The Inland Seas: Towards an Ecohistory of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea 3515114394, 9783515114394

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The Inland Seas Towards an Ecohistory of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea Edited by Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen and Ruthy Gertwagen

Alte Geschichte Franz Steiner Verlag

Geographica Historica – 35

The Inland Seas Edited by Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen and Ruthy Gertwagen

geographica historica Begründet von Ernst Kirsten, herausgegeben von Eckart Olshausen und Vera Sauer Band 35

The Inland Seas Towards an Ecohistory of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea Edited by Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen and Ruthy Gertwagen

Franz Steiner Verlag

Published with the financial support of the History of Marine Animal Populations project / Oceans Past Initiative.

Copy-editing by Gina Coulthard, Cherine Munkholt and Berit Panduro Petersen Translation by Mónica Ruz Manzano Cartography by Richard Szydlak Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über abrufbar. Dieses Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist unzulässig und strafbar. © Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2016 Druck: Hubert & Co., Göttingen Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier. Printed in Germany. ISBN 978-3-515-11439-4 (Print) ISBN 978-3-515-11443-1 (E-Book)

Zum Geleit Der vorliegende Sammelband kam auf Initiative von Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen und Ruthy Gertwagen zustande. Die Autoren folgten deren Einladung, zur Entwicklung einer Ökogeschichte des Mittelmeers und des Schwarzen Meers beizutragen. Die Drucklegung wurde von der Forschungsinitiative ‘Oceans Past Initiative’ (ehemals ‘History of Marine Animal Populations’) unterstützt. Ökogeschichte, verstanden als die Untersuchung der Wechselwirkungen zwischen Mensch und Umwelt in historischer Perspektive, ist auf das Engste mit Historischer Geographie verflochten und weitet gleichsam deren Horizont. So ist dieser Band in den Geographica Historica höchst willkommen. Eckart Olshausen und Vera Sauer

Contents Zum Geleit ................................................................................................................................

5

Illustrations ...............................................................................................................................

9

Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................

13

Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen and Ruthy Gertwagen Introduction ..............................................................................................................................

15

Arturo Morales-Muñiz and Eufrasia Roselló-Izquierdo Fishing in Mediterranean prehistory: an archaeo-ichthyological overview .....................

23

Dimitra Mylona Fish and seafood consumption in the Aegean: variations on a theme ..............................

57

Christophe Morhange, Nick Marriner and Nicolas Carayon The eco-history of ancient Mediterranean harbours ...........................................................

85

Ephraim Lytle Status beyond law: ownership, access and the ancient Mediterranean ............................. 107 Carmen Alfaro Giner Purple in the ancient Mediterranean world: social demand and the exploitation of marine resources .................................................................................................................. 137 Robert I. Curtis Ancient processed fish products ............................................................................................ 159 Darío Bernal-Casasola Garum in context: new times, same topics in the post-Ponsichian era ............................ 187 Benedict J. Lowe The trade in fish sauce and related products in the western Mediterranean ................... 215 Emmanuel Botte Fish, craftsmen and trade in ancient Italy and Sicily ........................................................... 237 Enrique García Vargas Littoral landscapes and embedded economies: tuna fisheries as biocultural systems .............................................................................................................. 255

8

Contents

Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen Ancient harvesting of marine resources from the Black Sea .............................................. 287 Constantin Ardeleanu Fishing in the Lower Danube and its floodplain from the earliest times to the twentieth century .......................................................................................................... 309 Ruthy Gertwagen Towards a Maritime Eco-history of the Byzantine and Medieval Eastern Mediterranean ........................................................................................... 341 Sabine Florence Fabijanec Fishing and the fish trade on the Dalmatian coast in the late Middle Ages ..................... 369 Ferdinando Boero Mediterranean Scenarios ........................................................................................................ 387 Index of Persons ....................................................................................................................... Index of Places .......................................................................................................................... Index of Sources ....................................................................................................................... Index of Species ........................................................................................................................ Index of Subjects ......................................................................................................................

399 401 409 414 417

Illustrations Arturo Morales-Muñiz and Eufrasia Roselló-Izquierdo, Fishing in Mediterranean prehistory Fig. 1.1: The Western Mediterranean, with principal sites mentioned in text. (Richard Szydlak). Fig. 1.2: The eastern Mediterranean, with principal sites mentioned in text. (Richard Szydlak). Fig. 1.3: The faunal composition, expressed as per cent NISP, in the Solutrean levels from Cueva de Nerja. (After Morales and Roselló-Izquierdo, 2008). Fig. 1.4: Distribution of the two species of the genus Thunnus recorded in the Mediterranean. (Taken, with modifications, from Whitehead et al. 1984; map by Richard Szydlak). Fig. 1.5: Temporal evolution of Roman fish productions. Time intervals define the dominant group in each stage given that all groups are documented throughout the Roman period in non-industrial Mediterranean fish assemblages. Fig. 1.6: Pelagic fishes from the ancient Mediterranean include species never found in the archaeological deposits. Dimitra Mylona, Fish and seafood consumption in the Aegean: variations on a theme Fig. 2.1: Sites mentioned in text. (Richard Szydlak). Christophe Morhange, Nick Marriner and Nicolas Carayon, The eco-history of ancient Mediterranean harbours Fig. 3.1: Plan of Atlit and its harbour based on a drawing by A. Raban (From Haggi and Artzy 2007). Fig. 3.2: The artificial harbour of Jezirat Fara’un Coral Island (Egypt). Fig. 3.3: Submerged Roman harbor of Portus Julius (Puteoli, Italy). (Photo courtesy of the Centre Jean Bérard, Naples). Fig. 3.4: Late medieval dredging of a harbour. (Woodcut from Olaus Magnus 1555, 420). Fig. 3.5: Evidence of ancient harbour dredging in Naples. (Photo courtesy of the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli). Fig. 3.6: Deltaic progradation of the Acheloos delta (NW Greece) (After Vött 2007; Vött et al. 2007). Carmen Alfaro Giner, Purple in the ancient Mediterranean world Fig. 4.1: Experimentally produced purple dye. (Photo courtesy of A. Verhecken). Fig. 4.2: Statue of Augustus wearing a purple himation, Corinth Museum. (Author’s photo). Fig. 4.3: Venus and Mars: wall-painting from Pompeii. (Bridgeman Art Library). Fig. 4.4: Mosaic with ‘Remains of the feast’: Bolinus brandaris and Murex trunculus, Vatican Museums. (Author’s photo). Fig. 4.5: Gravestone of the purpurarius C. Pupius Amicus, Museo de Parma. (Photo courtesy of the German Archaeological Institute, Rome, D-DAI-ROM-67.1633).

10

Illustrations

Robert I. Curtis, Ancient processed fish products Fig. 5.1: Malpe, India: Drying of salted fish outside the port harbour. (Wikipedia public domain photo by Rudolph A. Furtado, 24 January 2008). Fig. 5.2: Modern processed fish. (Author’s photo). Fig. 5.3: Barrels containing salted anchovies await loading. Strait of Kerch, between Nymphaion and Tyritake. (Photo courtesy of Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen). Fig. 5.4: Salting vats (cetariae) at Sexi (mod. Almuñecar) in southern Spain. (Photo courtesy of Benedict Lowe). Fig. 5.5: Dolia in ‘Garum Shop’ (Reg. I.12.8) in Pompeii, first century AD. (Photo courtesy of Benedict Lowe). Fig. 5.6: Residue of garum (allec) in a dolium of the ‘Garum Shop’. (Author’s photo). Darío Bernal-Casasola, Garum in context: new times, same topics in the post-Ponsichian era Fig. 6.1: The various stages of fish processing and their associated archaeological evidence. Fig. 6.2: Obverse of a coin from the mint of Gadir/Gades showing a tuna. (Museo Arqueológico Nacional, illustration courtesy of A. Arévalo). Fig. 6.3: Sites on the Strait of Gibraltar mentioned in text. (Richard Szydlak). Fig. 6.4: Tingitanian cetaria from Metrouna (Tetuán, Morocco), with murex middens situated nearby. Fig. 6.5: Murex midden at Metrouna under excavation. (Author’s photo). Fig. 6.6: Cetacean remains in archaeological sites from proto-historical and Roman times. (After Bernal and Monclova 2011; map by Richard Szydlak). Fig. 6.7: Detail from the process of sampling of the ‘caramelized’ adhesions from a wall of one of the salting tanks in Industrial Complex VI, Baelo Claudia. (Author’s photo). Fig. 6.8: Detail of the long-line (lines and hooks) found in Herculaneum. Fig. 6.9: Graffiti from Stabiae, showing long-lining from a boat. Fig. 6.10: Hooks and a bronze rod with hooks in the process of production, prior to separation, from the Phoenician deposits in La Fonteta (González Prats 2010, 37, fig. 6, no. 42286). Fig. 6.11: Roman net weight of the largest size found at Traducta; compare fig. 6.12. (After Bernal 2010). Fig. 6.12: For comparison, a modern net weight from Chanca de Conil. (After Gómez 2011). Fig. 6.13: An example of the complexity of ancient fishing gear: a ‘potera’ for catching squid. (Bernal 2010; Museo Arqueológico, Alicante, CS 5800). Benedict J. Lowe, The trade in fish sauce and related products in the western Mediterranean Fig. 7.1: Pier 2, Cosa. (Author’s photo). Fig. 7.2: Remains of the harbour wall at Empúries, second to first century BC. (Author’s photo). Fig. 7.3: The principal types of fish sauce amphorae. (After Bruno 2005; Keay 1984). Fig. 7.4: The excavation of the Secca dei Mettoni wreck. (Photo courtesy of ASSO, Archeologia Subacquea Speleologia Organizzazione o. n. l. u. s.). Fig. 7.5: Principal wreck sites referred to in the text. (Richard Szydlak). Emmanuel Botte, Fish, craftsmen and trade in ancient Italy and Sicily Fig. 8.1: Fish-salting factories mentioned in the text. (Richard Szydlak).

Illustrations

Fig. 8.2: Fig. 8.3: Fig. 8.4: Fig. 8.5: Fig. 8.6: Fig. 8.7: Fig. 8.8: Fig. 8.9:

11

Plan of the fish-salting factory of Cala Minnola on the Island of Levanzo. (Author). Plan of the fish-salting site of Vendicari. (Basile 1992, fig. 4) Plan of the fish salting site of Portopalo. (Basile 1992, fig. 12). Plan of the fish-salting factories at Baelo Claudia (Spain). (Sillières 1995, fig. 89). Plan of the fish salting factory at Pachino. (Felici 2012, fig. 6)5 Vat capacity of the fish-salting factories of the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. (Wilson 2006, fig. 5). Plan of the fish-salting factory on Giannutri island. (After Rendini 2003). Fragment of Dressel 21–22 from Cumae with titulus pictus indicating cet(us) Cum(ae). (Author’s drawing and photo).

Enrique García Vargas, Littoral landscapes and embedded economies: tuna fisheries as biocultural systems Fig. 9.1: Satellite image of the Straits of Gibraltar. Fig. 9.2: Almadraba de vista y tiro at Conil, province of Cádiz. (After Sáñez Reguart 1791– 1795). Fig. 9.3: Almadraba de buche at Ayamonte, province of Huelva. (After Sáñez Reguart 1791–1795). Fig. 9.4: Almadraba of Barbate, province of Cádiz, showing the different compartments (after Rodríguez Roda 1979). Fig. 9.5: Watchtower in Loma del Puerco, Chiclana, province of Cádiz. (After Regueira and Regueira 1993). Fig. 9.6: Almadraba de vista y tiro of Conil, province of Cádiz, in an image from the 18th century. (After Santos García forthcoming). Fig. 9.7: Slaughter in the tonnara of Bonagia, province of Trapani, Italy. (After Ravazza 2000). Fig. 9.8: Hauling the catch on board in the tonnara of Bonagia. (After Ravazza 2000). Fig. 9.9: Plan of divari or reed enclosure in the lagoon of Missolonghi, Greece. (After Guest-Papamanoli 1995). Fig. 9.10: Plan of the dalyan of Şira, Istanbul. (After Devedjian 1926). Fig. 9.11: Sicily, with sites mentioned in text. (Richard Szydlak). Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen, Ancient harvesting of marine resources from the Black Sea Fig. 10.1: The Black Sea, with sites mentioned in the text. (Richard Szydlak). Fig. 10.2: The Crimea and the Sea of Azov, with sites mentioned in the text. (Richard Szydlak). Fig. 10.3: Clay weights from Elizavetovka. (Marčenko, Žitnikov and Kopylov 2000, fig. 76). Fig. 10.4: Bone implements for making and mending nets, found at Elizavetovka. (Marčenko, Žitnikov and Kopylov 2000, fig. 77). Fig. 10.5: Plan of Tyritake. (Gajdukevic 1971, pl. 51). Fig. 10.6: Plan of sector XIII at Tyritake. (Gajdukevic 1971, pl. 97). Fig. 10.7: A group of salting vats at the southern extremity (sector I) of the Tyritake settlement during excavation. (Gajdukevic 1971, pl. 95). Fig. 10.8: The site of Tyritake in 2003. (Author’s photo). Fig. 10.9: Remains of a pipefish from the southern Black Sea, c. 240 BC. (Photo courtesy of Inge B. Enghoff)

12

Illustrations

Constantin Ardeleanu, Fishing in the Lower Danube and its floodplain from the earliest times to the twentieth century Fig. 11.1: Map of the Lower Danube region, showing sites mentioned in text. (Richard Szydlak). Figs 11.2: Coin of Histria (Istrus) showing eagle and dolphin on reverse. (Photo courtesy of Numismatik Naumann, Munich). Figs 11.3: Coin of Histria (Istrus) showing eagle and dolphin on reverse. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Busso Peus Nachfolger Münzhandlung, Frankfurt). Fig. 11.4: Fishing gear found at Dinogeţia. (Barnea 1969, fig. 32). Fig. 11.5: Fishing gear found at Păcuiul lui Soare. (Diaconu and Valceanu 1972, fig. 71) Fig. 11.6: Fishing implements found at Păcuiul lui Soare, 14th century AD. (Diaconu and Baraschi 1977, fig. 20). Sabine Florence Fabijanec, Fishing and the fish trade on the Dalmatian coast in the late Middle Ages Fig. 12.1: The Adriatic sea, with sites mentioned in text. (Richard Szydlak). Fig. 12.2: Fish exports from Split in selected years during the sixteenth century. Ferdinando Boero, Mediterranean Scenarios Fig. 13.1: The Oceanic Conveyor Belt. (After Tillinger 2011). Fig. 13.2: The circulation in the Mediterranean Sea. (Artwork by Alberto Gennari after Boero 2015). Fig. 13.3: Top: Circulation patterns in the Adriatic Sea. Below: The regime shifts that have characterized Adriatic ‘ecological history’ from the ’70s to present. (Alberto Gennari). Fig. 13.4: The Fish-Jellyfish transition, with a tendency towards the prevalence of jellyfish-eating species. (Alberto Gennari).

Abbreviations Aelian, NA

Aelian. On the Characteristics of Animals [De Natura Animalium], with an English translation by A. F. Scholfield (LCL 449). Cambridge MA 1971–2. AI Archaeo-ichthyology ap. apud (i. e. the passage in question is preserved in the text of another author) ARC Archaeological Research and Consultancy, Groningen. Athenaeus Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters [The Deipnosophists] 1–8, with an English translation by S. D. Olson (LCL 204, 208, 224, 235, 274, 327, 345, 519). Cambridge MA 2007–12. BAR British Archaeological Reports. Oxford. BE Bulletin épigraphique. Paris. BP (years) before present BSR Broad Spectrum Revolution CIESM Commission Internationale pour l’Exploration Scientifique de la Méditerranée CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Berlin. CIRB Corpus Inscriptionum Regni Bosporani. Leningrad 1965. CoCoNet Towards COast to COast NETworks of marine protected areas (from the shore to the high and deep sea), coupled with sea-based wind energy potential. Dig. Mommsen, T. and P. Krüger (eds), The Digest of Justinian, with a translation by A. Watson. Philadelphia 1985. Dittenberger, Dittenberger, W. (ed.) 1915–1924. Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum. Sylloge3 Third edition. Leipzig. EEZ Exclusive Economic Zone EMT Eastern Mediterranean Transient FAO United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation FGrHist Jacoby, F. 1924–1958. Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Berlin 1923– FL Fork length ICAZ International Council for Archaeozoology ICret Halbherr, F. and M. Guarducci (eds) 1935–1950. Inscriptiones Creticae. Rome. IG I3 D. Lewis and L. Jeffery (eds) 1981–1994. Inscriptiones Graecae I: Inscriptiones Atticae Euclidis anno anteriores (3rd edition). Berlin. IG II2 Kirchner, J. (ed.) 1913–1940. Inscriptiones Graecae II et III: Inscriptiones Atticae Euclidis anno posteriores (2nd edition). Berlin. IG IV Fraenkel, M. (ed.) 1902. Inscriptiones Graecae IV = Inscriptiones graecae Aeginae, Pityonesi, Cecryphaliae, Argolidis. Berlin.

14 IG IV2.1 IG IX.12 IG XI.2 IG XII.9 IG XII Suppl. IJNA IK ILS IMT indet. IOSPE IRPCádiz IScM LCL LGM MBSE MEFRA MNI NISP Oppian, On Fishing PCG Pliny, NH POxy RE SEG SESAME SL sp./spp. Strabo

Abbreviations

Hiller von Gaertringen, F. (ed.) 1929. Inscriptiones Graecae IV. Inscriptiones Argolidis (2nd edition). Fasc. 1, Inscriptiones Epidauri. Berlin. Klaffenbach, G. (ed.) 1932–1968. Inscriptiones Graecae IX.1 (2nd edition). Berlin. Durrbach, F. (ed.) 1912. Inscriptiones Graecae XI. Fasc. 2, Inscriptiones Deli. Berlin. Ziebarth, F. (ed.) 1915. Inscriptiones Graecae XII.9. Inscriptiones Euboeae insulae. Berlin. Hiller von Gaertringen, F. (ed.) 1939. Inscriptiones Graecae XII. Supplementum. Berlin. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien. Bonn. Dessau, H. (ed.) Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae. Berlin 1892–1916. Barth, M. and J. Stauber (eds) 1996. Inschriften von Mysia und Troas. Munich. undetermined species Latyschev, B. 1885. Inscriptiones antiquae Orae Septentrionalis Ponti Euxini Graecae et Latinae. St Petersburg. J. González, Inscripciones Romanas de la provincia de Cádiz, Cádiz 1982. Daciae et Scythiae Minoris antiquae. Series altera: Inscriptiones Scythiae Minoris graecae et latinae. Bucharest 1983Loeb Classical Library Late Glacial Maximum Mediterranean-Black Sea ecosystem Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome. Antiquité. Paris. Minimum number of individuals Number of Identified SPecimens Oppian, Colluthus, Tryphiodorus, with an English translation by A. W. Mair (LCL 219). Cambridge, MA 1963. Kassel, R. and C. Austin (eds) 1983–2001. Poetae Comici Graeci 1–8. Berlin. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, with an English translation by H. Rackham and W. H. S. Jones (LCL 330, 352–3, 370–1, 392–4, 418–9). Cambridge, MA 1938–1963. B. P. Grenfell and W. S. Hunt (eds), The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. London 1897– Pauly, A. and G. Wissowa (eds), Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Second edition. Stuttgart 1894–1980. Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum. Leiden 1923– Southern European Seas: Assessing and Modeling Ecosystem Changes Standard length species Strabo, Geography 1–8, with an English translation by H. L. Jones (LCL 49–50, 182, 196, 211, 223, 241, 267). Cambridge MA, 1917–32.

Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen and Ruthy Gertwagen

Introduction

Few other regions of the world have been studied in such minute detail as the Mediterranean basin. It was home to the earliest human urban communities and some of the earliest literate cultures; it has been the cradle of three great religions. Countless generations of scholars, from Herodotus and Pausanias to Fernand Braudel and David Abulafia,1 have devoted themselves to investigating the complex history and rich archaeological heritage of the civilisations along the shores of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The sea itself, too, has exerted a fascination since time immemorial, although systematic investigations did not take place before the early modern period. Whereas these early studies were motivated by a general scientific interest in the sea as such,2 more recent studies of the Mediterranean waters have increasingly been driven by concern for the well-being of its marine life.3 For those who wish to understand better mankind’s relationship with the sea around us and the ways in which our actions impact upon the marine environment, the Mediterranean-Black Sea ecosystem offers an incomparable store of information.

1. Mediterraneanism Drawing on this rich set of data, anthropologists and historians have produced impressive syntheses describing how ‘Mediterranean’ societies and their relation to the environment have evolved.4 By and large, however, these have been concerned with the terrestrial environment to the virtual exclusion of the marine environment. For instance, an eleven-page survey of ancient Mediterranean environmental history by Robert Sallares5 devotes only a few lines to life in the sea, a similar survey by Andrew Wilson 6 a single paragraph and the magisterial 800-page The Corrupting Sea by Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell a page and a half.7 Also, while concepts such as ‘Mediterranean society’, ‘Mediterranean diet’ or ‘Mediterranean landscape’ may be useful for analytical purposes, they, like all ideal types, carry with 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Braudel 1949; Abulafia 2009. E. g., Marsigli 1681; Köhler 1832; Schmidt (ed.) 1912–39. E. g., the studies in Gertwagen et al. (eds) 2008; Gertwagen et al. (eds) 2011; Mackenzie and Mariani 2012; see also, more generally, Holm et al. (eds) 2001. Horden and Purcell 2000; Abulafia 2009. Sallares 2009: 165. Wilson 2013: 275. Horden and Purcell 2000: 190–1.

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Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen and Ruthy Gertwagen

them the risk of over-simplification.8 Certainly there are some common denominators, but there were also very important differences between life in Corinth and Malaga, or between the institutions of sixteenth-century Venice and Smyrna, just as today’s Algiers is a very different place from Novorossijsk. Even under the Roman Empire, when they lived under the same ruler, the same legal code and used the same currency, there were significant differences between the ‘Mediterranean’ communities, differences which are not always apparent in the textual sources but come to light in the archaeological record. Indeed, it is perhaps significant that while the ancients had terms – Greek pontikos, Latin ponticus – to identify those who dwelt along the shores of the Black Sea, they lacked a similar adjective for those living on the coasts of the Mediterranean. The sea itself was known as he megale thalatta, ‘the Great Sea’, to the Greeks; the Romans, with characteristic self-confidence, called it mare nostrum, ‘our sea’.9 The adjective mediterraneus, from which the modern word is derived, simply means ‘surrounded by land’, i. e. ‘inland’ or ‘landlocked’. Only as late as the seventh sentury AD is Mare Mediterraneum used in its modern sense by the Spanish bishop Isidore (c. 560–636). He was living and writing in Seville, beyond the Strait of Gibraltar: from his point of view it made sense to distinguish between the ‘landlocked’ sea to his east and the open ocean to the west. For the title of this volume, we have taken the original sense of mediterraneus as ‘inland’ to describe the four seas that together form our field of study: the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara and the Sea of Azov. These seas are as different as the cities on their coasts, if not more so: in their geology (witness the contrast between the deep trench that forms the Sea of Marmara and the shallow Sea of Azov), in their hydrology (the clear waters of the Mediterranean against the anoxic depths of the Black Sea) and even in their history (that of the Mediterranean goes back millions of years, while the Black Sea as we know it is less than 10,000 years old). Within each of these, there are of course important differences. In particular, the Mediterranean is often conceived as a set of separate seas (the Pamphylian Sea, the Aegean Sea, the Adriatic Sea, the Sea of Sicily) within each of which there are again striking contrasts: between the southern and northern Adriatic, the southern and northern Aegean. In short, life in the sea is as varied as life on land. The one common feature of our seas is their being ‘inland’, connected to the world’s other seas only through the Strait of Gibraltar and, since 1870, by the Suez Canal.

2. Ecology, history and ecohistory Ecology, like economy, derives its first syllable from the Greek oikos, meaning ‘household’. Originally a branch of biology, during the twentieth century it developed into a discipline in its own right drawing inspiration from other new fields of science, notably thermodynamics. The influence from thermodynamics is clearly seen in the groundbreaking and highly influential essay by Thomas W. Gallant, A Fisherman’s Tale; the first attempt to view the history of Mediterranean fishing from a longue durée perspective.10 His focus on marine food as a 8 9 10

Herzfeld 2005: 47–8. Originally used only for the western Mediterranean, the name was later extended to include the whole sea. Gallant 1985.

Introduction

17

source of calories, i. e. energy, leads Gallant to conclude that given the low calorific content of fish, it could neither have played any significant role in the ancient diet, nor in the ancient economy. But as later studies have pointed out, and several of the contributions to this volume underline, catching or consuming fish is not primarily a question of cheap energy: on the contrary, it involves conscious decisions motivated by complex social, culinary and cultural motives. Human motives and actions are the subject matter of history. In his book The Idea of History, originally written in 1936 but published posthumously in 1946, the philosopher Robin G. Collingwood distinguished two kinds of events: ‘mere events’, which are governed by physical laws (gravity causes a stone to fall to the ground), and historical events, which are guided by human motives and decisions (a stone flies through the air because I threw it). ‘Mere events’ are predictable and can be replicated at will; historical events are not and cannot, since each event is essentially unique. ‘Mere events’ can be understood by reference to natural laws, historical events must be interpreted by re-enactment of the event in the historian’s mind.11 Collingwood’s neat division of events into only two categories has been challenged by subsequent developments in the sciences. Behavioural psychology has demonstrated how some human actions are guided by natural instinct rather than reflection and decision; the social sciences have shown that human actions, while individually unpredictable (for which party will this particular individual vote?) may be predictable when aggregated (what proportion of all individuals will vote for this party?). Yet the basic distinction between events determined by natural causes and events guided by human decisions remains useful for defining ecohistory and distinguishing it from environmental history, with which it is often confused. While environmental history normally takes both types of event into consideration, it does not have to; the history of global temperature variation until AD 1700, for instance, can be written entirely on the basis of natural laws. Although students of climate change will draw on traditional historical sources (e. g., narratives about extreme winters or records of the rise of the Nile at Cairo) these are explored in order to supply facts, not explanations. By this process, known as ‘data mining’, information recorded by human action is used to test hypotheses based on the laws of natural science. Conversely, while traditional political history can and often does take environmental factors into account, some important events – the death of Nero, to take one example – can be satisfactorily explained by re-enacting them in the historian’s mind, without recourse to the laws of natural science. Ecohistory stands at the interface between these two approaches to the past. Since it concerns itself with the relationship between humankind and the environment, it can afford to ignore neither ‘mere events’ of nature nor the motives underlying human actions. This also means that the student of ecohistory must strive to understand not only how environmental conditions were in the past, but also and sometimes more importantly, how they were perceived to be. Likewise, the researcher must attempt to recreate the unquantifiable factors, such as prestige and taboos, or the intangible networks of kinship and clientage, all of which affect the ways in which individuals exploit – or choose not to exploit – the resources around them. 11

Collingwood 1946: 213–5.

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Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen and Ruthy Gertwagen

Furthermore, ecohistory aims to trace the impact of human actions on the environment over past time, which raises the issue of finding sufficient and reliable source material. The problems involved are common to all branches of ecohistory, but they are particularly acute for the student of marine, as opposed to terrestrial, ecohistory; and for two reasons. First, the impact of human exploitation of the landscape for food or fuel is visible to the naked eye as deforestation and soil erosion, phenomena that were commented upon by Greek observers as early as the fourth century BC.12 To the observer standing on the shore or the deck, on the other hand, the surface of the sea provides little information about the richness of its fish stocks nor about its environmental health. It is only by using proxy data that we can hope to gain some impression of life in the sea, its variation and its extent. Ironically, it is for the early, pre-literate periods of human history that we are most likely to possess reasonably reliable proxy data, thanks to the work of modern ichthyoarchaeologists analysing and counting fish remains on coastal settlement sites. From later periods, where we are in general better informed thanks to the existence of written sources, quantitative evidence for marine harvesting is largely absent. This is partly due to the social context of fishing as an activity on the margins of society, but also to a more general, and far more serious problem: that well into the twentieth century, even among the scientific community, it was believed that the effect of human harvesting was too insignificant to have any impact on marine life in the open oceans. Thus insofar as any registration of catches took place at all, its purpose was not to document life in the oceans but to ensure a just division of the fruits of the sea between co-owners; between owners and lessees of fishing rights; or between fishermen and the government. Especially the last category of sources – tax records – raises obvious and disturbing questions about potential bias and under-reporting. Furthermore, systematic division of catches is mainly relevant in a situation where fishing zones are territorialized or fishing opportunites limited: in estuarine and coastal fishing, not on the open sea. Given the quasi-total absence of precise scientific records before the modern period, most of our textual evidence for open water fishing is bound to be circumstantial and in many cases anecdotal. In sum, there are daunting challenges facing this emergent discipline, and it is with good reason that we have chosen as the subtitle of this volume ‘towards an ecohistory of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea’.

3. Prehistory The first two contributions, by Arturo Morales-Muñiz and Eufrasia Roselló-Izquierdo on ‘Fishing in Mediterranean prehistory’ and by Dimitra Mylona on ‘Fish and seafood consumption in the Aegean’, share an archaeo-ichthyological approach. By focusing on the actual remains of fish that were consumed on a site, the authors enter into direct contact with their primary data material and are able to construct time series reaching far back into the prehistoric period. As both papers stress, however, the fish assemblages found on coastal sites do not reflect what species were present in the sea. First, there are the problems of ta12

E. g., Plato, Critias 111b on deforestation and soil erosion in ancient Attica: ‘what now remains compared with what then existed is like the skeleton of a sick man, all the fat and soft earth having wasted away’. For divergent interpretations of this passage, compare Williams 2000: 35 and Nenninger 2001: 193–8.

Introduction

19

phonomy: large individuals with robust skeletal structures will be over-represented in the material, while small fish and cartilaginous species will be under-represented. Furthermore, the authors find clear evidence for selection: fishermen and fish consumers did not mechanistically target whatever was available in the sea. Thus variation in the archaeo-ichthyological assemblages over time need not reflect variation in species composition; it is more likely to reflect changing preferences for different categories of seafood. Finally, the papers highlight the methodological shortcomings that characterise older excavations where fish remains were either not studied at all or in an unsystematic fashion. The following paper by Christophe Morhange, Nick Marriner and Nicolas Carayon, on ‘The ecohistory of ancient Mediterranean harbours’, likewise takes an archaeological approach but directs our attention to the points of contact between humans and the marine ecosystem: harbours. Properly investigated and interpreted – processes which require the combined efforts of many disciplines – harbour installations can yield important information not only about human activities (fishing, transport, evolution of construction techniques) carried on at the site but also about environmental events such as sea level fluctuation and coastal erosion or silting.

4. Fishing in context With the following seven papers, we move from the archaeological evidence to the social context within which marine resources were exploited. As pointed out already in the first two papers of the volume, fishing, even in prehistoric societies, is a selective process directed at certain species and virtually ignoring others. This selection in turn reflects a variety of factors such as the legal régime governing the exploitation of marine resources (Ephraim Lytle), the prestige associated with certain marine products and the technology available for producing marine derivatives such as purple dye (Carmen Alfaro Giner), the demand for and production of salt-fish and garum (Robert I. Curtis, Dario Bernal-Casasola and Emmanuel Botte). Unlike fresh fish, which before the advent of refrigeration could only be consumed within a restricted time-space window, derivatives had a long shelf life; they could be, and were, transported by sea or land to distant markets (Benedict Lowe). In this respect, the harvesting of tuna with mobile or fixed nets poses special challenges. It requires the coordinated efforts of many hands working together and will, on occasion, produce windfall catches far too large to be consumed by the fishing community or its hinterland; thus it also requires the organisational skills and capital resources – both far beyond the capacity of the small-scale family business or the craft fisherman – necessary to process the catch at short notice and transport it to urban markets. The social context of ancient tuna fishing is discussed by Ephraim Lytle in his paper and Enrique García Vargas explores its history in the western Mediterranean from the second to the eighteenth century AD.

