[Sca-cooks] Information gleaned from medieval cod bones

[Sharon Gordon]

>From The Times
April 14, 2008
European history in cod bones
Trading across medieval Europe revealed in cod bones more than a metre in
length
Norman Hammond, Archaeology Correspondent 

>The catastrophic decline of North Sea cod as the result of over fishing has
had an impact on all our menus, from the poshest restaurants to the corner
chippie: the fish left are few and small, compared with those of less than a
century ago. Cod more than a metre in length are rare these days, whereas
archaeological remains show that fish several times that size were common. 

>A new study shows that cod were exploited in the Middle Ages from many,
often distant, fishing grounds, with an international trade in dried
stockfish. Some fish eaten in a Yorkshire village may have been some from
off the coast of Sweden, while merchants in what is now northern Germany ate
cod from Arctic Norway. 
Co-operation by archaeologists and scientists from Britain, France, Belgium,
Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic states has allowed medieval cod bones
recovered from sites as far apart as Poland and Orkney to be analysed for
their stable-isotope content. Variation in the isotopes of carbon and
nitrogen is regional, "making it possible to identify bones from cod caught
in distant waters", James Barrett and colleagues report in the Journal of
Archaeological Science. Their work suggests that this long-distance fish
trade had already begun by late Anglo-Saxon times, at the end of the first
millennium AD. 

More details at:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/court_and_social/article3738
383.ece