Detecting Medieval Foodways in the North-eastern Baltic: Fish Consumption and Trade in Towns and Monasteries of Finland and Estonia

The beginning of commercial fishing in and around the North Sea is dated to ca. AD 1000, but it only reached the north-eastern Baltic with the Danish and Swedish colonists at the beginning of the 13th century. Their arrival changed the market and also the demand for seafood amongst locals. In this article, the foodways of fish resources, namely the production and consumption of fish, are examined for the medieval period, i.e. the 13th-16th century, in Estonia and Finland. The archaeological material excavated from medieval towns (Turku, Tallinn and Pärnu) and monastic sites (Rauma, Naantali and Padise) is compared in order to ascertain similarities and/or differences in fish processing, consumption and trade. In addition, a 14th-century shipwreck find from Kadriorg, Tallinn, provides unique evidence of fish trade in situ. The processing and consumption of fish are studied through the anatomical distribution of head vs. trunk bones in the zooarchaeological record, which reflects the final product. Thus, preparing and curing fish for trade affects the proportion of skeletal elements present in the final fish product, and thus in the zooarchaeological record. We detected different categories of foodways in our study material: local consumption, products of fresh and preserved fish, fish trade,and local and imported fish.