5. Regional studies The papers that follow have a regional rather than a thematic focus. Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen discusses the present state of our knowledge of Black Sea fishing and fish processing in antiquity, and the potential contribution of fish deposits from the sea’s anoxic depths to the study of its faunal history.

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Constantin Ardeleanu traces the evolution of Danube fishing in the longue durée from antiquity to the twentieth century. As we move into the early modern period, the first fishing statistics in the form of market and tax records emerge, enabling historians to assess the quantitative evolution of fishing with more confidence. It becomes possible to trace patterns of growth and decline,and to assess the negative effects of overexploitation or the positive consequences of new fisheries policies such as that implemented in Romania at the turn of the twentieth century. Studies of fishing in the eastern Mediterranean basin and the Levant coasts have, by and large, been scarce and somewhat patchy, partly due to the misconception that the eastern Mediterranean is poorly stocked with fish, thus a priori unlikely to support a fishing industry; and partly to the nature of the textual sources, written in a variety of languages (Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Latin) and divided among archives and libraries from Cairo and Istanbul to Venice and Genoa. As Ruthy Gertwagen’s paper reveals, fishing activity was rife along the Levant coast and in the north-eastern Mediterranean; it is documented by a rich body of texts, much of which still awaits the attention of scholars. Likewise, Venetian and Genoese archives offer important insights into the – otherwise poorly documented – fish processing industry in the northern Black Sea, and complement the information of the Byzantine sources about fish trade and consumption in Constantinople. Sabine Florence Fabijanec provides an overview survey of fishing and fish marketing on the mid-Adriatic coast in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and an analysis of their social context. In early modern Dalmatia, as in Sicily, the activities of the fishermen were embedded within a complicated framework of informal and formal relationships of ownership, patronage, kinship, religion and political authority. The urban communes played a particularly important role in Dalmatia, levying taxes on the fishermen and serving as arbiters – not always impartially – between rival fishing interests.

6. History and environmental change In the concluding chapter, Ferdinando Boero demonstrates how a better understanding of the past ecohistory of the Mediterranean-Black Sea ecosystem can lead to informed decisions affecting the future of the world’s oceans, whose waters are joined together by a great oceanic ‘conveyor belt’ (thus vindicating the ancient Greek belief that a single Ocean surrounds the entire inhabited world). The Mediterranean has its own ‘conveyor belt’; it is, in a sense, a small-scale replica of the oceanic system. Studying the effects of global warming on the Mediterranean – or as a case study, the Adriatic – provides insights which could guide decision-makers of the future. The Pope’s clear statement on the need for sustainability and the success of the COP21 meeting in Paris gives Boero grounds for cautious optimism that humanity will be able to make informed choices in accordance with the laws of nature. A pessimist would point out that whereas the international community has demonstrated ability to take concerted and effective action against some of the threats facing humanity (the eradication of smallpox and the phasing out of CFC gases are notable examples) it has been unable to deal in a similar manner with the problems of commercial whaling or overfishing of Mediterranean tuna. Here, the decision-makers have allowed the laws of economy to take precedence over the laws of nature. So at the end of the day, it all comes down to motives and decisions. Human motives and decisions are important not only for understanding the past but also for shaping the

Introduction

21

future. And as Boero points out, action will in any case, sooner or later, be taken to reduce the human impact on the global environment. If we, the human species, fail to do so, nature will. Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen Department of History, University of Southern Denmark Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M [email protected] Ruthy Gertwagen Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 3498838, Israel [email protected]

7. References 7.1 Primary sources Plato 9: Timaeus, Critias, Cleitophon, Menexenus, Epistles, with an English translation by R. G. Bury (LCL 234). Cambridge MA 1925.

7.2 Secondary literature Abulafia, D. 2009. The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean. Oxford. Braudel, F. 1949. La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen a l’époque de Philippe II. Paris. Collingwood, R. G. 1946. The Idea of History. Oxford. Gallant, T. W. 1985. A Fisherman’s Tale (Miscellanea Graeca 7). Ghent. Gertwagen, R., T. Fortibuoni, O. Giovanardi et al. (eds) 2011. When Humanities Meet Ecology: Historic changes in Mediterranean and Black Sea marine biodiversity and ecosystems since the Roman Period until nowadays: Languages, methodologies and perspectives. Rome. Gertwagen, R., S. Raicevich, T. Fortibuoni et al. (eds) 2008. Il mare, com ’era: le interazioni tra uomo ed ambiente nel Mediterraneo dall’Epoca Romana al XIX secolo: una visione storica ed ecologica delle attività di pesca. Chioggia. Herzfeld, M. 2005. ‘Practical Mediterraneism: excuses for everything, from epistemology to eating’ in W. V. Harris (ed.), Rethinking the Mediterranean. Oxford, 45–63. Holm, P., T. Smith and D. J. Starkey (eds) 2001. The Exploited Seas: New Directions for Marine Environmental History. St John’s, Newfoundland. Horden, P. and N. Purcell 2000. The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. Oxford. Köhler, H. K. E. 1832. ‘Τάριχος, ou recherches sur l’histoire et les antiquités des pêcheries de la Russie méridionale’, Mémoires de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences de Saint-Pétersbourg 6th s., 1, 347–490. Mackenzie, B. R. and P. Mariani 2012. ‘Spawning of bluefin tuna in the Black Sea: historical evidence, environmental constraints and population plasticity’. PloS ONE 7.7: e39998. Marsigli, L. F. 1681. ‘Internal observations on the Thracian Bosphorus, or true channel of Constantinople, presented in letters to Her Majesty, Queen Christina of Sweden’, reprinted 1935 in Bolletino di Pesca, Piscicoltura e Idrobiologia 11, 734–58. Nenninger, M. 2001. Die Römer und der Wald: Untersuchungen zum Umgang mit einem Naturraum am Beispiel der römischen Nordwestprovinzen (Geographica Historica 16). Stuttgart. Sallares, R. 2009. ‘Environmental history’, in A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to Ancient History. New York, 164–74.

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Schmidt, J. (ed.) 1912–39. Report on the Danish Oceanographical Expeditions 1908–10 to the Mediterranean and Adjacent Seas. Copenhagen. Williams, M. 2000. ‘Dark ages and dark areas: global deforestation in the deep past’, Journal of Historical Geography, 26, 28–46. Wilson, A. 2013. ‘The Mediterranean environment in ancient history: perspectives and prospects’ in W. V. Harris (ed.), The Ancient Mediterranean Environment between Science and History. Leiden, 259–76.

Arturo Morales-Muñiz and Eufrasia Roselló-Izquierdo

Fishing in Mediterranean prehistory: an archaeo-ichthyological overview

1. Introduction The Mediterranean is arguably the oldest continuously and intensively humanised seascape of the world. It also ranks among the best documented, despite the fact that we are still lacking critical knowledge in many areas. One such area is the relationship between fish and humans of the prehistoric period, when humans started to fish. The development of such human-marine interactions fostered coastal settlement, fishing technology and seafaring, among other impacts. This is a fascinating story that still lacks many details, due partly to the sheer diversity of the ecosystem. Like the lands surrounding it, the Mediterranean is an extremely varied environment where fish abundances shift dramatically from place to place, often on a daily basis.1 Mediterranean fishermen, since times immemorial, have had to adapt to these micro-regional ecologies and the erratic availability of resources. Under such circumstances, chance must have played a significant role in the success – or otherwise – of fishing expeditions.1 To understand the story better, however, we can employ archaeo-ichthyology (AI), the branch of zooarchaeology devoted to the study of fish remains from archaeological sites. This is a comparatively young discipline that emerged in the 1970s as researchers felt the need for a more precise knowledge of fishing. In recent decades, archaeo-ichthyology has witnessed a dramatic development, but there is still a long way to go, and the archaeo-ichthyology of the Mediterranean is no exception to this general rule.2 In this paper, we shall try to summarise what AI can tell us about early human exploitation of the Mediterranean’s fish resources and also the limitations of the data, which demand caution in their interpretation. As will become apparent, there is no single linear story of the emergence of fishing; rather, it is a story composed of many entwined tales, repeated through time and space, and that often resist unification into all-encompassing patterns. The patterns that do occasionally emerge are currently provisional, and require confirmation

1

2

Margalef (ed.) 1985; Bas et al. 1985. The effects of the Mediterranean oceanography underlying the unpredictability of the catch (i. e. the ‘myth of the bitter sea’) has provided the basis for many folk stories, like the one recounted by the Arab historian al-Waqidi: when fishermen offend the Mediterranean, the sea responds by refusing to give them food (Jones (ed.) 1966). Fortibuoni et al. 2010; Rick and Erlandson (eds) 2008.

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before being integrated into a general frame of reference concerning fishing in the ancient Mediterranean.

2. What can archaeo-ichthyology tell us about early human fishing? The main contribution that AI can provide to our precise knowledge of the past is to confirm the presence of a particular species at a given place and time. This is often no simple task, but, when successful, can provide a wealth of information. It is also possible to determine biological attributes such as size, sex, age and weight. These data, in turn, may inform us about matters such as how much meat the fish remains represent, where and at what time of year it was caught and, if a large sample is available, whether fish of a given size (i. e. age) or the whole population was targetted. At the level of the isolated bone, one last category of data is that revealing its post-mortem story. Surface marks such as digestion traces or gnawing marks inform the analyst whether agents other than humans accumulated fish remains, so blurring the signals of human activity.3 Traces of digestion, cut-marks and the like provide additional information about how fish were treated after being caught and processing evidence may suggest local consumption or trade. Proceeding beyond the level of the isolated find, a ‘faunal assemblage’ provides information about the marine habitat and, occasionally, about the time of year when fishing took place. Such analysis requires numerical estimates of abundance, the most common ones being the number of identified remains/specimens (NISP) and the minimum number of individuals (MNI). Estimates of abundance need to be taken as rough indications of the overall composition of the catch, given that most fish samples do not represent fishing ‘events’ (i. e. isolated episodes) but rather time-average series.4 Some researchers treat weight values as if they were indicators of abundance, when, at best, they only calibrate importance, and then only in a limited manner (i. e. the amount of meat provided). One element of the study of ancient fishing where AI might be expected to make a meaningful contribution, yet rarely does so, is the study of fishing methods and equipment. This matter has been discussed at length elsewhere5 but the major arguments should be repeated here. Briefly stated, the main problem is one of equifinality.6 Whilst a single species can be caught using a variety of equipment (e. g., tuna can be hooked, netted, speared, etc.), equally, one type of equipment, e. g., a seine, can be used to catch a large variety of 3 4

5 6

Erlandson and Moss 2001; Barrett et al. 2002. When it comes to evaluating abundance, there is far too much simplistic determinism implied in certain interpretations of fish assemblages. Claims along the line that 50 % of an assemblage being formed by remains of species A and 10 % by remains of species B indicates that A, though perhaps not five times as frequent as species B, was nevertheless far more abundant than it, need to be framed, at the very least, in terms of: (a) sample size (in a sample of a few bones the finds under consideration may represent chance events); (b) retrieval biases (defectively retrieved samples, with remains of species A being larger than those of B); (c) identification biases (eg. species A being the only one in its genus and species B belonging to a multi-species genus whose morphological similarities often preclude identification below genus level). The matter becomes even more troublesome when abundance is equated with importance. Morales 2010. Morales 2010: 46–8.

Fishing in Mediterranean prehistory: an archaeo-ichthyological overview

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fish – along with turtles, porpoises or even birds.7 Under such circumstances, a specific fish assemblage can, at best, offer the analyst a range of methods or tackle that were certainly not employed to generate a particular taxonomic spectrum (e. g., shark and ray are not caught by nets, sole seldom takes the hook, etc.). In order to make deductions about fishing methods and fishing equipment, AI needs to be contextualised; the faunal data require comparison with other sets of data. New techniques have recently enlarged the scope and capabilities of AI. Molecular analyses of ancient DNA or stable isotopes have already produced remarkable results relating to Mediterranean fish.8 Although we shall comment briefly on these here, these techniques, which are still in their initial stage of development, do not yet have a story to offer; thus, at best, they serve to complement data obtained through more conventional means. Neither modern nor traditional methodologies are without limitations. Given that the main aim of this paper is the identification of patterns, it seems appropriate to explain, first, the range of data included in the database that is presented and to follow this with a discussion about the major types of limitations that often preclude taking the archaeological record of Mediterranean fish at face value. 2.1 The dataset Given that we are concerned with what AI can tell us about ancient Mediterranean fishing, the dataset was restricted to include only marine fish and to exclude adjacent geographical areas such as the Black Sea and the Bay of Cádiz, the fishing industries of which have traditionally been studied on the basis of commercial fish-processing enterprises (figs 1.1–2).9 Data from these areas and related to freshwater fish or even marine molluscs may occasionally be incorporated if they help reinforce an argument or make a pattern more robust. We are presently aware of close to 500 publications mentioning fish in the Mediterranean, yet many of these are useless for our aims. Thus, in addition to freshwater records, papers reporting fishes as ‘Pisces indet.’ are obviously of no value. Equally useless are papers reporting fish on a qualitative (i. e. presence/absence) basis. For the most part, these are older reports referring to small samples retrieved by hand, but occasionally some recent papers report large and well-excavated collections in this deficient manner.10 The Franchthi Cave, a highly emblematic Mediterranean site, presents a different kind of problem. For trench FAS, for example, M. Rose (1995) fails to provide NISPs, offering instead a graph of vertebral counts for the main taxa. For trench HB1, M. C. Stiner and N. D. Munro (2011) provide NISPs only for the most important taxa (i. e. bluefin, barracuda and the combined sea bream (Sparidae) count). At the same time, although 76 % of these assemblages are reported as ‘Fish indet.’, the authors mention the presence of other taxa, including grey mullet (Mugilidae), sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) and gilthead (Sparus au7 8 9

10

Brandt 1984; Sahrhage and Lundbeck 1992. E. g., Arnt et al. 2003; Lightfoot et al. 2011. Ponsich and Tarradell 1965; Ponsich 1988; Curtis 1991; García Vargas 2001; Lagóstena-Barrios 2001; Étienne and Mayet 2002; Morales and Roselló-Izquierdo 2006; 2008; 2012; Morales et al. 2007; see also the papers in Bekker-Nielsen (ed.) 2005. This is the case for the Phoenician settlement at Cerro del Villar (Málaga, Spain): Rodríguez Santana 1999.

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Fig. 1.1: The Western Mediterranean, with principal sites mentioned in text. (Richard Szydlak). rata).11 Although the data from Franchthi are very valuable for the purposes of this paper, we have relied on the accounts provided by the authors and refrained from including the fish assemblages in the dataset. Fishing can best be inferred from primary deposits. For this reason, we omitted from our database both inland sites, where fish were selectively transported, and fish factories, which provide too biased a view of fishing proper; these matters have been dealt with satisfactorily elsewhere.12 Three features we looked for in the collections were a meticulous retrieval of remains, large sample sizes and long-term sequences. Few assemblages conform to all three requirements, thus meeting two of them was often deemed sufficient for inclusion. The resulting database consists of 45 assemblages, mostly sieved, representing 29 sites that span a period of c. 20 millennia (Table 1). The database is painfully biased, both geographically (e. g., there is only one site on the southern rim; cf. figs 1.1–2) and chronologically (e. g., there is only one post-Roman site), yet, for the time being, we will have to take it as representative. Its limitations highlight both the need to continue basic research and to be very wary about considering currently discernable patterns as established dogma.

11 12

Stiner and Munro 2011: 627. E. g., Waelkens et al. (2004); the papers in Bekker-Nielsen (ed.) 2005.

Fishing in Mediterranean prehistory: an archaeo-ichthyological overview

27

Fig. 1.2: The eastern Mediterranean, with principal sites mentioned in text. (Richard Szydlak). The approach we have followed is essentially comparative, carried out at a qualitative level and taking into account the available data on present-day Mediterranean fish stocks.13 Comparisons were made with NISPs and their corresponding percentages, and a measure of diversity, Richness (S), was incorporated; this refers to the number of taxonomic categories in a given assemblage.14 The premise that ‘an increasing species spectrum can be indicative of more efficient fishing equipment and of the exploitation of multiple fishing grounds, both offshore and inshore’15 is one of the accepted dogma that will be submitted to scrutiny. Inference of habitat and fishing grounds relies heavily on the concept of bio-indication. The aim is to look for stenoic fish (i. e. those that exhibit narrow margins of tolerance to specific features of their environment) as these happen to be the best bio-indicators. Under such a simple premise, in the past a lot of categorisation was undertaken that classified species as pelagic (open water), demersal (close to the bottom), benthic (on the bottom), euryhaline, 13 14

15

Whitehead et al. (eds) 1984; Bas et al. 1985; Margalef (ed.) 1985; Gil de Sola 1998; Coll et al. 2010. That is, the taxonomic categories taken into account include species as well as supra-specific categories, provided these contain no representatives at a lower taxonomic level (i. e. the family Sparidae would not count in case sparid remains had been recorded already at the level of the genus or the species). Van Neer et al. 2005: 146.

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stenohaline, migratory, sedentary, etc. Few fish will fit into such narrow categories; this is bad news for the analyst trying to infer the locations of ancient fishing grounds. To circumvent this problem, large, diverse assemblages are sought, since the combined tolerances of many stenoic species convey a far more reliable picture of a former environment than an inference based upon a few taxa. The selected assemblages have been reorganised according to criteria that allow one to identify patterns or trends (Tables 2–8). For an environmental categorisation of fishing, only the largest and most informative sites and taxa were considered (Table 5). This is the case for the three migratory groups selected (i. e. the bluefin, Thunnus thynnus, the mackerels of the genus Scomber and the combined count of all the scombrid fishes) and also, within the sedentary groups, the case for the benthonic Pleuronectiformes (i. e. flatfishes) and a series of mid-water (i. e. demersal) taxa. Among the latter, the groupers (genus Epinephelus) thrive in rocky shore areas, gilthead, sea bass, grey mullet and eel, Anguilla anguilla, do so in brackish-water environments and sea bream (Sparidae), probably the most representative of the Mediterranean fish through time, are littoral (i. e. inshore) over a wide range of depths and sea floors.16

3. The limitations of the dataset: problems of ‘visibility’ Can the compiled data be taken at face value? Probably not. The reasons for such a conclusion have been mentioned briefly above, but, before we take a more detailed look at the data, we should comment further on the problem of biases affecting the record by discussing three situations in which these may be affecting the visibility of marine resources through time and space, distorting our frames of reference. 3.1 The visibility of the fish record and the onset of fishing in the Mediterranean It has long been known that sea levels in the Mediterranean experienced changes of up to 120 m during the Pleistocene.17 What these changes meant at the regional and local scales emerged later,18 and, although the subject was raised by J. C. Shackleton (1985), not until recently was it realised what these changes implied for the visibility of the archaeological record.19 Sea level changes have had a significant effect on the marine resource record, given that fishing and mollusc gathering took place on the coast, their traces becoming weaker and sparser as one moves away from it. In the Mediterranean region, there is ample evidence that this record may be woefully biased prior to the Neolithic, when the shoreline stabilised more or less at today’s level.20 These phenomena have not yet been adequately reconciled with pro-

16 17 18 19 20

Whitehead et al. (eds) 1984; Gil de Sola 1999. Thiede 1978. E. g., Goy et al. 1996; Antonioli 1997; Lambeck et al. 2004. E. g., Bailey and Flemming 2008. During the past two or three millennia there has been a 5–6 m sea level rise in many parts of the Mediterranean that has contributed to shape the profile of the present-day coastline (Margalef 1985).

Fishing in Mediterranean prehistory: an archaeo-ichthyological overview

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posals such as K. V. Flannery’s now classical Broad Spectrum Revolution (BSR) hypothesis that considers fish to be a latecomer to the dietary repertoire of humans.21 Still, many of the problems we face when considering the earliest evidence for fishing are of a taphonomic nature. Indeed, the earliest marine fish in the archaeological record were reported to have been found at the Acheulean site of Vallonet (France, 900,000 years BP), but subsequent analyses revealed them to be a natural deposit.22 The Acheulean has also provided other fish deposits in Israel (Ubeidiya, 1,500,000 BP; Latamné, c. 700,000 BP), Spain (Aridos, 160,000 BP) and France (Lazaret, 140,000 BP); again, none of these show signs of human activity and only Lazaret is on the coast.23 The debate that this evidence has prompted about an early origin of fishing in the hominin lineage may finally be concluded with the analysis of the data emerging from the Middle Acheulean site of Gesher Benot Ya’akov (Israel, 780,000 BP). Located on the palaeo-shore of former Lake Hula, this site has produced the largest collection of fish remains found in the Mediterranean (< 20,000) and, within it, examples that show clear signs of human activity on the bones.24 How will the finds from Gesher Benot Ya’akov affect our currently held views on the origins of fishing? According to the BSR hypothesis, fish constitute low-rank prey (i. e. catching them consumes a large amount of energy – capture cost – compared to the amount of energy they provide as food) and low-rank prey should appear in the archaeological record only once high-ranked prey, such as ungulates, have become depleted or disappeared.25 Such depletion, according to the BSR hypothesis, started to be felt only during the Upper Palaeolithic. Prior to this, there would not have been any fishing around the Mediterranean. In other words, no hominin other than Homo sapiens apparently ever felt the need to fish. The problem is that the individuals from Gesher Benot Ya’akov were not Homo sapiens. Fish finds on Neanderthal sites are scarce and their evidence inconclusive.26 Still, Mousterian deposits have been found in the westernmost and easternmost margins of the Mediterranean,27 suggesting that the association between Neanderthals and marine fauna could be more than a mere coincidence. Data from the Bajondillo Cave (Málaga, Spain) reveals that Neanderthals were consuming marine molluscs in the Mediterranean at the same time that Homo sapiens were doing so for the first time in South Africa (i. e. 150,000 BP), and plenty of later Mousterian sites throughout the Mediterranean testify to such a practice.28 Marine harvesting was neither an exclusively Homo sapiens tradition, as some have recently argued, nor restricted to shellfish.29 Data from Vanguard Cave and Gorham caves in Gibraltar reveal that Neanderthals were actively hunting marine mammals c. 32,000– 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Flannery 1968; Stiner 2001. Cleyet-Merle 1990. Morales 1980; Desse and Desse-Berset 1999; Van Neer et al. 2005. Zohar 2011; pers. comm. Stiner 2001. Roselló-Izquierdo and Morales 2005–2006. At the inland sites of the Tabun Cave, the Amud Cave and Shubbariq in Israel, and of Cueva Millán in north-central Spain (Morales and Roselló-Izquierdo 2005–2006; Van Neer et al. 2005). Evidence for shellfishing at the Grotta dei Moscerini (Italy) has been securely dated to between 110/115,000–65,000 BP (Colonese et al. 2011); see also Cortés-Sánchez et al. 2011. E. g., Jerardino and Marean 2010.

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100% 90% 80% 70% 60%

Land snails

50%

Mammals

40%

Fishes Marine molluscs

30% 20% 10% 0% Lower Solutrean

Middle Solutrean

Upper Solutrean

Fig. 1.3: The faunal composition, expressed as per cent NISP, in the Solutrean levels from Cueva de Nerja. (After Morales and Roselló-Izquierdo, 2008). 30,000 BP.30 In addition, evidence from the islands of ephalonia (Kefallinia) and Zakynthos indicates that Neanderthals were sailing the Ionian Sea 110,000–35,000 BP, possibly even as early as 200,000 BP.31 In the light of this evidence, the suspicion that Neanderthals did fish seems unavoidable. Of course, we should also realize that most of the evidence for Neanderthal fishing may now be lying underwater, since sea levels were lower during the Mousterian than they are today. The earliest documented records of fishing by Homo sapiens show a most peculiar situation. In the Levant, which is home to the earliest finds of modern humans in the Mediterranean basin, the earliest evidence for marine fishing dates only from the Natufian (15,000–11,000 BP).32 This is some five millennia later than the evidence found at Cueva de Nerja (Málaga, Spain) at the opposite end of the Mediterranean, dating to the Solutrean and coinciding with the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM) when sea levels were at their lowest.33 We believe this inconsistency to represent yet another example of sea level changes determining the visibility of the archaeological record. Our hypothesis is based on the correlation that appears to exist between an encroaching coastline and the increasing number of fish remains in the faunal samples. At Cueva de 30 31 32

33

Stringer et al. 2008. Ferentinos et al. 2012. Bar-Yosef and Zohar 2010. This date conforms to the predictions of the BSR hypothesis, since it is during the Natufian that the evidence for gazelle hunting exhibits signs of resource depletion and other ungulate species become scarce or disappear from the deposits. Cortés-Sánchez et al. 2008; Morales and Roselló-Izquierdo 2008. There exist three uncalibrated 14C dates from the intermediate of the Solutrean levels at Cueva de Nerja: 18,420+/-350 BP (UBAR-158), 17,940+/-200 BP (UBAR-98) and 15,990+/-260 BP (UBAR-157).

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Nerja, during the Solutrean, when fish represented less than 5 % of all fauna, the coastline was ca. 4 km away from the cave. Yet already during the Solutrean, we see the frequency of marine faunas increasing (fig. 1.3), and in the ensuing Magdalenian, with the coastline 3 km away, fish rose to 16 % of the fauna, reaching their maximum (18 %) during the Epipaleolithic, when the shoreline was located less than 2 km from the site.34 At Franchthi Cave, the data from trenches FAS and HB1 reveal that, just as in the Levant, marine fish start to appear at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition (c. 11,000 BP). This is remarkable, given that Franchthi Cave had been occupied since the Aurignacian (c. 40,000 BP), yet fully in accordance with the postulates of the BSR hypothesis.35 Equally interesting is the fact that, during most of the Upper Palaeolithic, the seashore was c. 7 km distant from the site. It is revealing that when fish first appear in trench FAS, the shore was 4 km away, and fish barely reached 1 % by weight of the animal bones.36 Fish only become a prominent portion of the faunal assemblage during the Mesolithic (i. e. 9,100–8,000 BP in the FAS trench) when the shore was c. 2 km away.37 The idea that marine fishing arose during the Mesolithic is not new, neither for Greece nor for the eastern Mediterranean; indeed, sea fishing has been considered a defining feature of the period when modern humans became adapted to the marine environment.38 However, as in the case of Neanderthal marine adaptations, we suspect this to be the result again of biases having to do with sea level changes. Thus, irrespective of the moment, location or period under consideration, it would appear that a distance of 2 km from the shore marks a critical threshold, beyond which transporting fish to a settlement may have been an infrequent event, unlikely to leave any trace in the deposits. If this was the case, the dating of the onset of marine fishing in the Mediterranean as late as the Natufian-Mesolithic and the proposal that fish appeared in the record only once high-ranked taxa became depleted may both be in need of a thorough revision. 3.2 Retrieval biases and the visibility of the fish record Any cursory review of fish assemblages from the Mediterranean will rapidly reveal an absence or scarcity of small-sized fish (i. e. species with an SL< 20 cm).39 Again, the question is this: can one take the data at face value? Answering it is crucial if we wish to understand the nature of ancient fishing in the Mediterranean. Few fish, including those of moderate size (40–60 cm SL), feature large bones, and most remains are no longer than a few centimetres. Such a situation should preclude retrieval by hand at all times, yet, even today, at many archaeological sites faunal remains are retrieved in this manner. Since the seminal paper by S. Payne (1972) much has been written on the dan34 35 36 37 38 39

Morales and Roselló-Izquierdo 2008, tables 11.3, 11.4; Roselló-Izquierdo, unpublished data. Stiner and Munro 2011. Rose 1995. Rose 1995. E. g., Powell 2003. Van Neer et al. 2005; Morales and Roselló-Izquierdo 2008. SL (standard length) is defined as the distance from the most prominent tip of the snout to the beginning of the caudal fin rays, i. e. not including the tailfin.

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gers of partial recovery and, in the case of fish, these discussions have found their way into the textbooks.40 Experiments have shown that not only the number of remains but also species richness and diversity increase significantly when sediments are sifted through meshes of 1–3 mm.41 Fish analysts have long considered that 1 mm was the most appropriate mesh size for an adequate retrieval of fish remains, yet Inge Enghoff (2005) has demonstrated that only a mesh size of 0.6 mm is capable of retrieving the remains of the smallest fish (those with a SL below 10 cm). With such provisos in mind, we will consider briefly the case of clupeiforms in the Mediterranean. Clupeiformes is an order of medium to small-sized pelagics whose planktonic feeding habits have made them the most important of the oceanic fish, both in terms of biomass and numbers. In the Mediterranean, the two most common species are the sardine (Sardina pilchardus) and the anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus), which together amount to c. 60 % of the present-day catch.42 Clupeiforms are rarely documented in Mediterranean archaeological assemblages; this is the reason for not including them among the taxa selected for review here.43 Only on Roman sites such as Tróia or Castro Marim (see below) do clupeiforms, mostly sardines, constitute an important feature of the AI record.44 Although this later abundance has been taken by some authors as an argument to postulate a change in fishing strategies, few seem to have reflected upon the fact that all these clupeiforms appear for the most part in sealed or otherwise protected contexts such as salting vats and amphorae. If we were to consider only the evidence from open deposits (middens) we would find clupeiforms to be as poorly represented during Roman times as in any other period. Retrieval biases, rather than a change in fishing strategies, may therefore underlie the phenomenon of a poor representation. This should raise serious concerns. Does other evidence point in the same direction? As mentioned above, clupeiforms have been reported from time to time on Mediterranean sites. Of these, both Franchthi Cave and Cueva de Nerja offer an interesting story. The case of Franchthi is a bit frustrating since the authors offer only cursory comments on the presence of clupeiforms. Reporting on trench FAS, Rose mentions that in the Neolithic levels, ‘[a] large clupeid (probably Sardinella sp.), which occurred sporadically in earlier levels is present more regularly’ (italics added);45 for trench HB1, Stiner and Munro report that ‘Remains of very small fish such as sardines are also present, but these are rare even in flotation samples’ (italics added).46 Given that the HB1 sediments were screened through a 2.8 mm fine mesh and no retrieval technique is mentioned for trench FAS, one is left wondering to what extent clupeiform remains were lost during retrieval operations. At Cueva de Nerja, clupeiforms have been reported from the Epipalaeolithic layers only. They were found in two areas (the Sala del Vestíbulo and Sala de la Mina), but only in the 40 41 42 43

44 45 46

E. g., Wheeler and Jones 1989: 61–78. Zohar and Belmaker 2005. FAO 1981; Bas et al. 1985. Sardines and anchovies have very small and oily bones. These fish are often consumed whole, so that chewing and enzymes/acids in the digestive tract destroy most of their bones; but even when this does not happen, both lipid saponification (in cases where micro-organisms do not digest the fat soon after burial) and humic acid attack can lead to the complete elimination of their remains. Morales and Roselló-Izquierdo 2008. Rose 1995: 24. Stiner and Munro 2011: 627.

