Much rowing for fish

摘要

A thousand years ago, there was a shift in the fish diet in England from freshwater to marine species. The relevant case history, derived from picking through leftovers, has a contemporary resonance. Aelfric (AD 955-c. 1020), the Abbot of Eynsham, near Oxford, has in his Colloquy a master asking a fisherman why he does not fish in the sea. The fisherman answers, "Sometimes I do, but rarely, because it is a lot of rowing for me to the sea". Yet, in spite of all the rowing this transition required, Aelfric lived during the period when the fish that the English ate changed from mainly freshwater species to mainly marine ones — principally herring (Clupea harengus) and representatives of the cod family, the 'gadids', with cod (Gadus morhua) dominating. We know this from a study by Barrett and colleagues, just published in Proceedings of the Royal Society, which documents the contents of 127 'assemblages' (of old fish bones) from settlements around England, covering a period from the seventh to the sixteenth century.