Dear Ralph & All @ Zooarch,
I analysed the fish bone assemblage recovered at the Later Iron Age settlement
site of Bostadh Beach, Lewis, Western Isles of Scotland. Scales were rather
abundant. The main species in the LIA fish bone assemblage was saithe
(Pollachius virens). A variety of other species however were also present, one
of this was red sea-bream (Pagellus bogavareo), which explains the massive
presence of its scales; since the scales of red sea-bream are quite large and
robust and the sand would have preserved them rather well. Therefore, I did not
use the scales for estimating NISP because this means that the scales are well
preserved rather than the species being abundant. Point already addressed by
James Barret.
I am very interested in Mattias’ comments as I used the scales recovered at
Bostadh Beach mainly to consider taphonomy: why so many scales were present in
contexts where no other fish elements were recovered, some were from internal
contexts, within the house floors, others were external. Some of these
represented floor levels in the house interior, where elements recovered were
mainly scales identified to the Sparidae family (i.e. Pagellus sp.). Whether
the act of de-scaling fish took place inside or outside the house is unclear
from these contexts since masses of scales may have been accidentally
incorporated into the filling during the levelling of floors. Two of these
samples amounted to some 1.400 fragments of scales, most in good condition
(between 50-90% complete). Because of the nature of the contexts from which
this material was recovered, i.e. their components (mainly sand-shell) had been
used as filling material for walls and leveling floors, it is unclear whether
all the de-scaling would have been done inside the houses, prior to cooking or
also outside the buildings. In the latter case, it is likely that the scales
were mixed with sand and other materials there for construction purposes.
If anyone else has similar scale tales I will be very interested to hear. In
Chile I remember going to the Fishermen’s markets where the fish were only
gutted and de-scaled and sold whole. At home, the fish was filleted and the
head and vertebrae used mainly for fish soup stock.
Best wishes
Ruby
Ruby Ceron-Carrasco
Archaeology
School of Arts, Culture & the Environment.
The University of Edinburgh
Old High School
Edinburgh EH1 1LT
Scotland
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