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samples analysed by Aura et al. (2002) who screened their sediments using sieves down to 1 mm fine mesh. In the assemblage that we studied at Sala del Vestíbulo, which is of the same size as that reported by Aura et al. – 2,920 and 2,833 respectively – but, at best, screened through 2.5 mm fine mesh, not a single remain of a clupeiform has been found.47 On the other hand, Aura et al. report up to 6 % NISP of their assemblages to be ‘Clupeiformes indet.’ That retrieval bias is determining the visibility of certain groups at Cueva de Nerja has been already established as a consequence of the differences in the bird assemblages analysed by two research groups.48 Cueva de Nerja is surely no exception to the rule that clupeiforms do not appear in the archaeological records when sieving has not been carried out with an appropriate mesh size. At the Bronze Age site of Troy (Hisarlık near Çanakkale, Turkey), W. Van Neer and M. Uerpmann (1998) report sardines only in the fine-screened samples and our ongoing research at the Portuguese Bronze Age to Roman site of Castro Marim revealed no clupeiforms in the sediments screened on a 2 mm mesh49 yet thousands of sardine bones on soil samples screened for seeds on a 0.4 mm mesh.50 That clupeiforms were fished at all times should come as no surprise. From as early as 24,000 BP from the site of Ohalo II (Israel) has come evidence of nets that would have allowed the inhabitants to catch small fish.51 The absence of clupeiforms from the Mediterranean AI record is undoubtedly another ‘methodological construct’ distorting our view of ancient fishing in this sea. This problem needs to be taken into consideration when trying to assess the productivity of the Mediterranean through time or the importance of fishing in ancient economies.52 Retrieval biases work both ways, of course; some fish species grow to an enormous size and these, in defectively or incompletely retrieved samples, can convey a false impression of abundance. This brings us to the issue of tuna and identification biases. 3.3 Identification biases and the lack of adequate reference collections The bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) is one of the most spectacular creatures found in the Mediterranean waters. Even moderately-sized specimens (i. e. c. 1 m in length with a weight of 10–20 kg) feature bones (mostly vertebrae) that are impossible to overlook. Thus the bluefin, one of whose major breeding grounds is the Mediterranean, has been the focus of lively debates concerning its harvesting and its connections with seafaring and trade.53 There is, however, a major problem in these debates. Large (i. e. SL> 1 m) scombrid remains tend to be automatically identified as bluefins – but, in fact, another species of tuna, the albacore (Thunnus alalunga), is today more common in certain parts of the Mediterranean (fig. 1.4).54 While the albacore is a far more pelagic species that seldom approaches the 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

Roselló-Izquierdo, unpublished data. Morales et al. 1998. Morales and Roselló-Izquierdo 2008, table 11.5. Roselló-Izquierdo, in preparation. Van Neer et al. 2005; I. Zohar, pers. comm. Gallant 1985. Morales 1993. Collette and Nauen 1983.

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Fig. 1.4: Distribution of the two species of the genus Thunnus recorded in the Mediterranean, the albacore Thunnus alalunga (top), and the bluefin Thunnus thynnus. (Taken, with modifications, from Whitehead et al. 1984; map by Richard Szydlak).

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shore, as the bluefin does, their bones are almost indistinguishable.55 In the absence of specimens on the reference collections, analysts would do well to identify large scombrids only down to genus level, unless DNA can be analysed. The matter may still be more complicated if other large tunas that presently do not enter the Mediterranean – such as the yellowfin (Thunnus albacares) and the big-eyed tuna (Thunnus obesus) – did so in the past.56 The crux of the problem is that very few reference collections around the world hold skeletonised specimens of large tunas other than the bluefin; and, clearly, the correct identification is critical for determining the coastal or pelagic nature of its fishing in the past. The issue of the development of reference collections is crucial for the study of fish remains. As Van Neer et al. aptly remark: ‘The more time is spent on collecting modern comparative skeletons … the higher the number of taxa is’.57 The problem of restricted reference collections lurks behind the diversity and richness estimated for any particular assemblage. Along with the biases imposed by the visibility of the record, this problem affects not only the quantity but also the quality of the data, limiting the possibility of an accurate assessment of ancient marine fishing in the Mediterranean.

4. The results: any reliable patterns emerging? After this depressing introduction, can one hope to spot reliable trends or patterns in the datasets? To answer this question, a first step would be to check whether or not taxonomic richness (S) correlates in any meaningful way with other parameters. Here, the most obvious parameter would be the NISP. When all the samples from Table 1 are pooled together, essentially no correlation of richness with sample size emerges (r = 0.2) even though, and except for two outliers, the assemblages cluster neatly. These two outliers are the largest assemblages in the dataset with the site of Cape Andreas Kastros featuring a far larger number of taxa than Atlit-Yam (i. e. 19 as against 7). When these two are taken out, correlation increases but not to a significant level (r = 0.54); thus one can conclude that, in general, richness is not dictated by sample size, as one might intuitively deduce from a cursory look at Table 1. Such a result should actually be expected, given that all these sites were excavated following different protocols and their settings are rarely comparable. Yet, when one carries out this same analysis at the level of isolated sites, with the exception of Grotta dell’Uzzo (r = 0.9), correlations between the NISP and the richness of each assemblage are equally low (Nerja r = 0.33; Santa Maria Lavezzi r = 0.3) or downright inverted (i. e., the smaller the assemblage, the greater its taxonomic richness: Cave of the Cyclops r = -0.9; Mursia r = -0.1). Clearly, the diversity of the fish assemblages does not seem to have been the result of chance.

55 56

57

Nakamura 1965. When identifying species by size, one could say that only bones belonging to fish larger than 250 cm fork length (FL) would undoubtedly represent bluefins. (Fork length is the length of a fish measured from the tip of the snout to the end of the middle caudal fin rays). Remains from specimens with estimated fork lengths between 200–250 cm could be either big-eyed or bluefin tunas and remains above 140 cm fork length could represent bluefin, big-eyed or yellowfin tunas. When dealing with remains of fish below 140 cm FL (the majority at archaeological sites!) the albacore should certainly be included in the list. Van Neer et al. 2005: 146.

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Environmental factors may partly explain this lack of correlation at a pan-Mediterranean level. West to east diversity gradients have been evidenced in recent fish studies58 and this same trend is seen when our assemblages are arranged on a country basis, which loosely defines a similar geographical gradient (Table 2). It is true that this gradient is masking the fact that the number of sites varies from one country to another, yet there might also be sound reasons that explain the trend. Table 3 records fish that, independently of the total number of taxa reported for each country, have been cited in only one of them. When reviewing these data, it becomes evident that the taxonomic richness of Spain is due to its proximity to the Atlantic, from where, from time to time, it either received species from the northeastern Atlantic (i. e. cod, salmon) or the southeastern Atlantic, such as the moray eel, Gymnothorax unicolor, and various kinds of jacks (Carangidae) and grunts (Haemulidae).59 Indeed, in the remaining countries the ‘endemics’ are strictly Mediterranean taxa whose recorded presence at a particular place may simply reflect chance or some incidental event such as the presence of a given species in a given reference collection (see above). What this very general analysis has failed to reveal is any meaningful correlation of taxonomic richness with period. If anything, what the data in Table 4 demonstrate is that diversity was greatest during the earliest periods, diminishing drastically from the Palaeolithic up until classical antiquity. This finding runs counter to the previously held notion that as fishing technology progressed, fish diversities must have increased since a larger number of species became accessible to fishermen. Given that seafaring technologies might have been available at a far earlier time than previously assumed60 and that ethnographic data reveal that fishing methods in the Mediterranean have remained unchanged for millennia,61 one wonders whether the absence of any robust pattern here is significant or just another methodological construct, in this case related to sample size. What seems clear is that the high values of the richness estimator during the earliest periods are due to an input of ‘exotic’ fauna, represented by codfish, coinciding with cold spells during the Upper Palaeolithic.62 4.1 The nature of Mediterranean fishing Several lines of evidence indicate that, throughout history, availability must have played a larger role than choice in dictating what species were fished in the Mediterranean. This, in turn, implies that fishing was carried out at a local or, at best, a regional level – probably throughout the year. To interpret the data presented in Tables 5–7 one needs to take into account not only the context of each site but also data on the biology of the taxa reported from the site. In general, the year-round activity of fishermen may be deduced from the low overall levels of migratory taxa.63 These, in addition to the scombrid and eel of Table 5, include 58 59 60 61 62 63

E. g., Coll et al. 2010. Morales and Roselló-Izquierdo 2008; Rodrigo and Marlasca-Martín 2009. Ferentinos et al. 2012. Rose 1994; Powell 2003. Cortés-Sánchez et al. 2008; Table 3. We remain uncertain how to interpret the seasonal signal provided by the codfish taxa at Cueva de Nerja. If the documented 50–100 cm+ size range reflects the real composition of the original population, we would be looking at migratory breeders (i. e. only adults), likely to concentrate in the

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needlefish (Belone sp.) and barracuda (Sphyraenidae) (Table 7), along with pelagic sharks, the meagre (Argyrosomus regius) and the jack reported at Sidon (Table 8). There are exceptions here, such as the pre-Neolithic levels at Mursia and Franchthi,64 the Neolithic Cape Andreas Kastros site or the Bronze Age assemblage from Sidon, where migrants make up important proportions of the identified assemblages (37–92 % of the NISP: Table 7). But such exceptions support the rule that fishing took place over the whole year, a pattern that makes a lot of sense in the context of fishing at subsistence (i. e. household) or artisanal (i. e. local) level. From the second half of the first millennium BC to the first half of the first millennium AD, these strategies were complemented by large-scale fishing to supply markets throughout the Mediterranean (fig. 1.5). The generally restricted contribution of the migratory taxa can likewise be taken to indicate the generally littoral (i. e. inshore) character of most fish assemblages, and thus of the fisheries producing them. Indeed, most of the recorded migrants are offshore species that approach the coast at certain times and in such amounts as to be readily accessible from the shore itself.65 This would apply to the sardine but also to needlefish, barracuda and various kinds of pelagic shark and jack (Table 8). The case of the bluefin tuna is of particular relevance here. Bluefin is the most littoral of all the large tunas. Its habit of swimming close to the shore must have allowed fishermen stationed on the beaches to intercept schools with traps and nets, of which the tonnara and madrague are the best-known examples.66 There are documented cases of killer whales corralling bluefins into bays, occasionally provoking accidental strandings when the fish try to escape their predators. Could such chance events have played a role in the level of tuna harvesting in those parts of the Mediterranean where the coast is deeply indented? If it could ever be confirmed that the tuna remains of the Mediterranean fish assemblages systematically represent bluefins, not albacores (fig. 1.4), this would provide a strong argument in favour of the inshore character of ancient Mediterranean fisheries. In fact, when one reflects upon it, while pictorial and documentary evidence confirms that these were being caught, one is baffled by the absence in the AI record of such true pelagics as swordfish (Xiphias gladius) and dolphinfish (Coryphaena sp.) (fig. 1.6). These cases are not unique. Marlin (Istiophoridae) is equally remarkable by its absence, as are all the most pelagic large Mediterranean sharks, including the peregrine (Cetorhinus maximus), the great white (Carcharodon carcharias) and the thresher sharks (Alopias sp.). Other strongly pelagic species such as bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix), pilotfish (Naucrates ductor) and flying-fish (Exocoetidae) have been reported on only single occasions, the latter probably reflecting a marine bird accumulation.67 This also seems to have been the case with anchovy.68 There are many other pelagic taxa missing from the Mediterranean AI

64 65 66 67 68

area from midwinter to early spring (February-April), assuming that present-day behaviour can be extrapolated to the Palaeolithic: Whitehead et al. (eds) 1984; Roselló-Izquierdo, unpublished data. Rose 1995, fig. 1; Stiner and Munro 2011, table 3. Whitehead et al. (eds) 1984; Pepperell and Harvey 2010. García Vargas, this volume. Marlasca-Martín 2008. This lack of strictly pelagic taxa is seen also in the case of clupeiforms. Except for some isolated finds and fish factories, the pelagic anchovy is extremely infrequent, whereas the more littoral sardine is recorded regularly.

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Fig. 1.5: Temporal evolution of Roman fish productions. Time intervals define the dominant group in each stage given that all groups are documented throughout the Roman period in non-industrial Mediterranean fish assemblages. Clupeiforms are unlikely to be underrepresented, given the sealed nature of most of the deposits in which they appear (i.e., salting vats and amphorae). Tunas, on the other hand, tend to be underrepresented as most of the butchering process took place on the beaches, where most of the skeletal remains were left behind. The archaeoichthyologist needs to take these matters into consideration, as they not only affect the quantity but also the quality of the record.

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record (e. g., louvar (Luvarus imperialis), opah (Lampris guttatus), oilfish (Ruvettus pretiosus)), but these are rare species – although, like the majority of those just mentioned, of a large size and with a characteristic skeletal morphology, and thus unlikely to be overlooked on site or left unidentified on a laboratory bench (fig. 1.6). Their systematic absence after more than 40 years of research might be revealing, just as the epic narratives of swordfish hunting in the works of Polybius, Oppian, Strabo, Aelian and the elder Pliny69 imply that offshore fishing was highly exceptional in the ancient Mediterranean. Fishing was fundamentally an inshore activity, as can be partially inferred from classical descriptions of ancient fishing and fishermen.70 The exceptional nature of pelagic fishing could equally apply in the case of the strictly benthonic (i. e. bottom-dwelling) taxa, most of which can be harvested on a regular basis only by trawling.71 To understand further whether most of these fish assemblages were determined by availability rather than by choice, we must return to the data on the environmental settings of each site and to the biology of each species. Groupers, for example, have been found in significant quantities only at sites such as Tiryns, Grotta dell’Uzzo, Cendres and Cape Andreas Kastros, all located on rocky shores (Table 5); this is a pattern first noticed by J. Desse and N. Desse-Berset.72 That this pattern is a robust one can be observed at Cueva de Nerja, where groupers are absent during the Palaeolithic and Epipalaeolithic periods, when the seashore was essentially sandy,73 yet become the main taxa from the Neolithic onwards, when the advancing shoreline had reached the cliffs where the cave is located (Table 7). Likewise, only at sites such as Lattes, Carthage, Troy or La Fonteta, featuring brackish-water environments, does the gilthead become prominent in the fish assemblages (13–43 % of NISP). Along with this, the proportion of taxa typical of estuaries and coastal lagoons – such as sea bass, grey mullet or eel – also increases. That Lattes, facing lagoons that stretch for kilometres along the shore, happens to be the only Mediterranean site where flatfish74 represent a significant group is not surprising. Sandy bottoms constitute ideal habitats for these fishes and both the shallow waters and tides would have allowed the coastal dwellers to collect flatfish at low tide without any need for costly or cumbersome drag-net operations requiring many participants. That brackish-water environments determine the composition of the catch is confirmed by fish assemblages caught over long-term sequences where these environments gradually expanded or contracted due to coastal progradation or marine transgression episodes (Table 6). At both Troy and La Fonteta, for instance, we see the gilthead-sea bass-grey mullet-eel cluster diminish as a result of an advance of fresh (Troy) or marine waters (La Fonteta).75 Despite these being a mere two cases, the fact that the phenomenon is recorded at different 69 70 71 72 73 74

75

Polybius 34.2.3; Oppian, On Fishing 3.542–75; Strabo 1.2.16; Aelian, NA 14.23; Pliny, NH 32.15. Bekker-Nielsen 2005: 85–8. Morales and Roselló-Izquierdo 2008. Desse and Desse-Berset 1999. At the Cypriot site of Shillourokambos, located on a rocky shore, groupers reach 92 % of the NISP: Desse and Desse-Berset 1999. Aura et al. 2002. The common sole (Solea vulgaris), turbot (Scophthalmus maximus) and some unspecified Pleuronectid (plaice-like) species: Sternberg 1995. On sandy shores during low tide, many flatfish species can be easily stepped upon and taken with leister. Sternberg 2007; Van Neer and Uerpmann 1998.

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Fig. 1.6: Pelagic fishes from the ancient Mediterranean include species never found in the archaeological deposits, such as the common dolphinfishes (Coryphaena hippurus) that the fisherman shown in a fresco found at Santorini holds (top left); or found in anecdotal numbers, as in the cases of the flying fishes (Exocoetidae, upper right: drawn after a fresco from Phylacopi on Melos); and the swordfish Xiphias gladius (below); all of them having highly diagnostic bones (centre right: troncal vertebra of swordfish).

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times and both corners of the Mediterranean, works both ways for the fish cluster, and is paralleled by identical shifts of abundance in the brackish-water molluscs76 lends robustness to the pattern. A very important feature of most of the assemblages under consideration has to do with their idiosyncratic nature. Indeed, what our tables do not show is that, just as the assemblages from Cueva de Nerja include a significant number of codfish,77 58 % of the remains at Santa María Lavezzi are wrasse (Labrus sp.), and 68 % of those from Pseira are picarels (Spicara sp.). At the Cave of the Cyclops the main species is the saddled sea bream (Oblada melanura: 20–24 %), while at Ithanos it is the parrotfish (Sparisoma cretense).78 At Atlit-Yam, 97 % of the remains are triggerfish (Balistes carolinensis), whereas Sidon is the only site with the remains of a substantial number of large sharks, in particular the hammerhead, Sphyrna zygaena (Table 8).79 This list could be extended further with sturgeons, pilotfish and many of the taxa listed in Table 3. What these data imply is that in a diversified marine ecosystem, such as that of the Mediterranean, few species ever stood the chance of becoming the sole or even the main focus of the fishing effort, as has been the case in more northern waters such as the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Reading between the lines, one could take these ‘idiosyncratic’ occurrences not only as glimpses of a rich ecosystem, but also as an indication of the role played by chance events in small-scale fishing operations. Others have taken this variability to reflect a different kind of phenomenon that often goes under the largely ambiguous label of ‘specialised fishing’. Far from this, what we believe the Mediterranean AI records to show is, above all, opportunism, both at the spatial and temporal levels. Specialisation, as we now understand it, was probably too big a word for these fishermen! Why so? Taken together, the aforementioned data indicate that fishing was basically a short-range, inshore-based activity, focused on the local waters around each settlement. Although the fish assemblages do not allow us to specify whether this fishing took place from the shore or from boats, early (i. e. pre-Homo sapiens) evidence for seafaring indicates that both options were possible at all times.80 Of perhaps greater interest is the fact that fishing, being such a spatially-restricted phenomenon, lends support to the hypothesis that the most important technological constraint on ancient fishing in the Mediterranean was not the inefficiency of fishing gear – which the Palaeolithic fish assemblages from Cueva de Nerja reveal to have been quite efficient – but the inability to preserve the fish after the catch.81 This constraint must have limited the range and size of the fishing boats and forced fishermen to survive on their circumscribed parcels of coast: what one might call a sort of feedback loop. Some scholars, notably T. W. Gallant (1985), have based their arguments for the insignificance of fishing in the ancient Mediterranean upon questionable assumptions of low 76

77 78 79 80 81

Changes in the abundance of brackish-water molluscs such as cockles (Cerastoderma sp.) mirror the varying abundance of brackish-water-tolerant fish at both Troy (Çakirlar 2008) and La Fonteta (Martin-Cantarino and Rico-Alcaraz 2007). Solutrean: 34 % of NISP (Morales and Roselló-Izquierdo 2008); Magdalenian: 71 % of NISP; Epipalaeolithic: 79 % of NISP (Roselló-Izquierdo, unpublished data). Desse and Desse-Berset 1994; Rose 1994; Mylona 2003; Powell 2003; Morales and Roselló-Izquierdo 2008. Van Neer et al. 2005. Ferentinos et al. 2012. Bekker-Nielsen 2005: 93–4.

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productivity of either the marine environment or the fishing gear. Given that others have dealt adequately with arguments related to the putative inefficiency of ancient fishing gear and the problems of using modern fishing statistics to estimate catches in antiquity,82 we should like to add just a few words to the debate concerning productivity. In our view, the main issue is that biological productivity (i. e., the amount of carbon fixed by plants, which ultimately determines the biomass of organisms living at a particular place) is a very different phenomenon from productivity at the level of a society, a sunlight-independent, population-dependent phenomenon both in terms of the labour force that can be marshalled or the number of mouths that need to be fed. In most cases, biological productivity either facilitates or hampers the fishing effort, increasing or decreasing its efficiency, but it is not its sole, or even its main, determinant. Population densities and the restriction to short-range fishing must have thus played key roles in defining the character of ancient fishing in the Mediterranean; short-range fishing, in particular, shaped the idiosyncratic features of the assemblages that have been preserved for us to study. It would be good, however, if we could somehow calibrate the role that fish played in the animal economies of the ancient Mediterranean. 4.2 How does one measure importance? Evidence for intensification over time How can one measure the importance of the fish found at each site? One way to do this is to contrast their numbers with those of other faunal groups, the NISP and MNI being the most obvious choices for the analyses. Yet such a procedure would produce rough underestimates. Traditional, defective retrieval methods and the lower preservation rates of fish bones, due to their small size, oil content, etc., clearly reveal that it would be misleading to quantify their importance prima facie by comparison with groups of faunal material which have a greater chance of entering the archaeological record. By extension, the generally low numbers of fish records indicate that the NISP rather than the MNI – which reduces samples to ludicrously low numbers – should be the preferred estimator. As it happens, most fish reports rarely quantify other faunal groups found on the same site. In the ones that do, however, variability seems to be the rule at all times. As mentioned above, the proportion of fish at Cueva de Nerja rose from an average of 5 % during the Solutrean to 16 % during the Magdalenian, 18 % during the Epipalaeolithic, and then apparently crashed during the Neolithic (to c. 4 %); this was most probably due to the disappearance of gadids.83 At Franchthi Cave (trench FAS) Rose reports estimates by weight ranging from 1–50 % in the pre-Neolithic levels. For the Neolithic, these values drop to an overall average of 5 %, but in certain units values range from 15–40 %.84 Could one gather from such fluctuations that the importance of fishing was reduced at the onset of the Neolithic? For later periods, variation remains the rule (e. g., 0.02–50 % at Grotta del Uzzo; c. 90 % at Cape Andreas Kastros; up to 1.7 % at Troy; 0.1–1.9 % at Pevkakia; 7.5 % at Carthage, etc.). This variability resists any attempt to infer patterns and trends. Within-site variation, as in the case of taxonomic diversity, contributes to the idiosyncratic nature of each assemblage, with chance, due to seasonal or spatial variation, dictating the availability of fish stocks to the essentially ‘static’ (i. e. short-range) fisherman. Still, the contribution of fish, such as those 82 83 84

Bekker-Nielsen 2005: 93–4; Lund Jacobsen 2005. Morales and Roselló-Izquierdo 2008; Roselló-Izquierdo, unpublished data. Rose 1995: 24.

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recorded at Cape Andreas Kastros, not to speak of fish-salting installations, to the local economy has been presumed to be sizeable. Do we have other means by which to determine the role played by fish in ancient Mediterranean societies? Stable isotope analysis has become an important tool since the research of H. Tauber and others which suggests that, on the Atlantic edge of Europe, a strong reliance on marine resources gave way to a terrestrial diet during the Neolithic.85 In the Mediterranean the results thus far obtained, not surprisingly, ‘… argue for diversity’.86 Data from the Spanish Mesolithic site of El Collado suggest a diet of 25 % marine protein, while materials from Mesolithic sites along the Adriatic coast of Croatia reveal that at least one third of the human remains sampled had consumed enough marine protein for it to register in their bone collagen isotopic values;87 the Neolithic sites of Arene Candide (Italy) and Brochtorff Circle (Malta), however, provided no marine signal.88 This conforms with the findings from Cueva de Nerja and Franchthi Cave. But the situation is confused at Arene Candide, where molluscs have been found in the deposits, and more so at Grotta dell’Uzzo, where the Mesolithic offers no clear marine signals yet mollusc remains are abundant and fish represent up to 26 % of the faunal NISP in the transition levels to the Neolithic.89 Additionally, signals of marine foodstuffs are found in other Neolithic populations (e. g., the ossuary from Alepotrypa, Greece),90 indicating that the distinction between Mesolithic and Neolithic diets does not fit one sharp, coherent scenario of replacement. Later evidence is equally inconclusive, and scholars refer to ‘… a significant amount of dietary protein [deriving] from marine protein’ in the material from the site of Apollonia, Bulgaria (fifth to second century BC).91 This corresponds to the findings of Prowse et al. (2004) at the site of Isola Sacra near Rome (first to fourth century AD) and reflects the ‘higher’ level of consumption of marine foodstuffs than that indicated by isotopic analyses of the material from Metaponto, southern Italy (seventh to second century BC).92 All these results are preliminary and must be viewed in the context of the ongoing debate about the ability of isotopic analysis to trace low levels of marine resource consumption; apparently, marine intake may not be isotopically detectable if the diet contained less than 20 % marine protein.93 Add to this the fact that isotopic analyses provide combined estimations of fish and molluscs as one group, and it seems evident that, unless the method of analysis improves, assessment of fish consumption/importance on this basis is not likely to lead to anything but loose generalisations. The exception to the aforementioned rule that availability, rather than choice, dictated the output of fishing activity in ancient times is provided by the species involved in the earliest documented trade of fish in the Mediterranean (Waelkens et al. 2004). Although inland transport of marine fish is documented for the Early Natufian (Hayonim Cave B, Israel),94 it is not until the Late Chalcolithic (Tell Katif, Israel) that we can identify trade in the sense of 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

Tauber 1981; Richards and Hedges 1999. Lightfoot et al. 2011. Lightfoot et al. 2011. Francalacci 1988; Richards et al. 2001. Tagliacozzo 1993; Francalacci 1988. Papathanasiou et al. 2000. Keensleyside et al. 2006. Keensleyside et al. 2006. Milner et al. 2004. Bar-Yosef and Zohar 2010.

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long-distance transport.95 This trade, first recorded in the more southerly of the coastal settlements of the Levant, originally involved freshwater species, in particular the Nile Perch (Lates niloticus). That such a trade started in Egypt should come as no surprise given the development of Egyptian civilisation at the time; but that a freshwater top predator and scavenger (i. e., a species whose abundance must at all times have remained low compared to that of most other Nilotic fish) was the object of this trade seems baffling and suggests that, in this case, choice, rather than availability, must have played the key role in determining the course of events. We may, in fact, assume this to be the first instance of a specialised fishing activity in the Mediterranean basin. That a non-marine species was the target has implications at the level of productivity as well, given that some brackish-water, lower-down-the-trophic-chain fish, such as grey mullet or gilthead, must have reached enormous densities in the extremely productive waters of the Nile Delta, and thus should have been preferred to the Nile perch for mass-scale harvesting and export. The apparent absence of a trade in these brackish-water species points to a completely different agenda, related to the preservation of the meat. Indeed, the Mediterranean is conducive to the easiest method of fish preservation (i. e. drying), a process that is particularly well suited to the sunny lands bordering the Nile; the microclimate of the lush Nile delta is, however, entirely different. Under the moister conditions prevailing on the delta, flies, along with a wealth of micro-organisms such as fungi, must have posed serious problems when drying fish, especially at night. Is this apparent absence of estuarine species among the early Nilotic fish products real? During the following Bronze Age, the scope of the Levantine fish trade was widened to include marine fish, gilthead and grey mullet, and also grouper and meager. These species are found at inland sites as far away as the Aegean, but one remains unsure whether these marine fish represent long-range imports or catches from local shores. The question could be resolved through DNA analyses such as those carried out on a catfish found in the Roman inland city of Sagalassos in southwestern Turkey, which could have been of either local or foreign origin; the latter was found to be the case.96 What we do know at this stage is that the later fish trade in the Mediterranean focused on fatty-meat, marine migrants and that it developed in conjunction with a massive use of salt.97 That both low-trophic-level clupeiforms and high-trophic-level scombrids were targeted here suggests that both availability and choice were factors in the fishing process. Still, if one were to take the temporal sequence of events at face value, it appears that, as was the case with the Egyptian fish trade, choice (tuna) was the principal factor, with availability (clupeiforms) following (fig. 1.5).

5. Final remarks The idea that fishing was a marginal activity in the ancient Mediterranean, with fish being a marginal resource, as maintained by Gallant (1985), is not likely to be refuted on the basis of the available AI data. This is due to a general dearth of high-resolution, quantitatively-sig95

96 97

Waelkens et al. 2004; cf. Van Neer et al. 2005, 148: ‘The generally accepted distance that can be covered in a day by two individual parties meeting at a central point is 50 km, a distance that can serve to differentiate regional from wider distribution patterns’. Arnt et al. 2003: 1097–102. García Vargas 2001.

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nificant samples that only rich and well-excavated deposits are likely to provide. Since, at the time of writing, these number a dozen at the most, an item that should stand high on the agenda of future research is the study of these assemblages to the best of our ability. By now it should be clear that, to employ a famous bon mot, absence of evidence is by no means evidence of absence. This has become very evident from the data on pre-Homo sapiens fishing and seafaring capabilities which are slowly emerging, but applies equally well to other aspects of the fishing history of modern humans in the Mediterranean (e. g., the targeting of clupeiforms). This evidence challenges accepted ideas – e. g., the presumed late appearance of low-ranked prey such as fishes in the archaeological record – as well as unstated assumptions. Among the latter, the notions that fishing is per se difficult, and that fishing for sardine is far more difficult than fishing for tuna are both in need of a thorough review. As grizzly bears so aptly demonstrate, being stationed at the right place at the right time permits one to fish very productively with one’s bare hands (or paws, in this case). In fact, if someone else is doing the hard work for you, as in the case of stranded tunas escaping from killer whales, you may need to do nothing, apart from being on the spot!98 While we cannot elevate such anecdotes to the status of hypotheses, how can we be confident that such stranded tunas did not provide the impetus for fishing at a given place and early time in human history? The effect of tuna windfalls and other chance events on long-lived shore populations should not be underestimated (nor overestimated, for that matter); for people living on the shore, they represent events that need to be contended with. For future work, we should keep in mind that even if fish are found to constitute a fallback resource, this would not mean that they were unimportant; all that was needed was for this resource to be available at a critical time when all other foods were at their lowest supply. In other words, quality, not quantity, define importance. In connection with this, the preservation of meat for later consumption would have been critical and, before solutions to this problem were found, one may assume that subsistence/artisanal fishing was the rule, as the evidence from the data presented here suggest. Once people learned how to manage surpluses, fishing could have been carried out on a larger scale. Only once this threshold had been crossed can we conceive phenomena of local over-exploitation episodes, for which DNA fingerprinting of extinct haplogroups may in the future provide crucial evidence. The migratory marine species traded during classical antiquity must have been less exposed to over-exploitation, given that their numbers were mostly regulated through biological recruitment rates in the upper layers of the oceanic waters, far away from human interference. Conservation studies will surely become a major focus of archaeo-ichthyological research in a not too distant future. In the meantime, it is hoped that the ideas presented in these pages will help fuel the necessary debate among scholars that is required in order to reach a holistic understanding of ancient fishing in the Mediterranean. This paper benefited from discussions with a good many colleagues, some of whom may be unaware of the help they provided for the rumination of ideas. We wish to thank specifically Daniela Bar-Yosef, Leif Jonsson, Omri Lernau, Tatiana Theodoropoulou, Wim Van Neer and Irit Zohar for sharing data and ideas in the recent past and to make special mention of Nathalie Desse-Berset and her hus-

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Cort 2005.

