Early Medieval Shellfish Exploitation in Northwest Europe: Investigations at the Sands of Forvie Shell Middens, Eastern Scotland, and the Role of Coastal Resources in the First Millennium AD

Abstract

Coastal shell middens represent a well-known element of the archaeological record of island and coastal regions across the world and shellfish have been an important resource for subsistence since the mid Holocene. However, the factors that influence shell-fishing remain poorly understood and in many regions investigations into the role of shellfish gathering have often remained focused on prehistoric examples to the detriment of shell middens of later dates. This article reports on the emerging evidence for large-scale exploitation of shellfish during a hitherto understudied period for shell midden archaeology in Northwest Europe: the first millennium AD. The article includes a review of a series of previously unknown large mussel-dominated middens in eastern Scotland, an outline of their chronology and character, including Bayesian modelling of dates, and a synthesis of the emerging evidence for shellfish gathering in Northwest Europe during the first millennium AD. The research represents the first investigation of large-scale early medieval middens in Britain and the first review of their international parallels and the important new information they can provide for the early medieval economy. Keywords shell middens, coastal archaeology, early medieval, first millennium AD, Scotland, Northwest Europe INTRODUCTIONCoastal shell middens represent an important, but poorly understood element of the archaeological record of Europe. They survive in a multitude of forms and have great variability in terms of

‘Tuesday Morning’, the schoolboy and Mann

“…But more than just placing a new dot on a distribution map, the landscape location raises some questions of its own. The buildup of early medieval shellfish middens has been demonstrated in Aberdeenshire and is tied to the incipient commercialization of maritime resources in the Viking Age (Noble et al 2018). Viking-age occupation of sandy coastal settlements and the formation of 'farm mounds' are well understood processes linked to land-taking in Orkney (Noble et al 2018, Harrison 201315-16;Milner et al 2007).…”

A carbon and nitrogen isotope perspective on ancient human diet in the British Isles

“…Similar assumptions can be required for some marine resources such as shellfish, which are an important component of some archaeological assemblages (e.g. Noble et al, 2018), but leave no organic component from which to directly infer stable isotope composition.…”