounds very cool.
Best
Tom
Thomas H McGovern
Professor,
Dept of Anthropology Hunter College CUNY
Archaeology Coordinator,
CUNY Doctoral Program in Anthropology
Coordinator, North Atlantic Biocultural Organization
Address:
Anthropology Dept.
Hunter College
695 Park Ave. NYC 10021 USA
tel. 212 772 5410 fax. 212 772 5423
-----Original Message-----
From: Analysis of animal remains
from archaeological sites [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of S H-D
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005
10:35 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [ZOOARCH] re fish
butchery
It does interest some of us! I wonder how this applies to later and post medieval? the terms do seem to be rather muddled (even in the past?) In the 'Mary Rose' volume 'Shipboard Life' which should be out by the end of the year, I have mainly referred to 'preserved fish' or 'salted fish' but have mentioned stockfish at least once and briefly discussed the name problem - some of the original documents we are using don't seem to be that clear either! 'my' cod were all beheaded but often had part of the cleithrum left in, the atlas and most of the first few vertebrae are missing. Estimates of the size seem to imply a very uniform 75-90 cm cod - which seems to tie in with Samuel Pepys stipulation of a 24 inch salted cod in his Navy supply lists (24 inch = 61 cm = beheaded from 80 ish!). Well anyway, for those interested I'll let you know when its finally published (by Oxbow/Wessex/Mary Rose)- its been a long gestation, not without problems and is still not the complete or perfect story! as well as the (small) offering on fish there's a big chunk on meat and provisioning in general (mostly by J P Coy) and loads of other classes of finds.
Sheila
SH-D ArchaeoZoology
http://www.shd-archzoo.co.uk/
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