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band, the late Jean Desse, to whom this work is dedicated; Jean was not only the initiator of these studies but also a reference point and mentor for many, as well as an excellent person. May he rest in peace. Arturo Morales Muñiz Laboratorio de Arqueozoologia, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid Edificio de Biologia, Campus de Cantobianco, E-28049 Madrid [email protected] Eufrasia Roselló-Izquierdo Laboratorio de Arqueozoologia, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid Edificio de Biologia, Campus de Cantobianco, E-28049 Madrid [email protected]

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Whitehead, P. J. P., M. L. Bauchot, J. C. Hureau et al. (eds) 1984. Fishes of the North-Eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Paris. Zohar, I. 2011. ‘Who deposited these fishy bones? Analysis of fish remains from Gesher Benot Ya’aqov (GBY), Israel’. Paper presented at the 16th meeting of the ICAZ Fish Remains Working Group. Jerusalem, 27 October to 2 November 2011. Zohar, I. and M. Belmaker 2005. ‘Size does matter: methodological comments on sieve size and species richness in fishbone assemblages’, Journal of Archaeological Science 32, 635–41.

7. Appendix Table 1. Selected fish assemblages arranged chronologically Site

NISP

S

1 Solutrean

Nerja

1083

27

2 Magdalenian

Nerja

2533

21

3 Epipaleolithic

Nerja

2538

19

4 Epigravetian

Mursia

346

7

5 Mesolithic

Mursia

204

8

6 Mesolithic

Cyclops

1957

31

7 Mesolithic

Grotta dell’Uzzo

565

14

8 Natufian

El Wad

62

4

9 Pre-Pottery Neolitihic

El Wad

12

8

5906

19

312

7

Period

10 Pre-Pottery Neolitihic

Cape Andreas Kastros

11 Pre-Pottery Neolitihic

Khirokhitia

12 Pre-Pottery Neolitihic

Shillourokambos

71

2

13 Pre-Pottery Neolitihic C

Askelon Marina

789

11

14 Pre-Pottery Neolitihic C

Atlit-Yam

> 6000

7

15 Pottery Neolithic

Ziqim

154

3

16 Neolithic

Nerja

210

14

17 Neolithic

Cave of the Cyclops

1842

32

18 Neolithic

Grotta dell’Uzzo

873

16

19 Neolithic

Mursia

309

14

20 Cardial Neolithic

Cendres

811

31

21 Rachmani

Magula Pevkakia

59

6

22 Early Bronze Age

Magula Pevkakia

42

6

23 Early Bronze Age

Sidon

91

8

24 Middle Bronze Age

Sidon

29

8

25 Late Bronze Age

Sidon

13

4

51

Fishing in Mediterranean prehistory: an archaeo-ichthyological overview Period

Site

NISP

S

26 Early Bronze Age

Besik Yassitepe

442

10

27 Early/Middle Bronze Age

Tróia

250

13

28 Late Bronze Age

Hala Sultan Tekke

156

14

29 Late Bronze Age

Pseira

155

3

30 Late Bronze Age

Tiryns

65

8

31 Late Bronze Age

Tróia

105

17

32 Late Bronze Age

Palaikastro

356

19

33 Bronze Age

Punta de Gavilanes

398

31

34 Bronze Age

Riuets

216

17

35 Phoenician

La Fonteta

562

22

36 Phoenician

Punta de Gavilanes

101

21

37 Phoenician

Toscanos

53

7

38 Punic

Toscanos

142

15

39 Roman

Lattes

2657

25

40 Roman

Carthage

303

17

41 Late Antiquity

Ithanos

381

22

42 Byzantine

Limenas

566

23

43 Medieval

Santa Maria Lavezzi

451

10

44 Modern Age (16th–17th c.) Santa Maria Lavezzi

1517

23

89

14

45 Modern Age (17th c.)

Santa Maria Lavezzi

Table 2. Taxonomic richness (S) of the assemblages in table 1, arranged by country Country

Sites

Assemblages

S (Range)

S (Y)

Spain

6

France

2

11

7–31

20.4

4

10–25

18

Tunisia

1

1

17

17

Italy

2

5

7–16

11.8

Greece

7

9

3–32

16.6

Turkey

2

3

10–17

13.3

Cyprus

4

4

2–19

10.5

Levant

5

8

3–11

6.6

52

Arturo Morales-Muñiz and Eufrasia Roselló-Izquierdo

Table 3. Fish taxa recorded in only one country, with the total number for that country in brackets. Bold type indicates NE Atlantic species, an asterisk * indicates SE Atlantic species Spain (65)

France (34)

1. Mustelus mustelus 2. Squalus acanthias 3. Salmo salar 4. Gymnothorax unicolor * 5. Molva molva 6. Phycis sp. 7. Gadus morhua 8. Pollachius pollachius 9. Pollachius virens 10. Melanogrammus aeglefinus 11. Exocoetidae 12. Epinephelus caninus 13. Trachinotus ovatus * 14. Caranx rhonchus * 15. Plectorhinchus mediterraneus * 16. Dentex gibbosus * 17. Diplodus puntazzo 18. Diplodus annularis 19. Diplodus cervinus 20. Pagellus bogaraveo 21. Pagrus auriga 22. Labrus bergylta 23. Trigla lucerna

1. Alosa sp. 2. Gaidropsarus sp. 3. Mullus barbatus 4. Ctenolabrus rupestris 5. Scophthalmus maximus 6. Solea vulgaris 7. Scorpaena porcus Greece (58) 1. Sphyrna zygaena 2. Lamna nasus 3. Raja clavata 4. Merlangius merlangus 5. Serranus cabrilla 6. Dentex macrophthalmus 7. Dentex maroccanus 8. Coris julis Italy (24) Tunisia (17) Cyprus (20) Turkey (18)

Table 4. Taxonomic richness (S) of the assemblages from Table 1, by cultural period Period

N

Solutrean

1

S (Range)

S (Y) 27.0

Magdalenian

1

21.0

Epipaleolithic/Mesolithic

6

4–31

12.0

Neolithic

11

3–32

12.5

Bronze

10

3–19

11.5

Classical Antiquity

5

7–25

17.2

Late Antiquity

2

22–23

22.5

Medieval

1

Modern

2

10.0 14–23

18.5

53

Fishing in Mediterranean prehistory: an archaeo-ichthyological overview

Table 5a. Abundances, expressed as NISP and their percentages, of selected taxa from selected sites, Stone Age to Mesolithic periods Site (period)

Nerja (S) NISP

Nerja (M)

%

NISP

%

Nerja (Epi) NISP

%

Cyclops (Mes) NISP

%

Uzzo (Mes/N) NISP

%

Taxon Anguilla anguilla MUGILIDAE

4

0.4

Dicentrarchus labrax

1

0.09

388

8.7

Epinephelus sp.

108

3

19

1

17

1

4

0.1

9

0.4

12

0.3

134

6.8

1209

84

SPARIDAE (Σ)

518

47

2158

48

781

21

1278(4)

65

98

7

Sparus aurata

31

2.8

9

0.2

23

0.6

43

2

9

0.6

1

0.02

3

0.1

Flat fishes (Σ) Thunnus thynnus Scomber sp. SCOMBRIDAE (Σ)

19(1)

1.7

3(1)

0.06

2(3)

0.05

50(2)

2.5

19

1.7

380

8.5

33

0.9

103

5.2

Table 5b, Neolithic period Site (period)

Cendres (N) NISP

%

Cave of the Cyclops (N) NISP

%

Cape Andreas (N) NISP

%

Nerja (N) NISP

%

Taxon Anguilla anguilla MUGILIDAE

(+)

(-)

26

2.8

5

0.2

3

0.1

46.7

123

6.6

1013

Dicentrarchus labrax

115

3.2

1

0.5

2

0.1

29

82

39

Epinephelus sp.

432

SPARIDAE (Σ)

398

43

1476(5)

80

769

22

70

33

Sparus aurata

13

1.4

17

0.9

12

0.3

5

2.4

2

0.1

27

0.7

3

1.4

3(3)

1.4

1283

36.5

8

3.8

Flat fishes (Σ) Thunnus thynnus Scomber sp. SCOMBRIDAE (Σ)

2(2)

0.2

9(2)

0.5

2

0.2

32

1.7

54

Arturo Morales-Muñiz and Eufrasia Roselló-Izquierdo

Table 5c, Bronze Age to Hellenistic periods Site (period)

Pseira (B) NISP

%

Riuets (B) NISP

Tiryns (B)

%

NISP

Troia (B)

%

NISP

La Fonteta (H)

%

NISP

%

Taxon Anguilla anguilla

3 0.5

33

4.7

MUGILIDAE

2 0.3

7

3

2

3

46

16

43

6

3

4.5

5

1.7

33

4.7

Epinephelus sp.

5 0.9

11

5

40

61

1

0.1

SPARIDAE (Σ)

7 1.2

87

40

1

1.5

Dicentrarchus labrax

Sparus aurata Flat fishes (Σ)

1

0.4

Thunnus thynnus Scomber sp. SCOMBRIDAE (Σ)

1(2)

0.4

1

0.4

102

35

295

42

80

27.5

12(163)

1.7(23)

2

0.7

46

16 19(3)

2.7

19

2.7

50

1.7

Table 5d, Roman period to 16th/17th centuries Site (period)

Carthage (Ro)

Ithanos (Ro)

Lattes (Ro)

NISP

NISP

NISP

%

%

Lavezzi (16th–17th c.)

%

NISP

%

Taxon Anguilla anguilla

598

23.5

145

5.7

9

0.5

348

13.7

44

2.7

+

(-)

2

0.1

46.5

577

23

324

20

0.2

329

13

20

1.2

110

4.3

1

0.06

130(1)

5

130

5

MUGILIDAE

15

5

Dicentrarchus labrax

68

22

Epinephelus sp.

35

11.5

5

1.3

SPARIDAE (Σ)

164

54

178

Sparus aurata

43

1

1

Flat fishes (Σ) Thunnus thynnus Scomber sp. SCOMBRIDAE (Σ)

5

1.6

55

Fishing in Mediterranean prehistory: an archaeo-ichthyological overview

Table 6. Relative abundance, expressed as % NISP, of ecological fish groups at Tróia and La Fonteta Site (period)

% marine

% brackish

% fresh

Tróia (Early Bronze Age)

35

55

1

Tróia (Middle Bronze Age/Late Bronze Age)

40

45

5

Tróia (Classical)

31

28

31

La Fonteta (8th c. BC)

13

60

27

La Fonteta (7th c. BC)

38

50

12

La Fonteta (6th c. BC)

53

27

20

Table 7. Relative abundance, expressed as % NISP, of the main non-migratory groups at Mediterranean sites covering the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic

Assemblage (period) Mursia (Epigravettian)

% Sparidae

% Epinephelus sp.

% Scombridae

% Anguillidae

% Belone sp.

% Sphyraenidae

3

0

0

62

11

0

Mursia (Mesolithic)

1.5

1.5

0

0

92

0

Mursia (Neolithic)

65

16.8

0.6

0

2

8

Cave of the Cyclops (Lower Mesolithic)

39.5

13.5

13.5

0

0

0

Cyclops (Upper Mesolithic)

69.7

5.5

4.5

0

0

0

72

5.5

16.5

0

0

0

Cyclops (Early Neolithic)

82.7

5.4

1.4

0

0

0

Cyclops (Early/Middle Neolithic)

74

4.5

3.6

0

0

0

Cyclops (Late Neolithic)

51

24

3.9

0

0

0

Cyclops (Final Mesolithic)

Grotta dell’Uzzo (Mesolithic I) Gr. dell’Uzzo (Mesolithic II) Gr. dell’Uzzo (Meso-Neolithic) Gr. dell’Uzzo (Neolithic I) Gr. dell’Uzzo (Neolithic II)

0

66

0

0

0

0

6.6

80

0

0

0

0

7

86

0

0

0

0

8.6

80.5

0

0

0

0

3.1

89

0

0

0

0

Cendres (Neolithic IA)

35.4

57

0.4

0.4

0

0.4

Cendres (Neolithic IB)

32

46

0

0

0

0.6

Cendres (Neolithic IC)

47.4

49.5

0.4

0

0

0

Cueva de Nerja (Solutrean I)

40

0

0

0

0

0

C. de Nerja (Solutrean II)

57

0

0,8

0

0

0

45.3

0

2

0.1

0

0

C. de Nerja (Solutrean III)

56

Arturo Morales-Muñiz and Eufrasia Roselló-Izquierdo % Sparidae

% Epinephelus sp.

% Scombridae

% Anguillidae

% Belone sp.

% Sphyraenidae

C. de Nerja (Magdalenian I)

3

C. de Nerja (Magdalenian II)

12

0

1

0

0

0

0

0.4

0

0

0

C. de Nerja (Magdalenian III)

6

0

0.5

0

0

0

C. de Nerja (Epipaleolithic)

2.8

0

0.1

0

0

0

C. de Nerja (Neolithic)

53

39

3.8

0

0

0

Assemblage (period)

Table 8. Relative abundance, expressed as % NISP, of selected fish groups from the Bronze Age levels at Sidon (taken with modifications, from Van Neer et al. 2005) Early Bronze Age Sea Breams

Middle Bronze Age

Late Bronze Age

1%

12.5 %

14 %

Groupers

17 %

29 %

28.5 %

Scombrids

5.7 %

4%

0

Pelagic sharks

69 %

33 %

43 %

Meagre

1%

4%

0

Jacks

4.5 %

8.5 %

14 %

Σ sedentary

19 %

42 %

43 %

Σ migratory

80.5 %

58 %

53 %

Dimitra Mylona

Fish and seafood consumption in the Aegean: variations on a theme

1. Introduction The following study deals with the consumption of fish and seafood in the region of the Aegean Sea over the span of several millennia. In particular, it attempts to explore the ways in which environment and culture combined to create recognisable patterns in the exploitation of marine resources and particular tastes and preferences. The productivity of the sea and human consumption of fish and seafood are linked in an intricate relationship defined by local (or regional or even global) ecological, economic and cultural conditions. The study of fishing and fish consumption in antiquity requires the exploration of these parameters through consideration of the material remains (bones and shells, artefacts, structures, art and texts) aided by methodologies from biology, anthropology, economics, etc. This, however, is a far from straightforward process. Leaving aside the issues of methodology and theory,1 a basic problem concerns the resolution of the archaeological/historical data. Whether a study on ancient fishing and fish consumption adopts a broad chronological scope or a more context-specific point of view often depends on the chronological period being dealt with and the standards of the relevant discipline. Even for geographically-specific cases, e. g., the Aegean Sea, which is a fairly distinct physical entity, the various research projects undertaken often end up producing separate, parallel narratives on fishing and consumption, which are difficult to combine, compare and relate. The creation of an understanding of the diachronic use of marine resources is hindered and our conclusions become, by necessity, either too fragmentary or too simplistic. This paper attempts to tackle this problem by examining three distinct themes at different chronological points in the history of the Aegean. They all take place against the same physical and ecological background, which, however, is characterised by extreme variability. Each one highlights particular aspects of the relationship between people and marine food resources. Firstly, the Mesolithic explosion in the exploitation of fish and shellfish in the Aegean is reviewed and examined in terms of both common trends and variations in the choices made by people in different Mesolithic settlements. It is suggested that these reflect different priorities and desires on the part of the fishermen and the consumers, more generally, not necessarily variations in the available resources. The second case study focuses on fishing and shellfish gathering in the southern Aegean, mostly around Crete and Thera, during the Bronze Age. It outlines these activities and highlights their multiple connections to local societies. It also 1

Mylona 2008: 5–15, 24–30.

58

Dimitra Mylona

emphasises the importance of methodological and interpretational tools in the formulation of our understanding of marine exploitation. The market as a nodal point in the formulation of fish availability and demand in Classical and Hellenistic Greece is the third theme examined. The three case studies are quite different from one another. They all, however, reveal the ways in which people interacted with the marine food resources that were available to them and built a whole set of notions and preferences, which were not always directly related to this availability. The intricacies of these choices and the rationales behind them are more clearly visible in the later periods, especially once written records become available. Once we look for them, however, they can be discerned even in cases where our data lack such high resolution.

2. The physical background: variability The richness of any sea is directly related to its physical characteristics and nutrient availability. The Aegean is a complex system with regard to certain features which directly affect the profiles of its fisheries: its hydrology, circulation of water mass and biological, chemical and sedimentological processes. It displays a complicated physiography in terms of seabed morphology and island configuration.2 For decades, historians, archaeologists and anthropologists accepted the largely unfounded axiom that the Aegean Sea is oligotrophic, i. e. very poor in nutrients, unable to sustain large fish populations and, therefore, unable to support a sizable and complex fishing economy.3 Recent developments in the recording and understanding of marine morphology and ecosystems in the Greek seas, however, have brought this statement into question and permit a more accurate evaluation of the productivity dynamics of the Aegean and the Greek waters more generally. The Aegean can roughly be divided into two broad regions, northern and southern, which are very different in terms of seabed morphology and water chemistry. The northern area is a relatively shallow sea which is rich in nutrients due to the discharge of the Black Sea through the Marmaran straits as well as that of several large rivers. Its coasts are dotted with small or larger systems of lagoons and coastal lakes. The southern is generally deeper, with a narrower continental shelf and steep depth gradients. Water salinity is high and it is generally oligotrophic.4 Recent research, undertaken over a period of several years, on the water composition of the Aegean throughout the year has shown, unsurprisingly, that there is much more variation than the basic distinction between the eutrophic northern and the oligotrophic southern Aegean.5 Certain parts of both these areas diverge from the norm, sometimes considerably. Also, even in the southern, nutrient-poor Aegean, there are some very eutrophic micro-regions. Interestingly, almost all coastal areas, mainland and insular, exhibit some degree of nutrient richness very close inshore. This richness is extremely high near river estuaries and in areas with coastal lagoons and wetlands,6 both rich feeding grounds for fish.7 Wetlands can be large, such as the chain 2 3 4 5 6 7

Stanley and Perissoratis 1977. Horden and Purcell 2000: 190–1, with references; also Gallant 1985. For a more detailed description and references, see Mylona 2008: 33–7. Lykousis et al. 2002. Katsadorakis and Paragamian 2006, with references. Koutrakis et al. 2005.

Fish and seafood consumption in the Aegean: variations on a theme

59

of large lagoons close to the river Nestos in northeastern Greece, or very small, such as the tiny marshes at the estuaries of seasonal rivers. Although the largest of these ecosystems are found mostly in northern and western Greece, smaller ones are scattered all over the country.8 In the past they were a much more prominent feature of the Aegean coasts, even in southern Greece.9 Research on the composition of the ichthyofauna of the Aegean, in both the northern and southern regions, has shown that it is characterised by a multi-species pattern, in which many species appear seasonally in the catches and certain combinations of species occur with higher frequency in zones of certain depths or in certain geographical areas. Furthermore, especially in the southern Aegean, shallow waters generally exhibit the highest densities in terms of biomass and variety of fish species.10 In coastal lagoons and estuaries, typical feeding grounds for a variety of fish, populations of migrating fish such as eel (Anguilla anguilla), sturgeon (Acipenseridae), shad (Alosa fallax) and especially mullet (Mugilidae) are very important.11 Four hundred and forty seven fish species have been recorded so far, belonging to 129 families.12 No matter which aspect of the Aegean aquatic environment is under study, a recurrent trait is its variability, which has affected, and still affects, the way people have exploited its resources. The physical characteristics of the Greek marine environments are highly variable, even within the same region. They form, to use P. Horden and N. Purcell’s term, a ‘continuum of discontinuities’.13 As mentioned above, large expanses of the Greek seas, such as the northern Aegean, are eutrophic, even by the general standards of the world’s oceans. In relatively oligotrophic marine areas, which are generally coasts with steep depth gradients, the ichthyofauna is still characterised by the presence of a large number of species, with slightly different feeding habits and habitat requirements, the majority of which can be found in shallow waters. Thus there is a varied resource, a considerable part of which is accessible throughout the year. Besides, in these areas, even the ichthyofauna of deeper waters is accessible from the coast, given suitable technology. In several parts of Greece, coastal lagoons and other wetlands of lesser extent form important features of the landscape and provide an abundance of fish. In the study of ancient fisheries, the points outlined above are particularly relevant. They show that in an area like Greece, and the Aegean more specifically, generalised evaluations can be very misleading. The fishing potential of each site/region should be viewed individually, taking into account the local physiography, but also the fishing technology available at any given time. It appears that from a resource point of view, what is more important is not the total available fish biomass, but rather that part of it which was accessible and exploitable by fishermen in specific locations at particular times.

8 9 10 11 12 13

Heliotis 1988: 23, table 3. Heliotis 1988; Katsadorakis and Paragamian 2006. Kallianiotis et al. 2000. Koutrakis et al. 2005. Papakonstantinou 1988: 29. Horden and Purcell 2000: 53, 190–5.

60

Dimitra Mylona

Fig. 2.1: Sites mentioned in text. (Richard Szydlak).

Fish and seafood consumption in the Aegean: variations on a theme

61

3. Variations on a fishing theme: from Mesolithic abundance to Neolithic scarcity The earliest evidence for systematic large-scale exploitation of marine resources in the Aegean dates back to the Mesolithic, roughly 11,000 years. This phenomenon was part of a broader picture. The advent of the Holocene coincided with a remarkable intensification in the exploitation of aquatic resources along the Mediterranean, the Baltic and the Atlantic coasts as well as in inland waters, such as the Danube.14 Recent archaeological work in the Aegean has testified to this development at two cave sites and one open-air settlement:15 Franchthi Cave in the Argolid,16 the Cave of the Cyclops on the island of Youra17 and Maroulas on Kythnos.18 The fish remains from Franchthi Cave are known from preliminary reports only,19 while all the other marine remains from these sites are fully published.20 Despite the fact that the Cave of the Cyclops is situated in the northern Aegean, Maroulas in the Cyclades, just south of Attica, and Franchthi Cave in the Peloponnese, all in different environments, their ichthyofaunal and malacological remains share certain common features. They all target the inshore zone, especially fish and molluscs that can be caught in shallow waters, very near the shore.21 Among the coastal fish, the majority belongs to a few families, with several species each. These are sea bream (Sparidae), comber and grouper (Serranidae), scorpion fish (Scorpaenidae), etc. The bone and antler fish hooks that have been found in the Upper Mesolithic strata22 at Youra are part of the tool kit that targeted these inshore bottom dwellers. Seashells are abundant, but of restricted range. The molluscan assemblage is dominated by limpets (Patella sp.), monodonts (Monodonta sp.) and mussels (Mytillus sp.), all of which can be gathered from the rocks of the shore, without any specialised tools or knowledge.23 All these inshore fish and molluscs can be harvested more or less all year round, if the weather permits. The use of a boat is not essential, even for the largest of the bottom dwellers, such as scorpionfish or grouper. That is not to say, however, that boats were not used. The presence of considerable amounts of obsidian from the island of Melos at all these

14 15

16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23

Bailey and Spikins (eds) 2008. Sidari on Corfu, a fourth coastal Mesolithic site where marine materials, in the form of a shell midden, are very prominent, is not discussed here as it belongs to a different bio-geographical zone: Sordinas 2003. Theopetra Cave, another systematically excavated Mesolithic cave site (Kyparissi-Apostolika 2003), is also not discussed here because it is an inland site. For an overview and extensive bibliography on the cave, see Perlés 2003. Sampson (ed.) 2008; 2011. Sampson et al. (eds) 2010. Payne 1975; 1982; Rose 1995. Franchthi Cave marine molluscs: Shackleton and Van Andel 1986; Shackleton et al. 1988. Youra marine molluscs: Karali 2011; Youra fish remains: Powell 2003; 2011; Mylona 2003; 2011. Maroulas marine molluscs: Karali 2010; Maroulas fish remains: Mylona 2010. The following discussion is based on these data. This discussion refers mostly to material from the Upper Mesolithic phases which are common at all three sites. Moundrea-Agrafioti 2011. Shackleton and Van Andel 1986.

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Mesolithic sites clearly suggests that seafaring was practised, but it is uncertain if it played an important role in fishing.24 The migratory species encountered at all the Mesolithic sites under discussion here are mostly Scombridae. At two of the sites in this group (Franchthi Cave and Cave of the Cyclops), medium and small-sized fish generally predominate in the assemblages, although the largest species, such as Thunnus thynnus, are by no means absent. At Franchthi Cave, these are the dominant Scombridae species. Scombridae appear seasonally in the Aegean twice a year during their feeding and spawning migrations; the times and locations of these appearances vary depending on species.25 They move in massive schools (especially in the past when the stocks were not as exhausted as they are today) on more or less repeated trajectories which are defined by sea currents, upwellings, seabed morphology, etc., all of which affect the abundance of food for the fish. At certain locations, the fish, especially during their spawning migration, approach the coast to within metres, and can thus be caught in stationary traps operated from the shore. Usually the landing involves a large number of fish, and it is very often linked to fish preservation installations. Although there is some variation in the timing and abundance of the shoals that approach the shore each year, in the long run, these migratory fish are a reliable enough resource in the Aegean; they are so reliable, in fact, that in more recent times the use of stationary nets and watchtowers, thynneia, have been strictly regulated.26 These observations suggest that the migratory fish caught by the Mesolithic fishermen in the Aegean could have been caught near the shore in very shallow waters. At the Cave of the Cyclops on Youra and at Franchthi Cave, a third category of fish, besides the inshore and the migratory ones, was caught: euryhaline species that tolerate significant variation in water salinity and spend part of their life cycle in coastal lagoons and river estuaries. Their movement to and from such nutrient-rich environments is seasonal and may be massive. In more recent times, the exploitation of this resource has involved the construction and use of elaborate fish traps and the development of fish preservation businesses close to such areas.27 The numbers of their remains at the two cave sites never surpassed the other two categories. Their presence is important, however, because it provides evidence for the existence of yet another type of fishing technology. The Cave of the Cyclops and Maroulas provide strong evidence for fish processing, while at Franchthi Cave the evidence is still inconclusive since analysis is pending. At these two cave sites, fish bones have been found by the thousands, in thick accumulations over the floors of the caves. In the open-air settlement of Maroulas, fish remains, in smaller numbers but still very abundant in relation to other animal bones, have been found stashed on the floors of circular huts sunk into the ground. Both these features indicate the intensity of the exploitation of marine resources, inshore and migratory, and the adoption of processing and apparently of storage; this seems to be part of a wider tradition that extends as far east as Cyprus.28

24 25 26 27 28

See also Rose 1995. For details of the following discussion, see Mylona 2008: 43–9, with references; for the biology of Scombridae, see Block and Stevens 2001. Lytle 2006 and this volume. Koutrakis 2011. Desse and Desse-Berset 1994.

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Certain differences between the sites are significant. On the one hand, the Maroulas assemblage suggests several levels of fishing specialisation. A very restricted range of taxa were targeted, within a consistently preferred size range for inshore and for migratory fish. An additional type of specialisation emerges with different fishermen or fishing groups, probably reflected by the separate dwellings on the site, chose to store (and catch?) distinct combinations of fish. On the other hand, no specific preference in target species is evident at the two caves sites. The assemblages are taxonomically very diverse, with fish ranging in size from a few cm to over 1.5 m in length. Also, although there is strong evidence for fish processing at both the Cave of the Cyclops and Maroulas, the cave contained remains of both the discarded material from the processing of some species and the final processed product for others, while at Maroulas only remains of the final product were recovered. These observations on the similarities and differences in the ways various Mesolithic communities made use of fish and shellfish point towards the existence of an effective, developed fishing tradition. What is more, there is evidence that this tradition was, at least partly, shared with fishing communities some distance away, e. g., in Cyprus. Anthropological research on fishing communities all over the world finds that such communities share certain common features and distinctive characteristics, which constitute part of their fishing tradition.29 Fishermen require a unique skill set in order to practise their trade, including meteorological, ecological and biological knowledge, navigational skills, the ability to manufacture and maintain their own tools and equipment, as well as the fishing skills themselves.30 Also, the world of the sea often serves as a vehicle for symbolic thought, and thus traditional fishing knowledge may reflect an individual’s associations and connections with the spiritual world.31 In fishing communities, as in other such artisanal groups, the wealth of specialised knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation in particular, repeated ways.32 To date, the Mesolithic archaeological record of the Aegean has not provided the chronological and contextual refinement, level of preservation and wealth of sites required to permit a reliable exploration of these questions. Certain assumptions can, however, be made. The persistence of certain fish preferences and fishing techniques for over a millennium at the coastal sites under consideration, as well as the mastering of fish-processing skills, both of which are witnessed archaeologically through fish and mollusc remains, speak clearly for the existence, among certain groups of people, of a distinct maritime lifestyle. It has been claimed that the exploitation of marine resources was a short-lived phenomenon, restricted to the upper Mesolithic.33 Yet, this period of several centuries witnessed many generations of people who acquired the specialist skills required to harvest the sea and preserve that harvest, as well as the perception of their world which went hand in hand with the technical skills. In the scholarly discussion of the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic, both in the Aegean and elsewhere, one of the key themes has been the apparent change in food resource focus, with aquatic resources being replaced, almost entirely, by the products of

29 30 31 32 33

Acheson 1981; Blount 2005 for a review of several recent related works. Morrill 1967; Acheson 1981; Pálsson 1994a. Pálsson 1994b; Diegues 2002. Pálsson 1993. E. g., Perlés 2001: 30.

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crop cultivation and animal husbandry, in either an abrupt or a more gradual manner.34 Following the line of thought above, in this shift we should recognise a loss of knowledge, an abandonment of a specific set of ways and habits that go hand in hand with the exploitation of the sea. It has been claimed that the scarcity of fish remains and marine molluscs on Neolithic sites testifies to this change-of-focus phenomenon. Growing numbers of well-excavated and published sites in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean have, however, provided the basis for a reconsideration of this concept, even though the current record is still rather fragmentary in chronological and geographical terms. Comparative examinations of lithic, archaeo-botanic and zooarchaeological materials, along with more accurate dating, have highlighted the gradual and varied way in which the change from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic lifestyle took place.35 The domestication of certain animals had begun already in the upper Mesolithic at some sites (e. g., on Youra, Maroulas), and in other cases the whole package of domesticates was adopted (e. g., at Franchthi Cave), a phenomenon which echoes a similar development in the adoption of the Mesolithic way of life some centuries earlier, when certain communities chose to follow their familiar Palaeolithic traditions well into the Holocene, while other embraced the new ways.36 This observation has some bearing on the way the maritime lifestyle of some Mesolithic communities was transformed into a farming and pastoral way of living. The abandonment of fishing and shellfish gathering in favour of cultivated plants and herded animals needs to be reconsidered, not so much in terms of its actual outcome, but in terms of the mechanisms, pace and manner in which this happened.37 The two coastal sites (Cave of Cyclops on Youra and Maroulas on Kythnos) which provide evidence of almost continuous habitation from the Upper Mesolithic to the early stages of the Neolithic are both cave sites. In both of them, however, the transitional phase is quite elusive, with the relevant strata being of very restricted extent and very poor in terms of remains,38 indicating perhaps that habitation in both caves was quite sporadic. On Youra, the Final Mesolithic/Early Neolithic mixed phase produced thousands of fish remains, which are very similar to those of the Upper Mesolithic. The subsequent Neolithic strata (Early/Middle Neolithic) produced only a few dozen fish remains, but also remains of marine mammals and birds.39 At Franchthi Cave, the earlier Neolithic strata (called ‘Initial Neolithic’ by Perlés40) produced fish remains, which at certain places made up a considerable proportion of the animal bone assemblage, with some variation as to the preferred taxa and also to their age/size, compared to the earlier upper Mesolithic.41 Clearly, fishing and shellfish gathering, along with all associated knowledge and skills, did not simply disappear at the end of the Mesolithic. 34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41

For the conflicting views on this issue, see Milner et al. 2004; Richards and Schulting 2006; on the various proposed scenarios of this transition in Greece, see Perlés 2001; Galanidou and Perlés (eds) 2003; Kotsakis 2001; Kozlowski and Kaczanowska 2009. E. g., Kotsakis 2003; Kozlowski and Kaczanowska 2009. Galanidou 2011. For a critique of relevant ideas and interpretations, see Richards and Schulting 2006; also Morales and Roselló-Izquierda, this volume. Sampson 1998: 4; Perlés 2001: 46. Trantalidou 2011: 65–6, 71. Perlés 2003, 84. Sebastian Payne in Jacobsen 1973: 351–2; Rose 1994: 434–6.

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At a number of Neolithic sites, especially when proper collection methods have been applied during excavation, fish and shellfish are present in varying frequencies. In the Neolithic strata on the island of Agios Petros, only a short distance from Youra, a few remains of both inshore and migratory fish, along with a few thousand seashells, have been recovered.42 Fish are also present in the Late Neolithic strata of the inland Zas Cave on Naxos in the Cyclades,43 even though their numbers are low. The same is true for Late Neolithic Keos Kephala, where a single fish bone and a few hundred seashells have been found,44 as well as for the Neolithic strata in Kitsos Cave in Attica.45 The Late Neolithic Saliaggos on Antiparos in the Cyclades produced a few thousand fish bones, mostly bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus).46 The Late and Final Neolithic strata of the tell site of Pefkakia in Thessaly produced a few dozen fish remains, and at Early Neolithic Pyrassos indeterminate amounts of large fish bones and crustaceans were found.47 The more recently excavated open Neolithic site of Makrygialos further north, at Piereia,48 produced considerable quantities of fish and seafood remains. It is interesting to note that as we move north, to areas with richer aquatic environments, both marine and fresh-water, the intensity of fishing and shellfish gathering remains quite high during the Neolithic and even into the Bronze Age, despite the apparently favourable conditions for animal herding and crop cultivation.49 Thus, this short review suggests that the presumed unwillingness or inability of the Neolithic inhabitants of the coastal areas around the Aegean to harvest the sea once they adopted crop cultivation and animal husbandry50 is not fully supported by the available data. These mostly show a gradual and uneven change in behaviour, with certain areas retaining their old ways and skills, as far as fishing was concerned, long after agriculture entered their lives.51

4. Variations on a fishing theme: marine resources in the Bronze Age diet, craft industry and iconography Bronze Age Crete and the southern Aegean more generally, especially in the second half of the second millennium BC (conventionally called Middle to Late Minoan and Middle to Late Cycladic respectively) are marked by complex, hierarchical societies that gave rise to palaces and bureaucratic organisation of the economy.52 Although the history of Crete is turbulent and living conditions and social organisation were far from uniform through the course of this time period, certain features were quite persistent. The economic base focused largely on agricultural activities, but crafts which modified raw materials into elaborate ob42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

50 51 52

Schwartz 1985. Mylona forthcoming b. Coy 1986. Desse 1981. Renfrew et al. 1968; Rose 1994: 437–8. Theocharis 1959. Pappa et al. 2013. For a detailed analysis of fish and seashell remains from the sites of Archondiko, Dikili Tash, Dimitra, Kryoneri, Limenaria, the Valley of Aliakmon and Yannitsa, see Theodoropoulou 2007; on Kryoneri fish bones, see Mylona 2000a. E. g., Stratouli 1996. For a discussion along similar lines on other parts of Europe, see Borić et al. 2004. For a recent review, see Cline 2012.

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jects (e. g., clothes, jewellery, aromatic oils, etc.) were particularly advanced. Maritime commerce to and from distant places (insular and mainland Greece, Egypt, the Levant and even to the west) was also quite remarkable. In this sense the sea played a prominent role in the everyday lives of people, specially those inhabiting coastal areas. Not only was the sea a road upon which people, goods and ideas were circulating,53 but it was also a place full of life; fish, shellfish and dolphins were caught, eaten, used in crafts and also considered beautiful or meaningful enough to be included in ceremonies and performances. Research considering the contribution of the sea to the Bronze Age diet has taken off in the last twenty years or so,54 and, today, the considerable amount of data collected over this time permits us to attempt an overview. The seas around Crete are considered poor compared to other areas of the Aegean. They are deep, with steep depth gradients and very saline. The coastlines are punctuated, however, by ravine estuaries and very small coastal lagoons. Thus even in these generally poor waters there are eutrophic micro-regions. Certain trends seem to be shared by all those sites that provide evidence for fishing and shellfish gathering and these seem to be remarkably persistent through time. Fishing at this time was focused on inshore species.55 Remarkably, the majority of the remains represent small taxa such as picarel (Centracanthidae), bogue (Boops boops), comber (Serranus sp.), damsel fish (Chromis chromis) and younger individuals of the various species of the Sparidae family. These are all fish that are found in relatively large numbers very near the shore and are caught by various types of small nets, remains of which are attested in the archaeological record.56 These seem to constitute the staple fish, but they were often complemented by medium-sized fish, mostly bottom feeders, such as scorpionfish (Scorpaenidae), groupers (Epinephelus sp.) and parrotfish (Sparisoma cretense), while larger open-water fish, such as sharks, sting rays (Dasyadidae) and barracuda (Sphyraena sphyraena), were also caught and consumed, though less frequently. As these occasionally approach the coast, they could have been caught in the same shallow inshore waters as the smaller fish. Bones of tuna and other migratory species are quite rare, but not absent altogether. The largest fish, however, consumed were small or medium-sized individuals of the species in question. Shellfish gathering also targetted the shore.57 The vast majority of almost every seashell assemblage on the island is made up of limpets (Patella sp.), monodonts (Monodonta sp.), ceriths (Cerithium vulgatum) and spiny oysters (Spondylus gaederopus), with the addition of a range of species which are present in very small numbers along with crabs and cuttlefish. In addition to these, all of which are, again, creatures of rocky shores and shallow waters, on most sites we find a number of shells from deeper-water molluscs such as triton (Charonia sp.), pen shell (Pinna nobilis) and purple snail (Hexaplex trunculus). The molluscs of the 53 54 55

56 57

E. g., the papers in Laffineur and Basch (eds) 1991; McDonald et al. (eds) 2009. Rose 1994; Mylona 2003. The following discussion is based on data from the following sites: Palaikastro (Mylona 2007), Mochlos (Rose 1994: 302–16; Mylona 2004), Pseira (Rose 1994: 344–67; 1998), Kommos (Rose 1994: 250–92; Reese et al. 1995). Powell 1996: 102–21. The following discussion is based on data from the following sites: Palaikastro (Reese 1987), Papadiokambos (Mylona, personal analysis; Brogan et al. 2013), Mochlos (Reese 2004), Pseira (Reese 1995b; 1998; 1999), Kommos (Reese 1995a; Reese et al. 1995; Ruscillo 2006; 2012).

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first group were obviously eaten, and this is often manifested in the fragmentation patterns of their shells. The monodonts, for example, are often found crushed or with a crushed tip. This range of species and their relative proportions indicate that the gathering of shellfish for food was mostly done on the shore. This task requires minimal levels of technology and skill; the gatherers do not even need to know how to swim. It is interesting to note that the seashells taken from deeper waters were those that had uses other than culinary. The pearly interior of the pen shell was cut to create decorative inlay pieces, which are found at many sites on the island.58 Triton shells were systematically modified to produce household or industrial tools (ladles) and ceremonial objects.59 Finally, the purple snail provides the raw material for the purple-dye industry, which seems to have started on Crete as early at the Middle Minoan period (c. 1900–1700 BC).60 Any analysis of fish and shellfish archaeological remains, especially those that lead to assessments of the importance of these resources in the diet, needs to take into account the issues of taphonomy and preservation of the evidence.61 This is especially important when the remains have been recovered from built environments, which have often been occupied by generations of people who have constantly used and modified the spaces under investigation; this is the situation for Bronze Age Crete. The majority of the available material has been found in roofed or open spaces within houses, on floors, in floor fills or in foundation deposits along walls. Much less material originates from protected contexts, such as drains, vessels, etc., and even less has been found in situ in undisturbed destruction levels.62 Fish bones are notoriously fragile. Experiments on the taphonomy of fish bones indicate that only a fraction of the fish skeleton survives processes such as dispersal, trampling and digestion.63 In a Bronze Age domestic context, we should also consider the effects of sweeping and organised refuse disposal practices, which would also affect the quantity and nature of the retrieved remains.64 Larger fish elements and durable bulky seashells are bound to be removed.65 In the case of seashells, they may even be recycled, and be used, for instance, as a lime filler in pottery or in construction.66 Sites with very good preservation, such as Akrotiri at Thera, a few miles north of Crete, or sites which experienced sudden abandonment, such as the Late Minoan I ‘House A’ at Papadiokambos in eastern Crete, are indicative of the degree to which the fish and malacological records can be skewed by taphonomic processes (see below). On the basis of the current evidence, fishing and seafood gathering for culinary purposes do not appear to have been organised on a large scale. Most of the fish, shellfish and other marine animals consumed at the Cretan sites could be found all year round and would 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

Karali 1999: 31; Theodoropoulou 2007: 321. Reese 1985; 1989–90; Apostolakou et al. 2014. E. g., Reese 1987; Ruscillo 2006: 803, 809–10; Betancourt et al. 2012; Brogan et al. 2012. For a review of the pertinent issues, see Wheeler and Jones 1989: 38–78; also Morales and Roselló-Izquierda, this volume. For a representative sample of sites, see above, nn. 55, 57. Wheeler and Jones 1989: 61–78; Lubinski 1996. LaMotta and Schiffer 1999: 21. E. g., Mylona 2004. E. g., Reese 1987; Karali 1999: 43, fig. 35; Ruscillo 2006: 807.

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probably have been caught in relatively small amounts per catch. It has been suggested,67 and insistently repeated, that fish was never a staple for coastal communities around the Aegean in antiquity, for two reasons: the sea was poorly stocked and the available technology was very labour intensive; this situation precluded widespread use of marine resources. This idea has found support in the presumed scarcity of relevant archaeological remains. Such an approach, which finds its roots in the theory of optimisation which was dominant in the study of Aegean prehistory for decades, is not particularly helpful when discussing the Bronze Age economy and culinary preferences.68 Research at Akrotiri on Thera is instructive.69 This affluent Late Minoan I harbour town was buried under a very thick layer of volcanic ash after a catastrophic eruption and was not disturbed by later occupation. This covering of ash preserved organic materials. Evidence for the exploitation of marine resources by the inhabitants of Akrotiri is rich, and ranges from wall paintings70 to fish remains and fishing implements. The list of fish taxa retrieved from the site is very similar to the Cretan Bronze Age cases: dominated by a few species of small fish (mostly picarel and small sea breams) complemented by a relatively small number of various larger species.71 Apparently, Akrotiri participated in the broader fishing tradition of the Bronze Age southern Aegean. What is different at Akrotiri, however, is the amount of fish remains recovered from the destruction levels, especially from drains and other protected areas.72 The numbers of fish bones and scales run into the tens of thousands, indicating that fish, and especially the smallest varieties, were eaten regularly by most of the inhabitants. Fishing implements – fish hooks and fish bait as well as nets – have been found in several houses.73 In addition, Akrotiri provides several examples of preserved fish,74 including a bunch of dried and probably strung sea bream (Dentex dentex and another indeterminate related species) that had hung in the air, red porgy salted in a pithos (Pagrus pagrus) and assorted small fish turned into an allec-like sauce. These, along with the remains of two tuna steaks, which were found literally in the frying pan,75 indicate an elaborate and consistent preference for fish in this harbour town. At Papadiokambos, a Late Minoan I site a few kilometres west of Siteia in northeastern Crete, the building known as House A, on the outskirts of the settlement and near the sea,76 has produced a remarkable assemblage of seashells and crustacean remains.77 Several thousand examples of limpets, top shells (Trochidae) and crab remains were found accumulated on the floors, especially around two hearths. These remains bear clear traces of having been roasted and eaten. Additionally, several stone tools from the same contexts can be linked to 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

Gallant 1985. Analysed in detail in Mylona 2008: 7–13, with references; see also Stratouli 1996. For an introduction to the site, see Doumas 1992. Mylona 2001; Economidis 2000. Mylona 2000b; 2001. Mylona, personal observation. Moulherat et al. 2004; Powell 1996: 139–41. Mylona forthcoming a. Birtacha et al. 2008: 409–10. Brogan and Sofianou 2007; Sofianou and Brogan 2008; 2010; Evely 2010: 177; Mylona, personal analysis. Brogan et al. 2013.

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the processing of these foodstuffs. Fish bones are present, but, like the mammal remains, they are very poorly preserved. Although seashells and, to a lesser degree, crustaceans are very common finds at Bronze Age Cretan sites, and sometimes found in considerable numbers, the concentration at Papadiokambos is unique and probably relates to a special occasion on which these shellfish were consumed and their remains left scattered around. These two examples of well-preserved assemblages indicate that any assessment of the economic and culinary importance of fishing and shellfish gathering in the Bronze Age southern Aegean should be much more intricate than a mere count of the number of retrieved remains. This situation is further complicated by the fact that certain marine products functioned in spheres other than the culinary, which on occasion gave them considerable added value. Several sites on Crete have produced large amounts of crushed purple shells, mostly from the Hexaplex trunculus species.78 In some cases, these remains are found associated with installations for the production of purple dye or for the dyeing of fabrics, wool, etc.79 Most of these cases are currently under analysis and no details on the workings of these establishments are available at the moment. What becomes clear, however, based on the scatter of sizable concentrations of crushed purple shells around the island, is that purple-dye production was systematic and apparently economically important from as early as the Middle Minoan period. This, seen in conjuncture with the function of a palatial economy and the existence of a social elite, both loci in which luxury and rare goods were important, highlights a number of possible social connotations for this purple colour on Crete in the Middle and Late Bronze Age. Other shellfish were also used in processes that functioned in parallel with the culinary. Tritons (Charonia sp.), for example, were, at certain sites such as Papadiokambos, systematically collected and modified to create a range of utilitarian and ceremonial objects such as ladles, trumpets or ceremonial rhyta.80 Such items have been found in their use contexts at several sites across Crete and elsewhere, but the existence of a workshop for their manufacture at Papadiokambos in the Late Minoan I (1600–1400 BC) suggests that their supply was probably organised. Marine elements, animate and inanimate, were a fairly common theme in Minoan imagery. Boats, dolphins, fish, seashells and crustaceans, as well as sea rocks and possibly waves, are found represented in various media, such as seals, faience, stone vases, pottery and wall paintings.81 Several attempts have been made to explain this choice of marine themes in the artistic output. Cultic connations have been proposed,82 as has an awareness of the potency of the marine environment after the Thera eruption.83 A third proposal suggests a more straightforward reason for the choice on pottery, i. e. an iconographic indication of the liquid contents of vessels.84

78 79 80 81 82 83 84

Reese 1987. Ruscillo 2006: 807–16; Apostolakou et al. 2012; Betancourt et al. 2012. Apostolakou et al. 2014. E. g., Mountjoy 1985; Morris 1995; Vanschoonwinkel 1996: 367–73; Berg 2013; for a critical discussion, see Haysom 2011. Mountjoy 1985. Müller 1997: 322; Bicknell 2000. Morris 1995.

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These explanations are all partial and fall short under chronological scrutiny. They are also problematic when they are applied to the full range of materials and media on which marine themes are represented. In an attempt to contextualise marine imagery, M. Haysom discusses several trends in regional and temporal concentrations of marine themes in artistic output. According to him, there are distinct patterns to be observed.85 Depiction of marine themes on wall paintings are common on the Aegean islands in Late Minoan I, but are much scarcer on Crete, even though the Cretan corpus of surviving wall paintings is much larger. Dolphins, fish, crustaceans and boats are favourite themes in the naturalistic seal imagery of the Middle Minoan settlements of northeastern Crete, but not at any of the sites, including palaces, on the south coast. Interestingly, such themes fall out of fashion altogether in the following Late Minoan I period, except for on talismanic seals, where they are represented in roughly-cut intaglio on hard, colourful stones, which were probably used as personal adornments rather than seals. To make the picture even more complicated, during the Late Minoan period, the various marine elements – octopodes, nautili, dolphins, shells, seaweeds and rocks – became very fashionable decorative motifs on pottery. What this fluctuating demand and preference for marine themes and objects derived from the sea shows most clearly is that during the second part of the second millennium BC we have, on Crete and probably in the southern Aegean more generally, a complex situation. The changing economic, political and/or power landscapes affected the choice of marine elements in art and cult, and the association of certain areas or certain groups of people with the sea might in all probability be viewed as a characteristic of distinction and identity. This brief review of our current understanding of the exploitation of marine resources on Bronze Age Crete and in the southern Aegean, the economic and social ramifications of their various uses and their entanglement in various spheres of life confirms that marine resources were important for a variety of reasons. This importance varied from community to community and through time. A distinct variability is evident, even if the reasons behind it are still poorly understood. It is also clear that a quantitative evaluation of the importance of fish and shellfish as foodstuffs or in other spheres can be misleading, unless a combined, multi-level analysis is performed that takes into consideration the issues of taphonomy, temporality, associations and the broader economic, social and ideological contexts.

5. Variations on a fishing theme: the Classical and Hellenistic taste for fish and seafood Fish and fish-eating are highly visible in the Classical and Hellenistic discourse on social distinction. In this, fish are interwoven into urban social life and presented as creatures of the market place or the symposium table. The literary record of the time abounds with references to fish. Their variety, price, cooking methods and the proper manner of consumption are the focus of this discourse.86 By contrast, the realm of the live fish, the fishing grounds, the fishermen and the relevant technologies are seriously downplayed, mostly merely implied or treated as curiosities.87 85 86 87

For details of the following short review and corresponding references, see Haysom 2011. E. g., Davidson 1993; 1998; Wilkins 1993; 2000. Mylona 2008: 67–74.

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Archaeology broadens this limited picture by adding nuances and further illuminating the possible contexts of consumption: the cultic88 and the everyday, homes, taverns, shops.89 Archaeology also offers some insights into the production of fish and seafood, by examining the actual remains of caught and consumed animals and the material remains of the technology involved in the capture and processing of fish.90 The picture that emerges is a complex one. Not all the edible fish and seafood available in the sea were caught and consumed. The notion of edibility was structured, complex and fluid, governed not only by rules of availability but also by social and cultic prerequisites. For example, certain fish which are a common and prized catch nowadays, the large-eyed dentex (Dentex macrophthalmus) for instance, are totally absent from the archaeological record of the Aegean. This absence is obviously linked to the fact that this is a deep-water species whose capture requires technologies which would permit access to deep waters; such technologies were apparently unavailable. The Greeks of the Classical and Hellenistic eras considered dolphin (which they viewed as a large fish) to be almost inedible, despite the fact that they were aware of other people on the Aegean coasts who ate dolphin. These people, however, were the Thracians, who were known to the Greeks for their bizarre habits. Other creatures were considered inedible for different reasons. The tetyx enalios, for example, a kind of a lobster, was not caught because it was considered the playmate of Perseus and the red mullet (Mullus barba) was considered inedible only by the initiates of the Eleusinean mysteries, while everybody else held it in the highest esteem.91 Besides this basic notion of edibility, the decision to consume certain types of fish and seafood was governed by a range of social rules. It was, for instance, considered a sign of simplicity to prefer small cheap fish when you could afford larger ones.92 But this was not a rule without exceptions. Smelt, for example, one of the most commonly consumed fish in the Aegean through the ages, was considered a delicacy when it was fished in the Bay of Phaleron off Piraeus. Conversely, cartilaginous fish, sharks and sting rays were relatively cheap alternatives to other large fish, thus being accessible to those who were less affluent.93 In the ancient Greek world, the size and texture of fish was particularly important. The largest fish and the fatty, juicy parts of fish (e. g., eels, belly parts of tuna and the heads of large fish), were considered a delicacy and fetched the highest price in the market. The preference for large fish was driven by the statement their high price made, while the preference for fatty fish was backed up by contemporary ideas about health and bodily balance. The dry and the moist, the light and the heavy, and the digestibility of fish flesh were concepts often used in the context of medical writings (e. g., the Hippocratic Regimen 2)94 as criteria that rendered specific fish suitable or unsuitable for a diet oriented towards healing, restoration of the body’s balance or just general well-being. The most expensive, large and fatty fish, those celebrated in ancient Greek literature, were obviously not accessible to 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

E. g., Rose 2000. Mylona 2008: 99–102. Mylona 2003; 2008. For references and additional examples, see Mylona 2008: 106–8. Mylona 2008: 108–9. For further discussion, see Mylona 2008: 103–12. Hippocratic Regimen 2, 48. Although this text forms part of the so-called Hippocratic corpus, it is unlikely to be from the hand of Hippocrates himself.

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many because of their high price. However, cartilaginous fish, which shared these latter two qualities with their gelatinous, soft texture and very large size, seem to have fulfilled this need, although they seldom appear to be celebrated in the same manner as tuna or eel.95 The Akraiphia fish-price list, for example, which is preserved on a Hellenistic inscription from Akraiphia on the coast of Lake Kopais in Boeotia, illustrates this phenomenon. While eel and belly slices of tuna fetch the highest prices, shark and dogfish, also fatty and large, were much more affordable. It is perhaps relevant to note that in the surviving ancient Greek vocabulary the names of cartilaginous fish are many and varied.96 Such an abundance of names clearly reflects a vivid interest in these fish on the part of consumers.97 The archaeological record verifies some of these apparent preferences and tastes, but it also suggests that actual consumption was probably more flexible than the discourse around fish suggests. The ideas of this discourse about fish and seafood eating, however, provided a framework within which urban dwellers in Classical and Hellenistic Greece, especially in Athens, thought about fish and seafood, and made their consumption choices. Although people who lived in coastal settlements or near rivers and lakes would have been able to eat fish more regularly and perhaps in greater quantities, for urban consumers, access to fish was quite complicated. The key element in this process was the market, with its regularised mechanisms and structured ways by which fish was made available to consumers. Fish stalls in the market, travelling fishmongers, fish being kept alive after their capture, fish breeding and the marketing of preserved fish are just some of the elements in this process.98 There is evidence that a demand for fish and seafood existed despite the adverse conditions of availability. Fishmongers transported fish, sometimes over long distances. The inscriptional record, for example, documents two instances of the transportation of live fish from the Bay of Argos in the Peloponnese to Tegea, over 60 km inland, over mountainous roads to a market that demanded fish despite the difficulties involved.99 Also, just beyond the chronological scope of this review, the Roman fish tanks which dotted the rocky coasts of the Aegean provide another example of the active management of the fish and seafood supply. These features, single or multiple basins cut in the rock on the shoreline with a system of channels and roofs that regulated water circulation and shade, are particularly common along the Cretan coasts. The waters around Crete are among the most oligotrophic in the Aegean, with only small-scale micro-regions being more productive. The steep depth gradients and the high salinity of these waters results in an ichthyofauna that is taxonomically diverse, consisting mostly of non-gregarious taxa that provide relatively small catches (as compared to the situation in more eutrophic seas such as the northern Aegean). The fish tanks provided the means to secure a steady supply of certain fish for a demanding market. We see here an attempt to break the tight link between the actual availability of the resource

95 96 97 98 99

Exceptions are provided in the writings of Archestratus, on which see the commentary in Wilkins’ and Hill’s translation (2011). Mylona 2008: 70, table 6.1. On taxonomies which spring from a society’s interest rather than abstract rules, see Ellen 1993; Atran 1998. Mylona 2008: 73–90. Mylona 2008: 76.

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and its availability in the market.100 The references to Kopaic eels that reached the Athenian market wrapped in beetroot leaves101 and the catfish bones (Clarias gariepinus – a fish imported from Egypt or Syro-Phoenicia) which have been found in Hellenistic Kommos in southern Crete102 are evidence of two more such cases. Another way to manipulate the supply of fish and seafood to the market is the transportation of preserved fish over very long distances.103 Preserved fish formed a whole distinct category of food in ancient Greece. When fish is preserved, its taste and texture change. As a consequence, the way it is prepared for consumption, the combination of foods with which it is eaten and the very way it is consumed change drastically.104 Considering the variety of fish available, the range of preservation methods and the number of possible added ingredients, it is obvious that preservation offers the potential to create a great variety of different food items and tastes.105 Preservation is usually viewed as a way to turn a seasonal or locally-available resource into foodstuff which is available over long time periods and over broad geographical areas. This was especially so for certain types of fish. The people living near Lake Volvi, for example, preserved massive catches of Danube bleak (Alburnus chalcoides), which made an annual small-scale spawning migration from the lake to its bordering rivers.106 According to an anecdote by the second-century BC historian Hegesander, preserved in the Deipnosophistae (The Learned Banqueters) of Athenaeus, the lake goddess Volvi granted rich catches of fish during two months of the year to those who worshipped her son, Olynthus.107 This appears to have been a small-scale exploitation, which only involved the locals and the practice of massive-catch fishing was enmeshed in a ritual of ancestor-worship. Byzantium, being on the main pass of the vast schools of Scombridae migrating from the Black Sea to the Aegean and back, was renowned for its preserved tuna, which was highly desirable in Greek markets, especially the Athenian. The same was true for eels from the Strymon river108 and also apparently for preserved fish from very distant sources. For example, the excavation of the fourth-century BC ‘Punic Amphora Building’ in Corinth uncovered the remains of the commercial establishment of a merchant who specialised in imported goods, namely preserved fish (tuna of an indeterminate variety and sea bream, probably gilthead sea bream, Sparus aurata)109 and wine. Fish remains and crushed amphorae that had contained fish or wine were found deposited in the open yard of the building. The fish, of species which were also available in the Aegean, were caught and salted on the northwestern Atlantic coast of Morocco,110 well beyond the Pillars of Hercules. They were brought, sold and consumed in Corinth, in a lively commercial harbour town. 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110

Mylona 2008: 77–8. References in Mylona 2008: 76. Rose 2000: 512–4. For the following, see Mylona 2008: 84–8; also Curtis 1991. Curtis 1991: 29; Wilkins 1993: 198–9; Dalby 1996: 75–6. Curtis 1991. Economidis and Sinis 1988. Athenaeus 7.334e. Athenaeus 7.300c. Zimmerman Munn 2003: 201, n. 47. Maniatis et al. 1984: 208–21; Zimmerman Munn 1983: 264; 2003: 200–6.

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The need for fish preservation, however, at least in this particular period, should not be seen only from the point of view of the consumers. Its economic importance is best understood if viewed in the context of production, in relation to the fishermen and the coastal communities who lived off the resources of the sea. Preservation ensured the utilisation of the catch, even when this was very abundant. Also it made use of other resources of the coastal zone, such as salt. Preserved products from certain localities, when they became items of commerce, often acquired a wide reputation (as did the tuna from Byzantium), thus supporting an articulate local economy which involved not only fish and seafood, but also the production of salt, vinegar, containers, etc. For ancient Greeks, or rather the urban dwellers of ancient Greece, the sea provided its bounty; but people intervened to regulate it, enhance or modify it, so as to fulfil the demands of the market and of a developing culinary culture that constructed a number of different taxonomies of taste and distinction.

6. Variations on a fishing theme: supply, demand, access and taste Fish and seafood are variable resources in the Aegean. They vary on several levels: different species or combinations of species are available in each region depending on conditions such as seabed morphology, water salinity, etc.; variations in such conditions cause variability in the size of the available fish and seafood stock; additionally, a high degree of variability is caused by seasonal movements of fish which take the form of small-scale or long-distance migrations. The choices of fishermen at any given time and location are made against this background of variability. In the Aegean, certain trends in the particular choices of the fishermen seem to be very widespread and persistent. From as early as the Mesolithic and through the following millennia fishing and shellfish gathering was mostly focused on the shore. These activities made extensive use of the resources of the shallow and very shallow waters along the coast. Even in areas where eutrophic, brackish environments were available and exploited, the fish of the shallow rocky coasts still dominate almost every fish-bone assemblage. The consistent preference for small fish, such as picarel, bogue and the smallest sea bream, is part of this long tradition; these fish form the bulk of the fish fauna of inshore shallow waters. It is obvious that choices were made. Not everything edible was targeted. The selectivity applied differs from case to case and our understanding of the reasons behind such choices varies considerably. At Mesolithic Youra, Maroulas and Franchthi Cave, tuna was caught in considerable numbers. The individual fish caught were all, however, small or medium-sized examples of their species. The possibility that this was due to technological restrictions, with the available fishing gear being unable to handle larger and more powerful individuals, certainly seems plausible. But alternative explanations might also apply. We might hypothesise that the flesh of the largest, older tuna was believed to be tougher and thus less desirable. Alternatively, we might suggest that the largest, mighty tuna were considered untouchable on ideological or religious grounds. It remains a fact that although we are usually more comfortable accepting a functional explanation, we have no firm evidence for or against any of these explanations. Our perspective broadens with more recent cases. The so-called ‘fishermen fresco’ at Bronze Age Akrotiri, a wall painting in the house of an affluent merchant, depicts two boys

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holding several fish each. The fish are dolphinfish (Coryphaena hippurus) and bullet tuna (Auxis rochei) or little tunnies (Euthynnus alletteratus),111 all vividly portrayed. These fish belong to two different families (Scombridae and Coryphaenidae), but they are both seasonal, approaching Thera in the spring. They are still found today in the waters around the island. Nevertheless, remains of these fish are virtually absent from the osteological record of Akrotiri. True tuna (Thunnus sp.) is also very rare. The only remains of tuna are linked to a disrupted cooking episode, which probably took place on the last day of the town’s existence. It is clear that the fish in the wall paintings were familiar to the inhabitants of Akrotiri and apparently important to some, but not, it seems, as food. The significance of these fish remains enigmatic. Evidence from the historical period is more instructive, because the written record provides us with a wide range of explanations for consumption choices. Even though each specific explanation is relevant for a specific time and place only, as a group they show the breadth of possible motives behind the choices made by people regarding the harvesting of fish and seafood. When fishermen caught the (still unidentified) tetix enalios in their nets, they immediately threw it back into the sea, considering it inedible due to its association with Perseus. Similarly, the pompilos (pilotfish, Naucrates ductor) was regarded as sacred to the Samothracian gods and its consumption was severely punished: culprits were eaten by a sea monster.112 Certain texts, philosophical, medical or other, indicate that, in both the Classical and the Hellenistic periods, knowledge of marine fauna extended far beyond the range of edible species. Aristotle’s History of Animals (fourth century BC), for example, discusses in detail the physiology and habits of a wide range of marine creatures which never found their way to the table. Thus, it becomes clear that in each period and at each location the availability of marine resources for consumption was shaped by the interest that society showed them. Demand was a key factor. In the Bronze Age, the previously sporadically tapped population of purple shellfish became a resource of considerable interest which was harvested intensively from the Middle Minoan period onwards. In Classical Corinth, the demand for exotic preserved fish led to the importation of tuna and sea bream from the Atlantic for commercial purposes, although there is no evidence for the depletion of local fish stocks at this time. Finally, in Roman times, the demand for large fish from rocky shores led some fishermen to focus on their capture, invest considerable resources in building fish tanks, and organise a trade in these fish. Consumer demand is not, however, easy to define and pinpoint, and depends on who the consumers were. If they were the fishermen and their families, for example, their choices and preferences might be invisible in the archaeological record. In the thick Mesolithic deposits of fish remains on Youra, we find evidence for the harvesting and consumption of a wide range of fish from different fishing grounds and with different textures and tastes. If consumer demand was for certain fish as opposed to others, this would not be apparent unless it was constant and long-lived enough to be reflected in the archaeological record of distinct archaeological strata corresponding to hundreds of years. When, on the other hand, demand is expressed in a structured manner, e. g., through the market, and when consumption takes place at some distance from the source – the sea – the picture may be clearer. At the Sanctuary of Poseidon on Kalaureia (modern Poros in the Saronic Gulf), for example, 111 112

Rose 1994: 160–1; Mylona 2000b; Economidis 2000. Burkert 1983: 212.

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the excavation of the remains of a large feasting event that took place around 165 BC has produced a large number of fish bones and seashells. Fish and seafood were clearly part of the menu. The sanctuary is located at the heart of the island, some distance from the shore, while Kalaureia itself lies a few hundred metres off the Peloponnesian mainland. The analysis of the fish remains indicates that three different fishing grounds were tapped: the inshore shallow waters around the island, the euryhaline lagoons on the Peloponnesian coast and the mainland coast where migratory fish were probably caught. The participants in the feast chose to bring, and eat, these fish for some reason which is related either to their identity or to the ritual prescriptions of the specific event that took place here and is evidenced by the remains of the feast.113 Access to fish and seafood resources, either directly from the sea or mediated through the market or other mechanisms (e. g., exchange) is also a crucial element. Who is allowed or able to fish is a matter defined by geographic, social or ideological factors. The image of the hungry farmer who turns to fishing when everything else fails is a fiction.114 Fishing, as a systematic occupation, presupposes specialised knowledge, apprenticeship and participation in a whole system of relations and world-views. By definition, such participation excludes ‘outsiders’ from fishing, or at best renders them very inefficient. The fishermen at the Mesolithic sites discussed in this paper were definitely dexterous and efficient. The large quantities of fish and shellfish that were caught and deposited could be viewed as an indication that many people in these settlements were involved in fishing. At Neolithic sites, however, where fish remains are fewer but nonetheless as taxonomically varied, we do not see a reduced interest in marine resources as such, but, rather, a reduced number of people who had access to those resources or possessed the skills needed to harvest them. The issue of access is also reflected in the marked selectivity in the range of molluscs consumed in the Bronze Age southern Aegean. The emphasis on limpet, monodont and crab, all species that can be collected from the rocks of the shore, as opposed to creatures of the deeper waters, may be evidence that these were not collected by the fishermen themselves, but rather by less-skilled or low-status members of the coastal communities; ethnographic examples can be cited to support such a scenario.115 Access, however, can also be regulated by more clearly structured rules. In Hellenistic Greece, certain sanctuaries imposed prohibitions on access to particular fish which were thought to belong to the deity and to be exploited by the deity’s temple servants only.116 Again in Hellenistic Greece, the harvesting of migratory fish was often regulated by restricting operation of thynneia, land-based, permanent fish traps, which were leased out in an organised manner.117 Taste is another issue which is crucial to determining the way the exploitation of marine food resources was organised. Identifying taste archaeologically as a definable factor in decision-making is tricky. Once again, periods with written records provide the best opportunity to explore the issue. In ancient Greece, the taste for fish and seafood was determined by the consumer’s origin (town versus countryside, Greeks versus barbarians, Athenians 113 114 115 116 117

Mylona forthcoming c. A motif that stands at the heart of optimality models for ancient economics: Mylona 2008: 7–11. E. g., Moss 1993; Bird and Bliege Bird 2000. For a discussion and references, see Mylona 2008: 79–81. Lytle 2006.

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versus Spartans, Thessalians, Sicilians, etc.), gender, social and financial status, religion or philosophical convictions, etc. Like or dislike of certain fish and seafood was expressed in evaluations of several inherent or acquired characteristics of the food. Texture, for example, was crucial, with fatty, gelatinous fish or parts of fish considered more flavoursome and more suitable than others (cf. above). The impact on senses other than taste was also important. The literature of the fourth and third centuries BC, culinary or otherwise, is rich in sensory images of prepared dishes: for example, the squid snatched out of the sizzling frying pan and the perfectly-cooked grey mullet, the aroma of which raises the dead.118 Fish and seafood were more desirable if they were acquired from certain places of origin. Athenaeus, writing in the second entury AD, repeats the exaggerated claim of the fourth-century BC gourmand-merchant Archestratus that the Rhodian dogfish was so good that every effort made to aquire it was justified.119 The Kopaic eel and whitebait from the Bay of Phaleron also had excellent reputations, which were repeated again and again in the literature.120 Finer issues, such as the type of water in which the fish lived, were also considered relevant. Grey mullet which lived exclusively in closed freshwater ponds were considered inferior in taste to those caught in the sea.121 The variety of consumed fish and other seafood in the Bronze Age, and even in the Mesolithic period, and the persistent combinations of certain food items of animal and plant origin (as evidenced through both the macroscopic remains of past meals and the chemical traces of them in pots)122 suggest that particular recipes and specific tastes were always part of the picture. The inferences about these tastes that can be derived from the material record are, however, still problematic in most cases. The question remains to what degree inferences can be made from the archaeological record of fish and seafood remains for such issues as taste, demand, access or even availability. This brief review has shown that this depends on the quality of the data and their resolution, and also on the type of questions asked of the data.

7. Conclusions In the study of the past exploitation of marine resources, two major questions arise: what was available to the fishermen and what did they choose to capture? Occasionally, the distinction between the two is blurred and availability is viewed as the principal factor defining the range and quantity of marine foods that people consumed. In areas of high physical and cultural variability, as, for example, the Aegean Sea, such simplifications often lead to misleading interpretations. This paper has examined the relation between humans and marine resources in three chronological periods: the Mesolithic, roughly nine millennia ago; the Bronze Age, especially the second half of the second millennium BC; and the Classical and Hellenistic periods, covering the fifth to the second century BC. This review has highlighted certain issues 118 119 120 121 122

For a more detailed discussion and references, see Mylona 2008: 113–5. Athenaeus 7.285e–286a = Archestratus, Douglas and Sens 2000, fr. 22, 97–8 = Wilkins and Hill fr. 21; 57. Mylona 2008: 44–6, with references, table 5.3. For a discussion and references, see Mylona 2008: 110. See various papers in Tzedakis et al. (eds) 2008.

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which are crucial to our understanding of the way humans have interacted with the sea over time. The first issue is that the ability of archaeology and history to illuminate this past relationship is strongly dependent on two factors: the quality and resolution of the available data and the approach taken with regards to these data. It is characteristic of this field of research that the greater the distance in time, the greater the dominance of ideas derived from environmental determinism, which equate availability with exploitation, with only technology intervening between the two. For the Aegean Bronze Age, with academic interest dominated by a focus on the rise of complex societies and palaces, the exploitation of marine resources has generally been considered a peripheral issue, mostly viewed in relation to diet and subsistence. Again, as for earlier periods, palaeo-economic models have dominated the discussion. For more recent times, such as the Classical and Hellenistic periods, the research focus has been different, with consideration of the written record and the discourse around consumption rather than just the actual materiality of the marine exploitation itself. In recent years, however, the situation has changed, with a plurality of approaches being pursued. This change is obviously related to epistemological developments but also to the increase in the quantity of available data. The multitude of uses and meanings of marine resources in the Bronze Age southern Aegean, for example, has become evident and better documented by a new wave of excavations that focus on coastal sites and apply field methods that promote the retrieval of relevant data. The wealth and variety of the data produced by current research and the increased emphasis on the contextualisation of these data offer an important benefit. Questions and issues that were previously considered approachable only through the written record (e. g., taste, symbolism, food taboos) can now be considered for periods without written records. This could potentially lead to better integration of the archaeological and historical narratives, and thus to a better understanding of the relation between people and the sea in the short-term and the long-term. The second issue highlighted by the short reviews of the data in this paper is that to understand the way ancient people interacted with the Aegean, we need to appreciate the intricacies and endless possibilities offered by the many levels of variability that are observed in the area. Environmental and ecological variability is pronounced in the Aegean, as is cultural variability, expressed archaeologically and historically in the variety technological and artistic traditions, the highly-fragmented political organisation and the many subcultures supported by this patchwork. These levels of variability gave rise to a multitude of human responses to the sea and its resources. As a result, any diachronic review or any history of the relationship between people and the sea will be more accurate if presented not as a single, linear narrative, but more like a piece of orchestral music in which different instruments and sounds follow their own individual rhythm, with continuities and disruptions, in parallel or in collision with others, synchronous or diverging, but ultimately producing a rich, multilevel outcome. Dimitra Mylona Institute for Aegean Prehistory INSTAP Study Center for East Crete, GR-74100 Rethymno [email protected]

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8. References 8.1 Primary sources Aristotle, History of Animals, with an English translation by A. L. Peck and D. M. Balme (LCL 437–9). Cambridge MA 1965–91. Archestratos of Gela: Greek Culture and Cuisine in the Fourth Century BCE, translated by S. D. Olson and A. Sens. Oxford 2000. Archestratus: Fragments from The Life of Luxury, a modern English translation by J. Wilkins and S. Hill. Totnes 2011. Hippocratic Regimen 2, in Hippocrates, vol. IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humours. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams. Heracleitus: On the Universe, with an English translation by W. H. S. Jones (LCL 150). Cambridge, MA 1931.

8.2 Secondary literature Acheson, J. M. 1981. ‘Anthropology of fishing’, Annual Review of Anthropology 10, 275–316. Apostolakou, V., T. M. Brogan and P. P. Betancourt 2012. ‘The Minoan settlement on Chryssi and its murex dye industry’ in M. L. Nosch and R. Laffineur (eds) 179–82. Apostolakou, S., P. P. Betancourt, T. Brogan, D. Mylona and C. Sofianou, 2014. ‘Tritons revisited’ in G. Touchais, R. Laffineur and F. Rougemont (eds), PHYSIS: L’ environnement naturel et la relation homme-milieu dans le monde égéen protohistorique. Actes de la 14e Rencontre égéenne internationale, Paris, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA), 11–14 décembre 2012 (Aegaeum 37). Liège, 325–32. Atran, S. 1998. ‘Folk biology and the anthropology of science: cognitive universals and cultural particulars’, Behavioural and Brain Sciences 21, 547–69. Bailey, G. and P. Spikins (eds) 2008. Mesolithic Europe. Cambridge. Berg, I. 2013. ‘Marine creatures and the sea in Bronze Age Greece: ambiguities of meaning’, Journal of Maritime Archaeology 8.1, 1–27. Betancourt, P. P., V. Apostolakou and T. M. Brogan 2012. ‘The workshop for making dyes at Pefka, Crete’ in M. L. Nosch and R. Laffineur (eds) 183–6. Bicknell, P. 2000. ‘Late Minoan IB ware, the marine environment of the Aegean, and the Bronze Age eruption of the Thera volcano’ in W. J. McGuire, D. R. Griffiths, P. L. Hancock et al. (eds), The Archaeology of Geological Catastrophes (Geological Society Special Publications 171). London, 95– 103. Bird, D. W. and R. Bliege Bird 2000. ‘The ethnoarchaeology of juvenile foragers: shellfishing strategies among Meriam children’, Archaeology 19, 461–76. Birtacha, K., A. Devetzi, D. Mylona et al. 2008. ‘Cooking installations in Late Cycladic IA Akrotiri on Thera: a preliminary study of the “kitchen” in Pillar Shaft 65’ in N. J. Brodie, J. Doole, G. Gavalas et al. (eds), Horizon: A Colloquium on the Prehistory of the Cyclades, Cambridge, 25th-28th March 2004 (McDonald Institute Monograph). Cambridge, 389–416. Block, B. A. and E. D. Stevens 2001. Tuna: Physiology, Ecology, and Evolution (Fish Physiology 19). San Diego. Blount, B. 2005. ‘Small-scale fisheries in the contemporary world: adoption and management’, Reviews in Anthropology 34, 1–19. Borić, D., G. Grupe, J. Peters et al. 2004. ‘Is the Mesolithic-Neolithic subsistence dichotomy real? New stable isotope evidence from the Danube gorges’, European Journal of Archaeology 7, 221–48. Brogan, M. T. and C. Sofianou 2007. ‘Papadiokambos: new evidence for the impact of the Theran eruption on the northeast coast of Crete’ in D. A. Warburton (ed.), Time’s Up! Dating the Minoan Eruption of Santorini: Acts of the Minoan Eruption Chronology Workshop, Sandbjerg, November 2007 (Monographs of the Danish Institute at Athens 10). Athens, 117–24.

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Brogan, M. T., P. P. Betancourt and V. Apostolakou 2012. ‘The purple dye industry of eastern Crete’ in M. L. Nosch and R. Laffineur (eds) 187–92. Brogan, M. T., C. Sofianou, J. E. Morrison et al. 2013. ‘Living off the fruits of the sea: new evidence for dining at Papadiokambos, Crete’ in S. Voutsaki and S. M. Valamoti (eds), Subsistence, Economy and Society in the Greek World: Towards a Better Integration of Archaeology and Science. Proceedings of the International Conference Held at the Netherlands Institute at Athens on 22–24 March 2010 (Pharos supplements 1). Leuven, 123–32. Burkert, W. 1983. Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth. Berkeley. Cline, E. H. 2012. The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean ca. 3000–1000 BC. New York. Coy, J. 1986. ‘Appendix II: the faunal remains from period V’ in J. Davis (ed.), Ayia Irini: Period V (Keos 5). Mainz. Curtis, R. I. 1991. Garum and Salsamenta: Production and Commerce in Materia Medica (Studies in Ancient Medicine 3). Leiden. Dalby, A. 1996. Siren Feasts: A history of food and gastronomy in Greece. London and New York. Davidson, J. 1993. ‘Fish, sex and revolution in Athens’, Classical Quarterly 43, 53–66. Davidson, J. 1998. Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens. London. Desse, J. 1981. ‘Les poissons’ in N. Lambert (ed.), La Grotte Préhistorique de Kitsos (Attique) Missions 1968–1978 II: L’ occupation neolithique les vestiges des temps paléolithiques, de l’antiquité et de l’histoire récente. Athens, 607–10. Desse, J. and N. Desse-Berset 1994. ‘Strategies de peche au 8e millinnaire: les poissons de Cap Andreas-Kastros (Chypre)’ in A. Le Brun and L. Astruc (eds), Fouilles Recentes a Khirokitia (Chypre) 1988–1991 (Études néolithiques 3). Paris, 335–60. Diegues, A. C. 2002. ‘Traditional fisheries knowledge and social appropriation of marine resources in Brazil’ in A. C. Diegues, Maritime Anthropology in Brazil. São Paulo, 80–95. Doumas, C. 1992. Santorini: The Prehistoric City of Akrotiri. Athens. Economidis, P. S. 2000. ‘The “little fisherman” and the fish he holds’ in S. Sherratt (ed.), International Symposium: The Wall Paintings of Thera, Thera 30th August-4th September 1997. Athens, 555–62. Economidis, P. S., and A. I. Sinis 1988. ‘A natural hybrid of Leuciscus cephalus macedonicus x Chalcalburnus chalcoides macedonicus (Pisces, Cyprinidae) from Lake Volvi (Macedonia, Greece)’, Journal of fish biology 32.4, 593–605. Ellen, R. 1993. The Cultural Relation of Classification: An Analysis of Nuaulu Animal Categories from Central Seram (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology 91). Cambridge. Evely, D. 2010. ‘Eastern Crete (nomos of Lasithi)’, Archaeological Reports 56, 169–78. Galanidou, N. 2011. ‘Mesolithic cave use in Greece and the mosaic of human communities’, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 24, 219–42. Galanidou, N. and C. Perlés (eds) 2003. The Greek Mesolithic: Problems and Perspectives (British School at Athens Studies 10). Athens. Gallant, T. W. 1985. A Fisherman’s Tale (Miscellanea Graeca 7). Ghent. Haysom, M. 2011. ‘Fish and ships: Neopalatial seascapes in context’ in G. Vavouranakis (ed.), The Seascape in Aegean Prehistory (Monographs of the Danish Institute at Athens 14). Athens, 139–60. Heliotis, D. F. 1988. ‘An inventory and review of the wetland resources of Greece’, Wetlands 8, 15–31. Horden, P. and N. Purcell 2000. The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. Oxford. Jacobsen, T. W. 1973. ‘Excavation in the Franchthi Cave, 1969–1971, part 1’, Hesperia 42, 45–88. Kallianiotis, A., K. Sophronidis, P. Vidoris et al. 2000. ‘Demersal fish and megafunal assemblages on the Cretan continental shelf and slope (NE Mediterranean): seasonal variation in species density, biomass and diversity’, Progress in Oceanography 46, 429–55. Karali, L. 1999. Shells in Aegean Prehistory (BAR International Series 761). Oxford. Karali, L. 2010. ‘The seashells of Maroulas, Kythnos’ in A. Sampson et al. (eds) 147–50. Karali, L. 2011. ‘Malacological material’ in A. Sampson (ed.) 267–88. Katsadorakis, G. and K. Paragamian 2006. Oi Ygrotopoi tou Aigaiou. Athens.

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Kotsakis, K. 2001. ‘Mesolithic to Neolithic in Greece: Continuity, discontinuity or change of course’, Documenta Praehistorica 28, 63–73. Kotsakis, K. 2003. ‘From the Neolithic side: the Mesolithic/Neolithic Interface’ in N. Galanidou and C. Perlés (eds) 217–22. Koutrakis, E. T. 2011. ‘Fisheries in the lagoons of northern Greece: cultural aspects and indicators of biological integrity’ in T. Papagiannis and D. Pritchard (eds), Culture and Wetlands in the Mediterranean: An Evolving Story. Athens, 161–71. Koutrakis, T. E., C. A. Tsikliras and A. I. Sinis 2005. ‘Temporal variability of the ichthyofauna in a northern Aegean lagoon (Greece). Influence of environmental factors’, Hydrobiologia 543, 245–57. Kozlowski, K. J. and M. Kaczanowska 2009. ‘The Mesolithic in the Aegean basin: how to interpret the pre-Neolithic settlement of the Aegean islands and its role in the Neolithisation of southeastern Europe’ in D. E. Lieberman and J. J. Shea (eds), Transitions in Prehistory: Essays in Honor of Ofer Bar-Yosef (American School of Prehistoric Research Monograph Series). Oxford. Kyparissi-Apostolika, N. 2003. ‘The Mesolithic in Theopetra Cave: new data on a debated period of Greek prehistory’ in N. Galanidou and C. Perlés (eds) 189–98. Laffineur, R. and L. Basch (eds) 1991. THALASSA: L’Egée préhistorique et la mer: Actes de la troisième rencontre égéenne internationale de l’Université de Liège, Station de Recherches Sous-marines et Océanographiques, Calvi, Corse, 23–25 avril 1990 (Aegeum 7). Liège. LaMotta, M. V. and M. B. Schiffer 1999. ‘Formation processes of house floor assemblages’ in P. M. Alison (ed.), The Archaeology of Household Activities. London, 19–29. Lubinski, M. P. 1996. ‘Fish heads, fish heads: an experiment on differential bone preservation in a salmonid fish’, Journal of Archaeological Science 23, 175–81. Lykousis, V., G. Chronis, A. Tselepides et al. 2002. ‘Major outputs of the recent multidisciplinary biogeochemical researches undertaken in the Aegean Sea’, Journal of Marine Systems 33–4, 313–34. Lytle, E. 2006. Marine Fisheries and the Ancient Greek Economy. PhD thesis, Duke University. McDonald, C. F., E. Hallager and W.-D. Niemeier (eds) 2009. The Minoans in the Central, Eastern and Northern Aegean: New Evidence. Acts of a Minoan Seminar, 22–23 January 2005, in Collaboration with the Danish Institute at Athens and the German Archaeological Institute at Athens (Monographs of the Danish Institute at Athens 8). Athens. Maniatis, Y., R. E. Jones, I. K. Whitbread et al. 1984. ‘Punic amphoras found in Corinth, Greece: an investigation of their origin and technology’, Journal of Field Archaeology 11, 205–22. Milner, N., O. E. Craig, G. N. Bailey et al. 2004. ‘Something fishy in the Neolithic? A re-evaluation of stable isotope analysis of Mesolithic and Neolithic coastal populations’, Antiquity 78, 9–22. Morrill, W. T. 1967. ‘The ethnoichthyology of Cha-Cha’, Ethnology 6, 405–16. Morris, C. E. 1995. ‘Fishy tales from Knossos: a Late Minoan larnax and vase-painter’ in C. E. Morris (ed.), Klados: Essays in Honour of J. N. Coldstream (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Supplement 51). London, 185–93. Moss, M. L. 1993. ‘Shellfish, gender, and status on the northwest coast: reconciling archeological, ethnographic, and ethnohistorical records of the Tlingit’, American Anthropologist 95, 631–52. Moulherat, C., Y. Spantidaki and I. Tzachili 2004. ‘Yfasmata, dichtya, spaggoi, klostes apo to Akrotiri Theras’ [Textiles, nets, strings and threads from Akrotiri Thera], Arachne 2, 15–9. Moundrea-Agrafioti, A. 2011. ‘The Mesolithic and Neolithic bone implements’ in A. Sampson (ed.) 3–52. Mountjoy, P. A. 1985. ‘Ritual associations for LM I B Marine Style vases’ in P. Darcque and J.-C. Poursat (eds), L’Iconographie Minoenne: Actes de la Table Ronde d’Athènes, 21–22 Avril 1983 (Bulletin de correspondance hellénique supplément 11). Athens, 231–42. Müller, W. 1997. Kretische Tongefäße mit Meeresdekor: Entwicklung und Stellung innerhalb der feinen Keramik von Spätminoisch IB auf Kreta (Archäologische Forschungen 19). Berlin. Mylona, D. 2000a. ‘Animal bones from the Late Neolithic strata at Kryoneri, Serres: a preliminary report’, Archaeologiko Ergo Macedonias kai Thrakis 11, 523–38. Mylona, D. 2000b. ‘Representations of fish and fishermen on the Thera wall paintings in light of the fish

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bone evidence’ in S. Sherratt (ed.), International Symposium: The Wall Paintings of Thera, Thera 30th August–4th September 1997. Athens, 561–7. Mylona, D. 2001. ‘An archaeological quest for the fishermen of ancient Thera and their catch’ in M. Danezis (ed.), Santorini. Thera, Therasia, Aspronisi, Hefaisteia. Athens, 189–92. Mylona, D. 2003. ‘Archaeological fish remains in Greece: general trends of the research and a gazetteer of sites’ in E. Kotzabopoulou, Y. Hamilakis, P. Halstead et al. (eds), Zooarchaeology in Greece: Recent Advances (British School at Athens Studies 9). London, 193–200. Mylona, D. 2004. ‘Fish remains’ in J. Soles and C. Davaras (eds), Mochlos IC, Period III, Neopalatial Remains on the Coast: The Artisans’ Quarter and the Chalinomouri Farmhouse at Chalinomouri: The Small Finds (Prehistory Monographs 9). Philadelphia, 121–5. Mylona, D. 2007. ‘Fish remains from Well 576 and Well 605’ in H. Sackett, A. MacGillivray and J. Driessen (eds), Palaekastro: Two Late Minoan Wells (British School at Athens, Supplementary Volume 43). London, 217–20. Mylona, D. 2008. Eating Fish in Greece from 500 BC to AD 700: A Story of Impoverished Fishermen or Lavish Fish Banquets? (BAR International Series 1754). Oxford. Mylona, D. 2010. ‘Mesolithic fishers at Maroulas Kythnos. The fish bones’ in A. Sampson et al. (eds) 151–62. Mylona, D. 2011. ‘Fish vertebrae’ in A. Sampson (ed.) 237–68. Mylona, D. forthcoming a. ‘Preserved fish products at Bronze Age Akrotiri. A long-lived Mediterranean tradition’ in C. H. Doumas (ed.), Akrotiri Thera. Forty Years of Research 1967–2007. Athens. Mylona, D. forthcoming b. ‘Fish bones from the Zas Cave at Naxos’ in K. Zachos (ed.), Excavations at Zas Cave, Naxos. Mylona, D. forthcoming c. ‘Dining at the Sanctuary of Poseidon at Kalaureia’ in D. Mylona and A. Penttinen (eds), Physical Environment and Daily Life in the Sanctuary of Poseidon at Kalaureia (Poros): The Swedish Institute Excavations in 2003–2005. Stockholm. Nosch, M. L. and R. Laffineur (eds) 2012. Kosmos: Jewellery, Adornment and Textiles in the Aegean Bronze Age. Proceedings of the 13th International Aegean Conference/13e Rencontre égéenne internationale, University of Copenhagen, Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Textile Research, 21–26 April 2010 (Aegaeum 33). Liège. Pálsson, G. 1993. ‘Household words: attention, agency and the ethnography of fishing’ in G. Pálsson (ed.), Beyond Boundaries. Understanding, Translation and Anthropological Discourse (Explorations in Anthropology). Oxford, 117–39. Pálsson, G. 1994a. ‘Enskilment at sea’, Man 29, 901–27. Pálsson, G. 1994b. ‘The idea of fish: land and sea in the Icelandic world view’ in R. Willis (ed.), Signifying Animals: Human Meaning in the Natural World (One World Archaeology 16). London, 119– 33. Papakonstantinou, C. 1988. Check-list of Marine Fishes of Greece (Fauna Greciae 4). Athens. Pappa, M., P. Halstead, K. Kotsakis et al. 2013. ‘The Neolithic site of Makriyalos, northern Greece: reconstruction of social and economic structure of the settlement through comparative study of the finds’, in S. Voutsaki and S. M. Valamoti (eds), Subsistence, Economy and Society in the Greek World: Towards a Better Integration of Archaeology and Science. Proceedings of the International Conference Held at the Netherlands Institute at Athens on 22–24 March 2010 (Pharos supplements 1). Leuven, 77–88. Payne, S. 1975. ‘Faunal change at Franchthi Cave from 20,000 BC – 3000 BC’ in A. T. Clason (ed.), Archaeozoological Studies. Amsterdam, 120–31. Payne, S. 1982. ‘Faunal evidence for environmental/climatic change at Franchthi Cave (southern Argolid, Greece), 25,000 BP – 5000 BP. Preliminary results’ in J. L. Bintliff and W. van Zeist (eds), Palaeoclimates, Palaeoenvironments and Human Communities in the Eastern Mediterranean Region in Later Prehistory (BAR International Series 133). Oxford, 133–7. Perlés, C. 2001. The Early Neolithic in Greece: The First Farming Communities in Europe (Cambridge World Archaeology). Cambridge.

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Perlés, C. 2003. ‘The Mesolithic at Franchthi: an overview of the data and problems’ in N. Galanidou and C. Perlés (eds) 79–88. Powell, J. 1996. Fishing in the Prehistoric Aegean. Jonsered. Powell, J. 2003. ‘Fishing in the Mesolithic and Neolithic – the Cave of Cyclops, Youra’ in E. Kotzabopoulou, Y. Hamilakis, P. Halstead et al. (eds), Zooarchaeology in Greece: Recent Advances (British School at Athens Studies 9). London, 75–84. Powell, J. 2011. ‘Non-vertebral fish bones’ in A. Sampson (ed.) 151–236. Reese, D. S. 1985. ‘The Late Bronze Age to Geometric shells from Kition’ in V. Karageorghis (ed.), Excavations At Kition V. The Pre-Phoenician Levels II. Nicosia, 340–71. Reese, D. S. 1987. ‘Palaikastro shells and Bronze Age purple-dye production in the Mediterranean basin’, Annual of the British School at Athens 82, 201–6. Reese, D. S. 1989–90. ‘Triton shells from east Mediterranean sanctuaries and graves’ in P. Åström and D. S. Reese, ‘Triton shells in east Mediterranean cults’, Journal of Prehistoric Religion 3–4, 7–14. Reese, D. S. 1995a. ‘The marine fauna’ in J. W. Shaw and M. C. Shaw (eds), Kommos I. The Kommos Region and Houses of the Minoan Town. Part 1: The Kommos Region, Ecology, and Minoan Industries. Princeton, 240–73. Reese, D. S. 1995b. ‘The faunal remains’ in P. P. Betancourt and C. Davaras (eds), Pseira I. The Minoan Buildings on the West Side of Area A (University Museum Monograph 90). Philadelphia, 11, 45–46, 56–57, 83, 129–30. Reese, D. S. 1998. ‘The faunal remains’ in P. P. Betancourt and C. Davaras (eds), Pseira III. The Plateia Buildings (University Museum Monograph 102). Philadelphia, 131–44. Reese, D. S. 1999. ‘The faunal remains’, in P. P. Betancourt and C. Davaras (eds), Pseira IV. Minoan Buildings in Areas B, C, D, and F (University Museum Monograph 105). Philadelphia, 36–7, 80, 99, 110, 136, 162–4, 184, 223, 282–3. Reese, D. S. 2004. ‘The fauna’ in J. Soles and C. Davaras (eds), Mochlos IC, Period III, Neopalatial Settlement on the Coast: The Artisans’ Quarter and the Chalinomouri Farmhouse at Chalinomouri: The Small Finds (Prehistory Monographs 9). Philadelphia, 118–21. Reese, D. S., M. J. Rose and S. Payne 1995. ‘The Minoan fauna’ in J. W. Shaw and M. C. Shaw (eds), Kommos I. The Kommos Region and Houses of the Minoan Town. Part 1: The Kommos Region, Ecology, and Minoan Industries. Princeton, 163–290. Renfrew, J., P. Whitehead and P. Greenwood 1968. ‘Appendix VIII: The fish bones’ in J. Evans and C. Renfrew (eds), Excavations at Saliagos Near Antiparos (British School at Athens, Supplementary Volume 5). London, 118–21 Richards, M. P. and E. J. Schulting 2006. ‘Touch not the fish: the Mesolithic-Neolithic change of diet and its significance’, Antiquity 80, 444–56. Rose, M. 1994. With Line and Glittering Bronze Hook: Fishing in the Aegean Bronze Age. PhD thesis, Indiana University. Rose, M. 1995. ‘Fishing at Franchthi Cave, Greece: changing environments and patterns of exploitation’, Old World Archaeology Newsletter 18, 21–6. Rose, M. 1998. ‘The fish bones’ in P. P. Betancourt and C. Davaras (eds), Pseira I. The Minoan Buildings on the West Side of Area A (University Museum Monograph 90). Philadelphia, 145–8. Rose, M. 2000. ‘The fish remains’ in J. W. Shaw and M. C. Shaw (eds), Kommos IV. The Greek Sanctuary. Princeton, 495–560. Ruscillo, D. 2006. ‘Faunal remains and murex dye production’ in M. C. Shaw and J. W. Shaw (eds), Kommos V. The Monumental Minoan Buildings at Kommos. Princeton, 776–844. Ruscillo, D. 2012. ‘The faunal remains’ in M. C. Shaw and J. W. Shaw (eds), House X at Kommos. A Minoan Mansion Near the Sea. Part 1. Architecture, Stratigraphy and Selected Finds. Philadelphia, 93–116. Sampson, A. 1998. ‘The Neolithic and Mesolithic occupation of the Cave of Cyclope, Youra, Alonnessos’, The Annual of the British School at Athens 93, 1–22. Sampson, A. (ed.) 2008. The Cave of the Cyclops: Mesolithic and Neolithic Networks in the Northern Ae-

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gean, Greece 1. Intra-site Analysis, Local Industries, and Regional Site Distribution (Prehistory Monographs 21). Philadelphia. Sampson, A. (ed.) 2011. The Cave of the Cyclops. Mesolithic and Neolithic Networks in the Northern Aegean, Greece 2. Bone Tool Industry, Dietary Resources and the Paleoenvironmenal and Archaeometrical Studies (Prehistory Monographs 31). Philadelphia. Sampson, A., M. Kaczanowska and J. K. Kozlowski (eds) 2010. The Prehistory of the Island of Kythnos (Cyclades, Greece) and the Mesolithic Settlement at Maroulas. Krakow. Schwartz, C. 1985. ‘Agios Petros: the vertebrate and molluscan fauna, final report’ in N. Efstratiou (ed.), Agios Petros. A Neolithic Site in the Northern Sporades: Aegean Relationships During the Neolithic of the 5th Millennium (BAR International Series 241). Oxford, 151–60. Shackleton, J. C. and T. van Andel 1986. ‘Prehistoric shore environments, shellfish availability and shellfish gathering at Franchthi, Greece’, Geoarchaeology 1, 127–43. Shackleton, J. C., N. J. Shackleton and M. R. Deith 1988. Marine Molluscan Remains from Franchthi Cave (Excavations at Franchthi Cave 4). Bloomington. Sofianou, C. and T. Brogan 2008. ‘A first approach to a LMI house at Papadiokambos, Siteia/Proti proseggisi mias YMI oikiakis egkatastasis ston Papadiokambo Siteias’, Kritiki Estia 12, period Δ, 23–32. Sofianou, C. and T. M. Brogan 2010. ‘The Minoan settlement of Papadiokambos, Siteia. The excavation in House B1 in 2008/Minoikos oikismos Papadokambou Siteias. H anaskafi tis oikias B1 kata to 2008’ in M. Andrianakis and I. Tzachili (eds), Archaeologiko Ergo Kritis 1, 134–7. Sordinas, A. 2003. ‘The “Sidarian”: maritime Mesolithic non-geometric microliths in western Greece’ in N. Galanidou and C. Perlés (eds) 89–98. Stanley, J. and C. Perissoratis 1977. ‘Aegean Sea ridge barrier and basin sedimentation patterns’, Marine Geology 24, 97–107. Stratouli, G. 1996. ‘Die Fischerei in der Ägäis während des Neolithikums. Zur Technik und zum potentiellen Ertrag’, Prähistorische Zeitschrift 71, 1–27. Theocharis, D. R. 1959. ‘Pyrasos’, Thessalika 2, 29–68. Theodoropoulou, T. 2007. L’exploitation des faunes aquatiques en Égée septentrionale aux périodes préet protohistoriques. Doctoral thesis, Université de Paris-1, Panthéon-Sorbonne. Trantalidou, K. 2011. ‘From Mesolithic fishermen and bird hunters to Neolithic goat herders, the transformation of an island economy during the Mesolithic/Neolithic period in the Aegean’ in A. Sampson (ed.) 53–150. Tzedakis, Y., H. Martlew and M. K. Jones (eds) 2008. Archaeology Meets Science: Biomolecular Investigations in Bronze Age Greece: The Primary Scientific Evidence, 1997–2003. Oxford. Vanschoonwinkel, J. 1996. ‘Les animaux dans l’art Minoen’ in D. S. Reese (ed.), Pleistocene and Holocene Fauna of Crete and its First Settlers (Monographs in World Archaeology 28). Madison, WI, 351–412. Wheeler, A. and A. K. G. Jones 1989. Fishes (Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology). Wilkins, J. 1993. ‘Social status and fish’ in V. Mars and G. Mars (eds), Food, Culture and History. London, 191–203. Wilkins, J. 2000. The Boastful Chef: The Discourse of Food in Ancient Greek Comedy. New York. Zimmerman Munn, M. L. 1983. Corinthian Trade with the West in the Classical Period. PhD thesis, Bryn Mawr College. Zimmerman Munn, M. L. 2003. ‘Corinthian trade with the Punic West in the Classical period’ in N. Bookidis (ed.), Corinth: Results of Excavations Conducted by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. The Centenary, 1896–1996 (Corinth 20). Princeton, 195–217.

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The eco-history of ancient Mediterranean harbours

1. Introduction Up until recent times, coastal sediments uncovered during Mediterranean excavations received little attention from archaeologists.1 Before 1990, the relationships between populations and their coastal environments had largely been studied within anthropological and naturalist frameworks, and largely considered in isolation. During the past twenty years, Mediterranean archaeology has changed significantly, underpinned by the emergence of a new culture–nature duality that has drawn on the north European examples of waterfront archaeology. Because of the challenges of coastal contexts, the archaeological community is nowadays increasingly aware of the importance of the environment in understanding the socio-economic and natural frameworks in which ancient societies lived, and multidisciplinary research has become a central pillar of large-scale Mediterranean coastal excavations.2 Ancient harbour contexts have emerged as particularly novel and original archives, shedding light on how humans have interacted with and modified coastal zones since the Neolithic. Around 7,000 years ago, at the end of the post-glacial marine transgression, societies started to settle along ‘present’ coastlines.3 During the past 5,000 years, harbour technology has evolved to exploit a plethora of environmental contexts, from natural bays and pocket beaches through to the artificial basins of the Roman period.4 Although some of these ancient port complexes continue to be thriving transport centres (such as Marseille, Istanbul, Alexandria, Beirut, etc.), many millennia after their foundation, the majority have been abandoned and their precise whereabouts remain unknown. Although not the sole agent of cultural change, these environmental modifications partly reflect that long-term human activities have prioritized access to the open sea. Societies have developed adaptive strategies in response to the rapidly changing face of coasts, and harbour sites closely mirror the shoreline modifications and natural hazards that form part of history’s longue durée.5

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Marriner and Morhange 2007. E. g., Raban et al. 2009; Carayon 2012–3. Van Andel 1989. E. g., Raban (ed) 1985; 1995; Frost 1995; Morhange (ed.) 2000. E. g., Kraft et al. 1980; Stock et al. 2013.

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Since the multidisciplinary studies of Marseille in France6 and Caesarea Maritima in Israel,7 there has been a proliferation of studies looking into coastal and ancient harbour geoarchaeology,8 building on pioneering archaeological work in the first half of the twentieth century.9 Ancient harbour basins are particularly interesting because: (1) they served as important economic centres and nodal points for maritime navigation;10 (2) there is generally excellent preservation of the material culture due to the anoxic conditions induced by the water table;11 and (3) there is an abundance of source material for palaeo-environmental reconstruction.12

2. Eastern Mediterranean origins The ease of water transport, via fluvial and maritime routes, was important in the development of civilisations. Four areas – the Indus, China, Mesopotamia and Egypt – played an important role in the development of harbours. It is often argued that the Egyptians were one of the earliest Mediterranean civilisations to engage in water transport. Circumstantial evidence for the use of boats in ancient Egypt derives from deep-water fish bones found at prehistoric hunter/gatherer campsites.13 The earliest boats were probably papyrus rafts which enabled these societies to navigate.14 It is speculated that wooden boats were adopted during Neolithic times with the introduction of agriculture and animal husbandry. The rise of chiefdoms during the Egyptian Predynastic period was accompanied by the widespread adoption of boats as attested by the archaeological evidence. North of the First Cataract of the Nile in Egypt, ships could travel to almost anywhere along the river. For example, Bronze Age harbourworks are known from Memphis and Giza. Despite excavations at a number of sites, however, the exact locations of many of the river ports are equivocal.15 On the delta, the then seven branches of the Nile served as waterways into the eastern Mediterranean. The eastern Mediterranean was also a natural communications link between the major cultural centres of Syria-Palestine, Cyprus, Crete, Greece and Libya. In light of this, it is unsurprising that the works along the fluvial banks of the Nile and the coastlines of the Red Sea and Mediterranean were many and varied. During the third millennium BC, canals were excavated from the Nile to the valley temples of the Giza pyramids so that building materials could be transported. Quays were also commonly established along the Nile: for instance, at fourteenth-century BC Amarna, boats were depicted parallel to shoreside quays equipped with bollards.16 An artificial quay dating to the second millennium BC is attested 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Hesnard 1994. Raban and Holum (eds) 1996. See Marriner and Morhange 2007 and Goiran et al. 2011a for references. E. g., Pâris 1915; 1916; Lehmann-Hartleben 1923; Poidebard 1939; Poidebard and Lauffray 1951. E. g., Arnaud 2005; Keay (ed.) 2012. E. g., recent research in Narbonne, southern France: Sanchez et al. 2013. E. g., Reinhardt et al. 1998; Marriner 2009a; 2009b. Shaw et al. 1993. Basch 1987. Fabre 2004–5. Blackman 1982a; 1982b.

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Fig. 3.1: Plan of Atlit and its harbour. Atlit is a Phoenician harbour in present-day Israel. It was used during Iron Age II and until the end of the Persian era. The study of Atlit has provided invaluable information on the planning and construction of Phoenician harbours in the Levant. The harbour occupies an ideal natural bay on the north and north-east of the promontory upon which the Crusader castle stands. This promontory protects the area from the prevailing winds and swells from the south-west. To the west, protection is afforded by two rocky islets. In c. 2700 years cal. BP (c. 700 BC) the natural bay was improved by the construction of two moles, each consisting of two parallel walls of ashlars with a stone filling in between: a common Phoenician technique. (Based on a drawing by A. Raban, after Haggi and Artzy 2007). at Karnak, on the Nile.17 High sediment supply and rapid changes in fluvial systems mean that few conspicuous remains of these early fluvial harbours are still visible, particularly in the delta. Navigation in the Red Sea during Pharaonic times is a theme that has attracted renewed interest during the past 30 years, underpinned by the discovery of numerous coastal sites shedding new light on the extent and chronology of human impacts in maritime areas. Extending for over 2,000 km from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea was a major communications link. Recent findings have been made at Ayn Soukhna, El-Markha 17

Fabre 2004–5.

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and Wadi el-Jarf.18 At Mersa Gawasis, archaeological excavations have documented evidence for some of the world’s earliest long-distance seafaring.19 The site was used extensively during the Middle Kingdom (c. 4,000–3,775 years BP), when seafaring ships departed from the Egyptian harbour for trade routes along the African Red Sea coast.

3. Chrono-typology In the Mediterranean, the first artificial harbour structures appear to date to the Middle Bronze Age. For example, submerged boulder piles are attested at Yavne-Yam on the coast of Israel; these suggest human enterprise to improve the quality of the natural anchorage. Recent geoarchaeological work in Sidon has elucidated the presence of a semi-protected basin beginning around 4410 ± 40 BP.20 This sedimentological unit has been interpreted as a proto-harbour, with possible artificial reinforcement of the shielding sandstone ridge to improve the natural anchorage quality. It is suggested that small boats were hauled onto the beach face, with larger vessels being anchored in the outer harbour of Zire.21 After this period, the maritime harbours of the ancient Mediterranean evolved in four broad technological leaps as outlined below. 3.1 Bronze Age to Early Iron Age ashlar technology A double ashlar wall with a filling of fieldstones (pier-and-rubble technique) is a harbour construction method commonly attributed to the Phoenicians.22 This harbour construction technique appeared in the Levant at the end of the ninth century BC and the first examples are attested at Atlit in Israel23 and Tabbat-al-Hammam in Syria.24 This technique spread from the Levant to the western colonies and Greece where it can be found as late as the sixth century AD. For instance, the use of ashlar techniques can be seen in the Persian harbour of Akko (Israel), the Hellenistic harbour at Amathous on Cyprus, the Punic harbour of Carthage and the Roman quay at Dor. Iron Age Atlit is one of the best-studied Phoenician harbours.25 The northern harbour’s mole extends about 100 m into the sea and is about 10 m wide. It is constructed of two parallel ashlar headers of 2–3 m in width. Between the ashlar walls, a fill of stones was placed. This form of construction added stability so that the mole could withstand the high energy of the waves. The northern part of the mole ends with north-facing ashlar headers. The mole was placed on a foundation of ballast pebbles. Radiometric dating of wood fragments constrains this structure to the ninth century BC, although there is very little pottery dating from this period.26

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Tallet 2009. Bard and Fattovich 2010. Marriner et al. 2006a. Carayon 2008; 2012–3. Raban 1985; 1995. Haggi and Artzy 2007. Braidwood 1940. Haggi and Artzy 2007. M. Artzy, pers. comm.

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3.2 Artificial, dug harbours (Iron Age to the Roman period) During the Iron Age a new harbour construction technique appeared in the Mediterranean. This technique comprised either the digging of artificial harbour basins along the coastline or the deepening and extension of natural lagoons.27 The method is attested as early as the Bronze Age in fluvial contexts in Egypt28 and Mesopotamia.29 The artificial, dug harbour of Coral Island in the Red Sea,30 believed to be the naval station of Salomon and Hiram of Tyre mentioned in the Bible, could date to the tenth century BC, and thereby constitute one of the oldest examples of an excavated harbour in a maritime context. This technique was subsequently propagated throughout the Mediterranean, probably via the Phoenicians. It is attested during the period of Carthaginian domination over the western Mediterranean, from the fifth century BC onwards, at Mahdia and Carthage in Tunisia.31 The cothon at Carthage, which sheltered the city’s fleet during the third Punic War (146 BC), was an artificial harbour that was equipped with slipways for 220 war vessels.32 The technique is also attested in the Greek world, with examples at Lechaion-Corinth,33 and in the Roman world at Portus,34 where the harbour was constructed by the Emperor Trajan (AD 98–117) and attests to a monumentalisation of the technique. 3.3 Hydraulic concrete Pre-Roman ashlar block methods continued to be used throughout the Roman era. Nonetheless, another technique was introduced during this period that completely revolutionised harbour design – the use of hydraulic/pozzolana concrete. This technological breakthrough meant that natural roadsteads were no longer a prerequisite to harbour loci and completely artificial ports, enveloped by imposing concrete moles, could be located offshore on open coasts. The material could be cast and set underwater, and started to be used during the second century BC. Roman engineers were free to create structures in the sea or along high-energy shorelines.35 Pozzolana concrete facilitated the construction of offshore basins such as Claudius’ harbour at Portus.36

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Carayon 2005. Kemp and O’Connor 1974. Woolley 1930. Flinder 1977. Carayon 2005. Hurst and Stager 1978. Morhange et al. 2012. Keay et al. (eds) 2005. Hohlfelder 1997; Brandon et al. 2010. Goiran et al. 2011a.

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W Fig. 3.2: The artificial harbour of Jezirat Fara’un Coral Island, Egypt. The island of Jezirat Fara’un lies in the Gulf of Aqaba, about 300 m offshore and 10 km south of Eilat (ancient Eloth). It measures c. 325 m north to south and 150 m east to west. The northernmost and highest of its three hills is topped by an Islamic fortress. The other two hills to the south and east are smaller and have Byzantine architectural remains. In the southwest of the island, facing the continent, a small rocky cove, today silted, was connected to the sea by a narrow channel. Jezirat Fara’un is also surrounded by a coral reef. The stretch of sea separating the island from the mainland is well protected and the best natural anchorage in the Gulf of Aqaba. The anchorage has a landing site, comprising a pebble beach, near an ancient trade route. The docking facilities were improved by the construction of two jetties. On the island, the rocky cove also served as a loading and unloading area. The ‘cothon’ of Jezirat Fara’un is semi-artificial. The basin was roughly rectangular (60 by 30 m and 2.5–3 m in depth) with a 10 m wide entrance. The seaward opening of the pocket beach was closed by a breakwater. This served as the foundation for the island’s wall that encircles the harbour basin. Ceramic fragments collected from the site have been dated to the beginning of the early Iron Age. (References in Carayon 2008).

3.4 Romano-Byzantine harbour dredging Ancient authors mention harbour dredging,37 although direct archaeological evidence has, until now, remained elusive. The ancient harbours of Marseille and Naples have both undergone widespread excavations,38 and multidisciplinary datasets now exist for numerous sites including Lechaion-Corinth,39 Tyre and Sidon40 or Naples.41 On decadal timescales, continued silting induced a shortening of the water column. De-silting infrastructure, such as vaulted moles and channels, partially attenuated the problem, but in the long term these appear to have been relatively ineffective. In light of this, repeated dredging was the only means of maintaining a practicable draught depth and ensuring long-term harbour viability. At Marseille, although dredging phases are recorded from the third century BC onwards, the most extensive enterprises were undertaken during the first century AD, at which time huge tracts of Greek sediment were extracted. Three dredging boats have been unearthed. The vessels were abandoned at the bottom of the harbour during the first and second centuries AD. They are characterised by an open central well that is inferred to have accommodated the dredging arm.42 At the excavations of Naples, the absence of pre-fourth-century BC layers has been linked to extensive dredging between

37 38 39 40 41 42

Tacitus, Annals 16.23.1; cf Strabo 14.1.24. Morhange and Marriner 2010. Morhange et al. 2012. Marriner and Morhange 2006. Amato et al. 2009; Carsana et al. 2009. Pomey 1995.

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Fig. 3.3: Submerged Roman harbor of Portus Julius near Pozzuoli, Italy. One marker of the majesty of ancient Rome is its surviving architectural legacy, the remains of which are scattered throughout the Mediterranean landscape. Surprisingly, one remarkable aspect of this heritage remains relatively unknown. Beneath the waters of the Mediterranean lie the remnants of a vast maritime infrastructure that sustained and connected the Roman empire and its economy. The key to this incredible accomplishment and to the survival of structures in a hostile marine environment was hydraulic concrete. This building material was discovered by the Romans and employed to construct harbour installations wherever needed, rather than only in locations with advantageous geography. The discovery of hydraulic concrete during the early Roman period marked a technological revolution in coastal engineering. (Photo courtesy of the Centre Jean Bérard, Naples).

the fourth and second centuries BC.43 Unprecedented traces 165–80 cm wide and 30–50 cm deep attest to powerful dredging technology that scoured into the volcanic substratum, reshaping the harbour bottom.44 Notwithstanding scouring of the harbour bottoms, this newly created space was rapidly infilled and necessitated regular intervention due to sedimentation rates up to ten times superior to those in a natural environment.

43 44

Carsana et al. 2009. Boetto 2010.

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Fig. 3.4: Late medieval dredging of a harbour. (Woodcut from Olaus Magnus 1555, 420).

4. Geoarchaeological study of harbour basins In tandem with the development of rescue archaeology, particularly in urban contexts, the study of sedimentary archives has grown into a flourishing branch of archaeological inquiry.45 This growing corpus of sites and data demonstrates that ancient harbours constitute rich archives of both the cultural and environmental pasts. Ancient harbour sediments are particularly rich in archaeological remains, bioindicators and macro-remains yielding insights into the history of human occupation at a given site, coastal changes and the natural processes and hazards that have impacted these waterfronts.46 Ancient harbours are both natural and constructed landscapes and, from a geoarchaeological perspective, comprise three elements of note. 4.1 The harbour basin In architectural terms, the harbour basin is characterised by its artificial structures, such as quays and moles.47 Since the Bronze Age, there has been a great diversity in harbour infrastructure in coastal areas, reflecting changing technologies and human needs. These include, for instance, natural pocket beaches serving as proto-harbours, the first Phoenician mole attributed to around 900 BC and the offshore Roman constructions made possible by the discovery of hydraulic concrete.48

45 46 47 48

Walsh 2004. Morhange and Marriner 2010b. Oleson 1988. Oleson et al. 2004.

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Fig. 3.5: Evidence of ancient harbour dredging in Piazza Municipio, Naples. The coastal landscape of the port of Neapolis has been precisely elucidated after 10 years of archaeological excavations and geoarchaeological investigations. The Graeco-Roman harbour has been located in a large cove lying between Municipio square and Bovio square. The excavations revealed several levels of the sandy sea floor of the harbour, which was in use from the late fourth century BC to the fifth century AD. The photograph shows traces of dredging of Hellenistic sediment and volcanic tufa in the Piazza Municipio excavation, line 1. The red line corresponds to the upper surface of dredging scars. Hellenistic sediments filled the dredging depressions. (Photo courtesy of the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli). 4.2 Ancient harbour sediments Shifts in the granularity of ancient harbour sediments translate the degree of harbour protection, often characterised by a rapid accumulation of sediments following a sharp fall in water competence brought about by artificial harbourworks. The harbour facies is characterised by three poorly-sorted fractions: (1) human waste products, especially at the base of quays and in areas of unloading (harbour depositional contexts are particularly conducive to the preservation of perishable artefacts such as leather and wood); (2) poorly-sorted sand; and (3) an important fraction (> 90 %) of silt that translates the sheltered environmental conditions of the harbour. These areas are characterised by rapid accumulation rates of 10– 20 mm per annum. High-resolution study of the sediments can help shed light on the nature

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of ancient harbour works, such as those at Tyre49 or Portus.50 Recent research has sought to characterise these chronostratigraphic phases using the unique sedimentary signature that each technology brings about. Changes in sediment supply at the watershed scale are particularly important in understanding base-level changes in deltaic contexts, as in Cyprus51 or the palaeo-island of Piraeus.52 4.3 Relative sea-level changes versus draught depth Nowadays, most ancient harbours are completely infilled with sediments. Within this context, it is possible to identify and date former sea-level positions using biological indicators fixed to quays, that, when compared with the marine bottom, allow the height of the palaeowater column to be estimated.53 Such relative sea-level data are critical in understanding the history of sedimentary accretion in addition to estimating the draught depth for ancient ships.54 These two reference levels, the palaeo-sea level and sediment bottom, are mobile as a function of crustal movements (e. g., local-scale neotectonics, regional isostasy, sediment budgets) and human impacts such as dumping and dredging. All these factors can potentially impact upon the available accommodation space for sediment accretion. One of the key problems posed by artificially-protected harbours relates to accelerated sediment trapping. In the most acute instances it could rapidly reduce the draught depths necessary for accommodating large ships. From an economic perspective, harbours were important, and many changes in basin location can be explained functionally by the need to maintain an interface with the sea in the face of rapid sedimentation. The best example of this coastal relocation derives from Aegean Anatolia (present-day Turkey) where Brückner et al.55 have reconstructed a progradation of several tens of kilometres in a number of ancient rias such as the Meander.

5. Ancient harbour location During the past twenty years, multidisciplinary geoscience inquiry has allowed a better understanding of where, when and how ancient Mediterranean harbours evolved. This is set within the wider context of the utilisation of new palaeo-environmental proxies. A battery of research tools is available that broadly draw on (1) geomorphology and (2) the sediment archives located within this complex. The geography of ancient harbours constitutes a dual investigation that probes both the location and the extension of the basins. Biostratigraphical studies of sediments, married with GIS investigation, can be used to reconstruct coastal evolution and identify possible anchorage areas. Urban contexts are particularly problematic for accurate archaeological studies because the urban fabric can hide many of the most important landscape features. 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

Marriner et al. 2008. Goiran et al. 2010. Devillers 2008. Goiran et al. 2011b. Laborel and Laborel-Deguen 1994; Morhange et al. 2006. Morhange et al. 2001; Goiran et al. 2009; Boetto 2010. Brückner et al. 2005.

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W Fig. 3.6: Deltaic progradation of the Acheloos delta. Ancient Oiniadai lies at the base of the Trikardo palaeo-island in the centre of the Acheloos River delta (NW Greece) at a distance of 9 km from the present coastline. Its ancient shipsheds testify to a former connection with the Ionian Sea. Sedimentological, geochemical and faunal analyses of sediment samples from numerous cores were carried out in order to decipher the progradation of the delta in a context of sea-level stabilization since c. 6000 years BP. Based on sedimentary and archaeological evidence, it was found that during Classical and Hellenistic to Roman times – when the shipsheds were in use – the northern harbour experienced continuous water inflow from the Acheloos River and communicated with the sea via a lagoon. Sedimentary evidence suggests that the island never had a seafront harbour. Trikardo, throughout the millennia, represented an excellent terrestrial outpost on a low-lying coast, well protected by the lagoon and marshy areas and, at the same time, providing rapid access to the sea. (After Vött 2007; Vött et al. 2007). In such instances, chronostratigraphy can be particularly useful in reconstructing coastal changes. This approach helps not only in reconstructing ancient shorelines through time but can also aid in locating ports for which no conspicuous archaeological evidence presently exists, as in the case of Cuma56 or Byblos.57 Geophysical techniques, such as electrical tomography and georadar, can provide a great multiplicity of mapping possibilities, notably in areas where it is difficult to draw clear parallels between the archaeology and certain landscape features. Because geophysical techniques are non-destructive, they have been widely employed in archaeology, and are gaining importance in coastal geoarchaeology58 and ancient harbour contexts.59 Reliable information can be provided on the location, depth and nature of buried archaeological features before excavation.

6. Ancient harbour stratigraphy The aim of geoarchaeological harbour studies is to write a ‘sedimentary’ history of human coastal impacts, using geoscience tools. Research attests to considerable repetition in ancient harbour stratigraphy, both in terms of the facies observed and their temporal envelopes. There are three distinct facies of note: (1) middle-energy beach sands at the base of each unit (i. e. the pre-harbour phase); (2) low-energy silts and gravels (i. e. the active harbour phase); and (3) coarsening beach sands or terrestrial sediments which cap the sequences (i. e. the post-harbour facies). In the broadest terms, this stratigraphic pattern translates a shift from natural coastal environments to anthropogenically-modified contexts, before a partial or complete abandonment of the harbour.60 The ancient harbour facies corresponds to the active harbour unit. This artificialisation is translated in the sedimentary record by lower energy sediments consistent with a barring of the anchorage by artificial means. Harbour infrastructure accentuates the sediment sink properties by attenuating marine energy (swell and waves) leading to a sharp fall in water 56 57 58 59 60

Stefaniuk and Morhange 2009. Stefaniuk et al. 2005. Hesse 2000. E. g., Keay et al. (eds) 2005 for Portus. Marriner and Morhange 2006.

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competence. Research has demonstrated that this unit is by no means homogeneous, with harbour infrastructure and the nature of sediment sources playing key roles in shaping facies architecture. Of note is the grain-size paradox of this unit: fine-grained silts juxtaposed with coarse gravels made-up of ceramics and other urban waste. During the Early Iron Age, improvements in harbour engineering are recorded by increasingly fine-grained facies. Plastic clays tend to be the rule for Roman harbours and sedimentation rates 10–20 times greater than naturally prograding coastlines are recorded. The very well protected Roman harbours of Alexandria, Marseille61 and Fréjus62 all comprise plastic marine muds consisting of more than 90 % organic silts. Significant increases in sedimentation rates can also be attributed to human-induced increases in the supply term including, for example, anthropogenic changes in the catchments of supplying rivers due to deforestation and agriculture practices, erosion of adobe constructions and, finally, use of the basins as ad hoc waste dumps. This underlines the importance of an explicit source-tosink study integrating both the coastal area and the upland hinterland.

7. Coastal hazards Human societies in coastal zones are arguably the populations most prone to the danger of natural hazards and need to devise strategies to live with them. Not only are coastal populations confronted with the major geological problems of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, but such hazards are compounded by the interface situation. Tsunamis and storms are an obvious link between geological hazards and the sea, but slower connections are also encountered, for example post-glacial sea-level rise. Slow, crustal changes along coasts are also significant, and from the Neolithic period onwards, human activities have become a notable forcing factor. Here, we draw on current topical examples to focus on two types of coastal hazard: sea-level rise and coastal deformation linked to base-level sediment inputs.63 7.1 Slow post-glacial sea-level rise Since 18,000 years BP a relative sea-level rise of about 120 m has drowned significant areas of Palaeolithic archaeology beneath the sea.64 Until relatively recent times, human societies in coastal regions were totally at the mercy of sea-level rise. Only relatively late in history, essentially beginning with the Roman era, did societies acquire the engineering skills to deal with these problems. Many coastal Palaeolithic sites may therefore be drowned offshore, awaiting investigation by underwater archaeologists. The sea-level change has been too slow to constitute a hazard in the true meaning of the word, but, in any case, no technology was yet available to protect against the inexorable rise of the sea. Since c. 7,000 years BP, relative sea-level changes have been characterised by a pronounced deceleration linked to the end of glacio-eustatic forcing agents. After 7,000 years BP, local adjustments are mostly attributed to crustal factors (i. e. isostasy and tectonics) and in the case of the Mediterranean coast, relative sea-level changes of less than 61 62 63 64

Morhange et al. 2003. Gébara and Morhange 2010; Bony et al. 2011. Morhange and Marriner 2010b. Masters and Flemming (eds) 1983.

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10 m are observed.65 Within this context, coastal environments provide excellent sea-level archives due to a precise biological zonation of marine species living just above or below mean sea level and given the density of archaeological coastal remains such as harbours and drowned urban areas.66 A methodology refined by Laborel and Laborel-Deguen67 has been successfully applied to numerous excavations, including those of the ancient harbours of Marseille,68 Pozzuoli69 and Fréjus.70 Where precise vertical relationships can be established between archaeological structures and biological indices it has been possible to reconstruct accurately relative sea-level trends since antiquity at a number of Mediterranean sites.71 The strength of such results lies in the precision of biological palaeo-zonation with the chronological accuracy of well-dated archaeological remains. In so-called ‘stable’ areas, sea-level rise has averaged less than 1 mm a year during the last 2,000 years – hardly a hazard to the human population. Evidently, higher sea levels increase the risk of flooding during storms. A consequence of moderate sea-level rise was the gradual infilling of base-level depocentres such as lagoons, river mouths and coastal marshlands. During the Bronze Age, for example, the Levantine coastline was characterised by an indented morphology, where lagoons and estuaries were exploited as natural harbours. Limited accommodation space and high clastic inputs quickly infilled this indented morphology to yield a linear coastline. Bronze Age sites gradually became isolated from the sea, and human populations, unable to offset the rapid rates of sedimentation, were displaced to new locations on the rapidly prograding coasts. 7.2 Rapid sea-level rise The effects of rapid sea-level rise may be illustrated by Alexandria, Egypt, where the late Roman harbour is submerged around 6 m below the present sea level.72 To the west of the city, in Aboukir Bay, this offset is even more pronounced at c. 8 m relative to present level.73 The mechanisms responsible for the collapse of the western margin of the Nile delta are at present unclear, but appear to comprise fault tectonics, sediment compaction, offshore diapirism and slope instability of the prodelta. Research has also highlighted the role of instantaneous sea-level changes causing harbour destruction during severe storm and tsunami events. For example, major excavation works in the Byzantine port of Theodosius (Yenikapı, Istanbul) have elucidated a scenario of catastrophic seaport destruction during the sixth century AD, attributed to the earthquake of AD 553 and the possible tsunami associated with that event.74 Similar high-energy impacts have been described for the ancient harbour of Caesarea in Israel.75 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

Pirazzoli 1976; Flemming and Webb 1986. Blackman 1982a; 1982b. Laborel and Laborel-Deguen 1994. Pirazzoli and Thommeret 1973; Morhange et al. 2001. Morhange et al. 2006. Devillers et al. 2007; Morhange et al. 2013. See references in Моrhange and Marriner 2010b. Goiran et al. 2005; Stanley and Bernasconi 2006. Stanley et al. 2001; 2004. Bony et al. 2012. Reinhardt et al. 1999; 2006.

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A review of the literature written during the past 30 years shows a shift away from the myth of drowned cities (e. g., Spyridon Marinatos for the lost harbour of Helike on the Corinthian Gulf) to a more modern paradigm of rapid sediment accretion driving coastal progradation and the landlocking of ancient harbours. 7.3 Hypersedimentation and coastal changes From 6,000 years BP, Mediterranean coasts attest to exceptional coastal progradation linked to a deceleration of global glacio-eustasy at all spatial scales.76 This phenomenon explains significant coastal changes to which ancient societies constantly had to adapt. The Bronze Age harbour of Gaza, for example, is currently landlocked due to sediment inputs from the Nile that have been reworked by the eastern Mediterranean gyre. This sweeps westward across the prodelta area before being deviated north towards the Levantine coast.77 In a wave-dominated situation, sedimentary infilling has led to a change in the coastal geomorphology from an indented coastline to a rectilinear clastic coast. The effect on the pattern of human settlement has been a gradual dislocation of ancient settlements to keep pace with coastal progradation. Research in the lower Argens (Fréjus, Var, France) has elucidated about 10 km of coastal progradation during the last 6,000 years.78 In a similar vein, the Pedheios-Gialias ria (Cyprus) has undergone some 20 km of coastal progradation since the Neolithic. Ancient harbour palaeo-geography in this vast palaeo-bay attests to the gradual seaward displacement of settlements in order to keep pace with the rapid sedimentation and shoreline progradation.79 Hypersedimentation of coastal areas, therefore, clearly engendered problems of access to the sea and hence the long-term viability of harbours. Many good examples are known from the Ionian coast of Turkey, an area where human-environment interactions have a long history of research.80 This geomorphological evolution is particularly true of settlements located in rias, the best examples deriving from the Ionian coast of Turkey.81 For example, the watersheds of Miletus, Troy, Priene and Ephesus correspond to narrow grabens, with limited accommodation space. Harbour displacement was linked to rapid shoreline progradation. Such high rates of harbour infilling were detrimental to the medium- to long-term viability of harbour basins. The discovery of hydraulic concrete during the early Roman period marked a technological revolution in coastal engineering. Natural roadsteads were no longer a prerequisite for seaport construction and completely artificial harbour basins could be built offshore in high-energy environments, an enterprise which was difficult during the Iron Age.

8. Human impacts Human societies and the natural environment have long been considered independently of each other rather than as a co-evolution in which they are complimentary. Recent work 76 77 78 79 80 81

Stanley and Warne 1994. Morhange et al. 2005. Dubar 2003. Devillers 2008. Kraft et al. 1977; 1980; 2003; 2007. Brückner 1997; Brückner et al. 2002.

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demonstrates that coastal sediments can be used to reconstruct the history of humans and their interactions with the environment since prehistory. The presence and impact of societies can be reconstructed using a number of proxies, as outlined below. a.

Granulometric impacts: the construction of harbour works is recorded in the stratigraphic record by a unique fine-grained sedimentary facies. This lithoclastic signature facilitates a delimitation of the ancient basin topography. b. Biological pollution: modification in faunal assemblages record local anthropogenic impacts such as increases in turbidity and use of the basin as a waste depocentre over many thousands of years. c. Geochemical impacts: lead (Pb) has proved to be a powerful tool in elucidating ancient industrial activities. Within this context, it has been demonstrated that ancient harbours are particularly rich archives of palaeo-pollution. At Alexandria in Egypt, for example, lead isotope analyses have been used to elucidate the pre-Hellenistic occupation of the site.82 The Graeco-Roman apogee of the city is attested by lead pollution levels twice as high as those measured in contemporary ports and estuaries. Similar patterns have also been reconstructed in harbour sediments from Marseille83 and Sidon.84

9. Conclusion Today, it is recognised that harbours should be studied within broader regional frameworks using a multidisciplinary methodology. The diversity of contexts investigated has brought to light some striking patterns. Numerous processes are important in explaining how these have come to be preserved in the geological record including the distance from the present coastline, position relative to present sea level and geomorphology. Some of the main advances made during the past twenty years include: (1) the precise characterisation of harbour facies in coastal contexts, using a variety of sedimentological, geochemical and palaeo-ecological proxies; (2) the characterisation and intensity of human impacts in coastal areas; and (3) the scope to derive high-resolution relative sea-level data. Christophe Morhange Aix Marseille University, IUF, CEREGE-CNRS UMR 7330 Europole de l’Arbois, F-13550 Aix-en-Provence [email protected] Nick Marriner Laboratoire Chrono-Environnement, UMR 6249 CNRS Université de Franche-Comté, UFR ST, F-25030 Besançon nick.marriner @univ-fcomte.fr Nicolas Carayon CNRS UMR 5140 Archéologie des sociétés méditerranéennes 390 avenue de Pérols, F-34970 Lattes-Montpellier [email protected] 82 83 84

Véron et al. 2006. Le Roux et al. 2005. Le Roux et al. 2002; 2003.

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10. References 10.1 Primary sources Tacitus, Annals 13–16, with an English translation by J. Jackson (LCL 322). Cambridge MA 1937. Olaus Magnus, Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, earumque diuersis statibus, conditionibus, moribus, ritibus, superstitionibus. Rome 1555.

10.2 Secondary literature Amato, L., C. Guastaferro, A. Cinque et al. 2009. ‘Ricostruzioni morfoevolutive nel territorio di Napoli’, Méditerranée 112, 23–31. Anthony, E. J., N. Marriner and C. Morhange 2014. ‘Human influence and the changing geomorphology of Mediterranean deltas and coasts over the last 6000 years: from progradation to destruction phase?’, Earth Science Reviews 139, 336–61. Arnaud, P. 2005. Les routes de la navigation antique: Itinéraires en Méditerranée. Paris. Bard, K. A. and R. Fattovich 2010. ‘Recent excavations at the ancient harbor of Saww (Mersa/Wadi Gawasis) on the Red Sea’ in S. H. D’Auria (ed.), Offerings to the Discerning Eye: An Egyptological Medley in Honor of Jack A. Josephson (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 38). Boston, 33–8. Basch, L. 1987. Le musée imaginaire de la marine antique. Athens. Blackman, D. J. 1982a. ‘Ancient harbours in the Mediterranean, part 1’, IJNA 11, 79–104. Blackman, D. J. 1982b. ‘Ancient harbours in the Mediterranean, part 2’, IJNA 11, 185–211. Boetto, G. 2010. ‘Le port vu de la mer’, Bollettino di Archeologia on line B/B7/9, 112–28. Boetto, G. 2012. ‘Les épaves comme sources pour l’étude de la navigation et des routes commerciales: une approche méthodologique’ in S. Keay (ed.), Rome, Portus and the Mediterranean (Archaeological Monographs of the British School at Rome 21). Rome, 153–73. Bony, G., N. Marriner, C. Morhange et al. 2012. ‘A high-energy deposit in the Byzantine harbour of Yenikapı, Istanbul (Turkey)’, Quaternary International 266, 117–30. Bony, G., C. Morhange, H. Bruneton et al. 2011. ‘2000 ans de colmatage du port antique de Fréjus (Forum Julii), France: une double métamorphose littorale’, Comptes rendus Geoscience 343, 701–15. Braidwood, R. J. 1940. ‘Report on two sondages on the coast of Syria, south of Tartous’, Syria. Archéologie, Art et historie 21, 183–226. Brandon, C., R. L. Hohlfelder, J. P. Oleson et al. 2010. ‘Geology, materials, and the design of the Roman harbour of Soli-Pompeiopolis, Turkey: the ROMACONS field campaign of August 2009’, IJNA 39, 390–9. Brandon, C., R. L. Hohlfelder, M. D. Jackson et al. 2014. Building for Eternity: The History and Technology of Roman Concrete Engineering in the Sea. Oxford. Brückner, H. 1997. ‘Coastal changes in western Turkey; rapid progradation in historical times’ in F. Briand and A. Maldonado (eds), Transformations and Evolution of the Mediterranean Coastline (Bulletin de l’Institut Océanographique 18). Monaco, 63–74. Brückner, H., M. Müllenhoff, M. Handl et al. 2002. ‘Holocene landscape evolution of the Büyük Menderes alluvial plain in the environs of Myous and Priene (western Anatolia, Turkey)’, Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie supplementary volume 127, 47–65. Brückner, H., M. Müllenhoff, K. van der Borg et al. 2004. ‘Holocene coastal evolution of western Anatolia. The interplay between natural factors and human impact’ in Human Records of Recent Geological Evolution in the Mediterranean Basin: Santorini (Greece), 22–25 October 2003 (CIESM Workshop Monographs 24). Monaco, 51–6. Brückner, H., A. Vött, M. Schriever et al. 2005. ‘Holocene delta progradation in the eastern Mediterranean – case studies in their historical context’, Méditerranée 104, 95–106. Carayon, N. 2005. ‘Le cothon ou port artificiel creusé. Essai de définition’, Méditerranée 104, 5–13.

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Kraft, J. C., S. E. Aschenbrenner and G. Rapp Jr 1977. ‘Paleogeographic reconstructions of coastal Aegean archaeological sites’, Science 195, 941–7. Kraft, J. C., I. Kayan and O. Erol 1980. ‘Geomorphic reconstructions in the environs of ancient Troy’, Science 209, 776–82. Kraft, J. C., H. Brückner, I. Kayan et al. 2007. ‘The geographies of ancient Ephesus and the Artemision in Anatolia’, Geoarchaeology 22, 121–49. Kraft, J. C., G. R. Rapp, I. Kayan et al. 2003. ‘Harbor areas at ancient Troy: sedimentology and geomorphology complement Homer’s Iliad’, Geology 31, 163–6. Laborel, J. and F. Laborel-Deguen 1994. ‘Biological indicators of relative sea-level variations and co-seismic displacements in the Mediterranean region’, Journal of Coastal Research 10, 395–415. Lehmann-Hartleben, K. 1923. Die Antiken Hafenanlagen des Mittelmeeres. Leipzig. Le Roux, G., A. Véron and C. Morhange 2002. ‘Caractérisation géochimique de l’anthropisation dans le port antique de Sidon’, Archaeology and History in Lebanon 15, 37–41. Le Roux, G., A. Véron and C. Morhange 2003. ‘Geochemical evidences of early anthropogenic activity in harbour sediments from Sidon’, Archaeology and History in Lebanon 18, 115–9. Le Roux, G., A. Véron and C. Morhange 2005. ‘Lead pollution in the ancient harbours of Marseille’, Méditerranée 104, 31–5. Liuzza, V., 2014. Ricostruzione paleogeografica e paleoambiantale della citta’ di Napoli: un’ indagine geoarcheologica, Ph.D. thesis, University of Naples Federico II. Marriner, N. 2009a. Géoarchéologie des ports antiques du Liban (Milieux naturels et sociétés). Paris. Marriner, N. 2009b. Geoarchaeology of Lebanon’s Ancient Harbours (BAR International Series 1953). Oxford. Marriner, N. and C. Morhange 2006. ‘The “ancient harbour parasequence”: anthropogenic forcing of the stratigraphic highstand record’, Sedimentary Geology 186, 13–7. Marriner, N. and C. Morhange 2007. ‘Geoscience of ancient Mediterranean harbours’, Earth-Science Reviews 80.3–4, 137–94. Marriner, N., C. Morhange and C. Doumet-Serhal 2006. ‘Geoarchaeology of Sidon’s ancient harbours, Phoenicia’, Journal of Archaeological Science 33, 1514–35. Marriner, N., C. Morhange and N. Carayon 2008. ‘Ancient Tyre and its harbours: 5000 years of human-environment interactions’, Journal of Archaeological Science 35, 1281–310. Masters, P. M. and N. C. Flemming (eds) 1983. Quaternary Coastlines and Marine Archaeology: Towards the Prehistory of Land Bridges and Continental Shelves. London. Morhange, C. and N. Marriner 2010a. ‘Mind the (stratigraphic) gap: Roman dredging in ancient Mediterranean harbours’, Bollettino di Archeologia on line B/B7/4, 23–32. Morhange, C. and N. Marriner 2010b. ‘Palaeo-hazards in the coastal Mediterranean: a geoarchaeological approach’ in I. P. Martini and W. Chesworth (eds), Landscapes and Societies: Selected Cases. Dordrecht, 322–34. Morhange, C., J. Laborel and A. Hesnard 2001. ‘Changes of relative sea level during the past 5000 years in the ancient harbor of Marseilles, southern France’, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 166, 319–29. Morhange, C., F. Blanc, S. Schmitt-Mercury et al. 2003. ‘Stratigraphy of the late-Holocene deposits of the ancient harbor of Marseilles, southern France’, The Holocene 13, 593–604. Morhange, C., M. Hamdan Taha, J.-B. Humbert et al. 2005. ‘Human settlement and coastal change in Gaza since the Bronze Age’, Méditerranée 104, 75–8. Morhange C., N. Marriner, J. Laborel et al. 2006. ‘Rapid sea-level movements and noneruptive crustal deformations in the Phlegrean Fields caldera, Italy’, Geology 34, 93–6. Morhange, C., P. A. Pirazzoli, N. Evelpidou et al. 2012. ‘Late Holocene tectonic uplift and the silting up of Lechaion, the western harbor of ancient Corinth, Greece’, Geoarchaeology 27, 278–83. Morhange, C., N. Marriner, P. Excoffon et al. 2013. ‘Relative sea level changes during Roman times in the northwest Mediterranean: the 1st century AD fish tank of Forum Julii, Fréjus, France’, Geoarchaeology 28, 363–72.

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Oleson, J. P. 1988. ‘The technology of Roman harbours’, IJNA 17, 147–57. Oleson, J. P., C. Brandon, S. M. Cramer et al. 2004. ‘The ROMACONS Project: a contribution to the historical and engineering analysis of hydraulic concrete in Roman maritime structures’, IJNA 33, 199–229. Oleson, J. P., C. J. Brandon, R. L. Hohlfelder and M. D. Jackson 2014. Building for Eternity: The History and Technology of Roman Concrete Engineering in the Sea. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Pâris, J. 1915. ‘Contributions à l’étude des ports antiques du monde grec: note sur Léchaion’, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 39, 5–16. Pâris, J. 1916. ‘Contributions à l’étude des ports antiques du monde grec II: Les établissements maritimes de Délos’, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 40, 5–73. Pirazzoli, P. 1976. ‘Sea level variations in the northwest Mediterranean during Roman times’, Science 194, 519–21. Pirazzoli, P. and J. Thommeret 1973. ‘Une donnée nouvelle sur le niveau marin à Marseille à l’époque romaine’ Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences 277 D, 2125–8. Poidebard, A. 1939. Un grand port disparu, Tyr: Recherches aériennes et sous-marines, 1934–1936. Paris. Poidebard, A. and J. Lauffray 1951. Sidon, aménagements antiques du port de Saïda: Étude aérienne au sol et sous-marine 1946–1950. Beirut. Pomey, P. 1995. ‘Les épaves grecques et romaines de la place Jules-Verne à Marseille’, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres 139.2, 459–84. Raban, A. 1985. ‘The ancient harbours of Israel in biblical times (from the Neolithic period to the end of the Iron Age)’ in A. Raban (ed.) 11–44. Raban, A. (ed.) 1985. Harbour Archaeology: Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Ancient Mediterranean Harbours, Caesarea Maritima, 24–28.6.83 (BAR International Series 257). Oxford. Raban, A. 1995. ‘The heritage of ancient harbour engineering in Cyprus and the Levant’ in V. Karageorghis (ed.), Cyprus and the Sea. Proceedings of the International Symposium, Nicosia 25– 26/10/1993. Nicosia, 139–90. Raban, A. and K. G. Holum (eds) 1996. Caesarea Maritima: A Retrospective after Two Millennia (Documenta et monumenta orientis antiqui 21). Leiden. Raban, A., M. Artzy, B. Goodman et al. 2009. The Harbour of Sebastos (Caesarea Maritima) in its Roman Mediterranean Context (BAR International Series 1930). Oxford. Reinhardt, E. G. and A. Raban 1999. ‘Destruction of Herod the Great’s harbor Caesarea Maritima, Israel, geoarchaeological evidence’, Geology 27, 811–14. Reinhardt, E. G., R. T. Patterson, J. Blenkinsop et al. 1998. ‘Paleoenvironmental evolution of the inner basin of the ancient harbor at Caesarea Maritima, Israel; foraminiferal and Sr isotopic evidence’, Revue de Paléobiologie 17, 1–21. Reinhardt, E. G., B. E. Goodman, J. I. Boyce et al. 2006. ‘The tsunami of December 13, 115 AD and the destruction of Herod the Great’s harbor at Caesarea Maritima, Israel’, Geology 34, 1061–4. Sanchez, C., S. Mauné and G. Duperron 2013. ‘Narbonne. Un très grand port antique’, Archeologia 509, 30–9. Shaw, T., P. Sinclair, B. Andah et al. 1993. The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns (One World Archaeology 20). London. Stanley, D. J. and M. P. Bernasconi 2006. ‘Holocene depositional patterns and evolution in Alexandria’s eastern harbor, Egypt’, Journal of Coastal Research 22, 283–97. Stanley, D. J. and A. G. Warne 1994. ‘Worldwide initiation of holocene marine deltas by deceleration of sea-level rise’, Science 265, 228–31 Stanley, D. J., F. Goddio and G. Schnepp 2001. ‘Nile flooding sank two ancient cities’, Nature 412, 293–4. Stanley, D. J., F. Goddio, T. F. Jorstad et al. 2004. ‘Submergence of ancient Greek cities off Egypt’s Nile delta – a cautionary tale’, The Geological Society of America Today 14, 4–10. Stefaniuk, L. and C. Morhange 2009. ‘Evoluzione dei paesaggi littorali nella depressione sud-ovest di Cuma da 4000 anni, il problema del porto antico’ in A. Alessio and M. Lombardo (eds), Cuma:

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Status beyond law: ownership, access and the ancient Mediterranean

1. Introduction The debates about the status of the sea and its resources in antiquity are some of the longest standing in all of western scholarship. Most of this scholarship has focused on questions of ownership and access as treated by Roman law. These issues were addressed already by the medieval glossators but achieved particular prominence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, during the great political and theoretical disputes over whether the sea should properly be considered free (mare liberum) or subject to territorial claims (mare clausum).1 Such debates continued in subsequent centuries, eventually multiplying across the technical literatures of numerous academic disciplines. In recent decades, as a result not only of traditional research on Roman legal theory and practice, but also of a better understanding of fiscal and regulatory regimes, and increased attention given to historical questions in a wider Mediterranean context, a consensus has begun to emerge about the status of the sea and its resources in Greek and Roman antiquity.2 In short, the sea and its resources were never generally subject to ownership but widely considered to be free or held in common. In the Classical and Hellenistic periods this status was less the product of law than customary practice and institutions having a limited regulatory reach. These traditional notions about the sea and its usage were widely shared in the ancient Mediterranean and eventually accommodated and codified by Roman law. Nevertheless, the history of the status of the sea and its usage in antiquity is not static, and the political authority of the Roman Empire and accompanying social and economic changes had real effects on the way its inhabitants conceived of the Mediterranean and its resources.

1 2

The bibliography on this subject is vast, see, e. g., Gordon 2009; also the recent, brief discussion in Fiorentini 2003: 12–9. See, e. g., most recently, Fernández Nieto 2006; Purpura 2008; Lytle 2012a; Marzano 2013: 235–67. Secure evidence is scarce for earlier periods and states: Egyptian evidence, e. g., concerns only the status of inland waters, while Phoenician data is insufficient to provide a clear understanding.

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2. The sea in ancient Greece 2.1 The common sea By the Classical period, traditional notions of the sea as a dangerous, ungoverned wilderness offered a stark contrast to the legal status of civic chora with its carefully delineated and perpetually contested borders. The reality that the sea was beyond direct territorial control with a shared usage gave rise to the concept that it was koine, generally free or held in common. This notion is reflected in a range of Classical and Hellenistic texts. Take, for example, a fourth-century BC fragment of Antiphanes in which two individuals complain in exaggerated tones that other wealthy epicures are buying up all the fish before it arrives in the market.3 Direct political control of the islands is contrasted with the inability of the state to control similarly the surrounding sea and its produce. The comically exaggerated accusation that certain individuals are somehow ‘buying up the sea’ (tês men thalattês antipoieisthai) relies upon the fact that the sea is not usually subject to ownership. It is, together with its fish, koine, normally subject to no regulation whatsoever, hence the suggestion that some novel law be contrived so that the fish market might enjoy the benefits of Athenian power. A fragment attributed to the third-century BC comic poet Phoenicides of Megara is more explicit: ‘the sea may be common to all (tên men thalassan koinên einai), but its fish belong to those who pay for them’.4 The line is intended to single out diners at a club meal who have not paid their tab on the pretext that ‘the sea is common to all’. Phoenicides’ character points out the distinction between the commonality of the resource and the legal status of the catch. Such disputes about the status of the sea and things found or captured in it constituted a regular comedic topos. The potential ambiguity exploited by Phoenicides – if usage is shared why not also the catch? – occurs again in a scene in Plautus’ Rudens (The Rope). Although written at Rome in the late third century BC, the scene in question is thematically central to the play and likely featured already in its Greek model.5 The dispute concerns a chest that the fisherman Gripus claims as his own, having pulled it from ‘a sea that is common to all’ (975: mare quidem commune certost omnibus). Trachalio latches onto the concept of the commonality of the sea to suggest that this should equally entitle him to the prize, but Gripus carefully details the distinction between common usage and a fisherman’s right of capture (978–81).6 Not surprisingly, this customary status of the sea as something koinon is also attested in political contexts. So, for example, in encouraging the Athenians to accept the terms offered by the Lacedaemonians in 392/1 BC, Andocides stresses that the Lacedaemonians are willing to leave the cities of their enemies free and the sea in common (tên thalattan koinên).7 In the 340s, Aeschines decries the actions of Chares’ generals in piratically seizing ships 3 4 5 6

7

Antiphanes, fragment 188 (Kassel and Austin, PCG). Phoenicides, fragment 5 (Kassel and Austin, PCG), quoted by Athenaeus 8.345e. Konstan 1983: 74–81. The prologue to the Rudens tells us only that its model is a play by Diphilus (fourth or early third century BC). Unfortunately for Gripus, his catch is not a fish but a chest, the original owner of which Trachalio can identify. In such cases the law became more complex: see Marx 1928: 181. Such cases are better attested in Roman law and the preponderance of evidence concerns shipwrecks, on which see Rougé 1966; Vélissaropoulos 1980: 156–65. Andocides, On the Peace 19.

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from the common sea (ek tês koinês thalattês).8 Chares’ plundering of peaceable shipping, we should note, is not condemned as violating any international law but rather a moral convention that was widely – but not, Thucydides reminds us, universally – shared. From the understanding that the sea’s enjoyment was common to all there developed the idea that there might exist a common right to sail and work it securely. This notion certainly existed already in the fourth century BC. The desire to clear the sea of pirates and so establish the security of the seas constituted one plank in the foreign policy of Philip II and subsequently of Alexander.9 Isocrates characterises this attempt to establish security of the seas not as an innovation but rather as a kind of return to normalcy.10 The Macedonians likely found a model for their rhetoric already in the policies and propaganda of the Athenian Empire, which sometimes linked its activities to the noble cause of defeating piracy.11 This ideology endures into the Hellenistic and later Roman periods.12 It is too cynical to dismiss this ideology of the security of the sea simply as convenient political propaganda. It also reflects a world of poleis increasingly interconnected by maritime trade and accordingly concerned with ensuring the security of international exchange.13 But concerted efforts to combat piracy, and the complex networks of laws, treaties and commercial contracts that developed during the Classical and Hellenistic periods, can hardly be confused with the modern legal concept of mare liberum, or the Freedom of the Seas, which relies on legal theories and a body of international law that find little precedent in the ancient Mediterranean. In important respects, modern maritime law assumes principles that are antithetical to those widely shared in Greek law, such as the right of reprisal. As demonstrated most forcefully by Johannes Hasebroek, the doctrine of mare liberum is ‘a product of modern times, elaborated after weary battles of politicians and theorists’.14 2.2 Territorial waters No less foreign to the world of the Greek poleis is the modern legal concept of territorial waters, which evolved only after, and partly in response to, the notion of mare liberum.15 8 9

10 11

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13 14 15

Aeschines, On the False Embassy 71. Demosthenes dismisses Philip’s policy as propaganda (7.14–5). Alexander included in his treaty with the Corinthian League language intended to guarantee that all parties would be free to sail the sea unhindered (Demosthenes 17.19). Isocrates, On the Peace 20. Even if neither Plutarch’s Cimon 8 (anti-piratical propaganda and Cimon’s campaign against Scyros) nor Pericles 17 (Pericles’ Hellenic congress and the freedom of the sea) are reliable, during the Peloponnesian Wars Athens did include in its treaties clauses aimed at piracy: see IG I3 67 (treaty between Athens and Mytilene); IG I3 75 (treaty between Athens and Halieis). Combating piracy and protecting the security of the sea was the chief justification for the Rhodians’ protection scheme. Byzantium’s attempt c. 220 BC to levy a toll on the use of the Bosphorus resulted in Rhodian intervention on similar grounds: see Polybius 3.2.3; 4.47–52; Austin 2006: 213 n. 3; Bresson 2008: 88. See, e. g., Bresson 2008: 72–97. Hasebroek 1928: 126. See, e. g., Imbart-Latour 1889; Fenn 1926b; Oudendijk 1970. Even by the end of the nineteenth century territorial waters had yet to be universally defined or recognised. Van Bijnkershoek’s socalled ‘cannon-shot rule’, elaborated in his De Dominio Maris (1702), granted states exclusive rights to a three-nautical-mile width of coastal sea, roughly the range of eighteenth-century cannons. This

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While acknowledging that the legal concept of territorial waters is not applicable to antiquity, scholars nevertheless sometimes suggest that there existed de facto territorial waters. It has, for example, been argued that there existed already in the Archaic period a notion of ‘protected maritime zones’ and that by the Classical period there existed a practical concept of territorial waters subject to regulatory control and treated like other civic territory.16 Even such limited claims are overstated. Greeks would have recognised a primitive notion of maritime jurisdiction, described by legal historians as nearly universal: states have the right to try to exclude the navies of foreign states from those waters along their own coasts. Such is acknowledged by ancient treaties in which parties agree to allow peaceable shipping along their own coasts or to refrain from sailing warships along the coasts or otherwise plundering the shipping of other parties or their allies.17 When naval power was sufficient, a state like Athens might attempt to prevent other states from manning triremes altogether. At its greatest extent, that power or jurisdiction became, in the ancient Greek conception of the term, a thalassokratia.18 But even with such exceptional cases of maritime power as Classical Athens, thalassocracy in no way implied any appropriation of the sea itself, nor its resources.19 It is hardly surprising, then, that there is no ancient Greek term for territorial sea, nor is the concept anywhere elaborated in our sources. Aside from the major naval powers, the evidence for even a primitive notion of jurisdiction over coastal waters is decidedly scarce. In only a single instance is a treaty stipulation worded in a fashion that could be taken to imply a concept of territorial waters; in a treaty from Hellenistic Crete, the city of Praesus grants that the neighbouring community of Stalae shall retain ‘its land, city, sea and islands’’20 The wording suggests that Praesus might have attempted to deprive Stalae of ‘the sea’; but, as is made more explicit in a number of other cases, this likely refers merely to the right to maintain and sail warships and to conduct maritime trade, or even to collect customs duties.21 Even if taken to refer to a specific body of water, there is no reason to suspect that Stalai’s jurisdiction included the notion of legal ownership, and nothing suggests that its boundaries were, like other civic territory, carefully defined. There is, in fact, no evidence anywhere for carefully delineated maritime boundaries.22 It has been argued that a sixth-century BC law from Eretria includes geographic references in-

16 17 18 19 20 21

22

principle arrived relatively late to many parts of the Mediterranean and a number of nations still do not formally acknowledge the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Vélissaropoulos 1980: 136–40; Bresson 2007: 190. See, e. g., Thucydides 4.118.5. A number of Athenian inscriptions include clauses concerning the rights of various parties to navigate freely: see, e. g., IG I3 61.18–20; IG I3 63; IG I3 116.3. Momigliano 1944. Fenn 1925: 718 ‘A claim of jurisdiction did not and could not involve a claim to ownership’. Chaniotis no. 64.A.18–9 (Dittenberger, Sylloge3 524; ICret III.6 7). E. g., a Hellenistic treaty between Rhodes and Hierapytna (Dittenberger, Sylloge3 581) confirms the latter’s rights to ‘proceeds from the sea’ (line 68), which Austin (2006: 216 n.7) takes to refer to ‘custom or harbour dues’. The closest analogies are clauses in the allegedly fifth-century BC Peace of Callias, intended to prevent Persian ships from sailing in the Aegean (Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 73; Demosthenes 19.273) and in the fourth-century BC treaties between Rome and Carthage (Polybius 3.24.3–13). Hasebroek (1928: 126–27) is surely right to describe these not as delimiting territorial waters but merely ‘two spheres of influence’.

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tended to delimit a maritime zone.23 But the geographic indications are limited to the names of two obvious landmarks that roughly correspond to the northern and southern limits of the Straits of Euboea.24 This text seems to specify only that sailors venturing beyond these points will be entitled to higher pay.25 It assumes neither the existence of territorial waters nor the ability to police them. The language in this Eretrian law finds an interesting parallel in a fourth-century BC Thasian decree precluding Thasian merchant vessels from importing foreign wine ‘within Mount Athos and Pachaea’.26 It has been argued that the Thasians would have actively policed these regulations within a clearly delimited maritime zone.27 But the Thasians appear to be requiring their merchants to export only Thasian wine to harbours on the southern coast of Thrace lying between two easily recognisable landmarks, while the provisions given in the inscription imagine only enforcement by private suit or, alternately, a process of public enforcement initiated by an informant.28 2.3 Harbours Harbour regulations like those attested at Thasos find parallels in numerous other Greek poleis. Most often such evidence concerns the collection of customs duties or regulations on import, export or sale, but there also existed access and usage fees.29 Clearly harbours were often considered subject to territorial control and closely supervised. Indeed they frequently defined the outer limits of civic regulatory reach. For example, in a fifth-century BC treaty between Oiantheia and Chaleion it is specified that the rights and procedures agreed to in the treaty will be protected and enforced within the territories of either polis, which are explicitly defined to include harbours and to exclude the sea.30 In the fourth century BC the author of the oration Against Theocrines recognises the same distinction at Athens. Addressing his fellow citizens he concludes: ‘As to what happens at sea, I reckon you are not responsible … but as to what happens in the Piraeus and before the magistrates, you are, for you have control of all this’.31 The contrast is deliberately drawn: security at sea is a function of military force and international alliances, but within the harbour, security can and should be guarded by law. Of course, the ancient definition of a harbour could itself be ambiguous.32 There is no expectation that a harbour necessarily required infrastructure. Any bay suitable for sheltering and beaching or offloading vessels could suffice. And not all such harbours would have

23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Vélissaropoulos 1980: 138; Walker 2004: 192–6. IG XII.9 1273–4 = SEG 41.725; Vanderpool and Wallace 1964; Cairns 1991. Vanderpool and Wallace 1964: 391 (sailors’ pay); Cairns 1991: 311 (specifically payment for naval service). Cairns’s proposal finds an analogy in an inscription from Hellenistic Crete (Chaniotis no. 64.B.10–22), sometimes misinterpreted as evidence for territorial waters. IG XII Suppl. 347. See, e. g., Vélissaropoulos 1980: 138–9; Brunet 1997: 239–40. Lytle 2012a: 15–6. See, e. g., Purcell 2005: 217–8; Bresson 2007: 92–8; 2008: 98–133; Lytle 2007a: 108–9. IG IX.12 717.A.3–4. On this clause, see, e. g., Austin and Vidal-Naquet 1977: 247 n. 4. [Demosthenes] 58.55. Cf. Lowe, this volume.

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been subject to supervision, which would have imposed an impossible regulatory burden on cities with long coastlines and limited resources.33 2.4 Coastal lagoons and the Little Sea Harbours, then, were potentially subject to regulatory control and as such were acknowledged to have a status distinct from that of the sea. The same is just as obviously true of inland waters, which were subject to ownership, whether by individuals, associations, cities or gods.34 Potentially more problematic is the status of coastal marshes and brackish lagoons. These comprised valuable economic resources, affording seasonal pasturage and fisheries that were sometimes richer than those found in adjacent coastal zones.35 Especially important, too, were those lagoons that were suitable for salt production, whether in their natural state or improved through the construction and maintenance of evaporation ponds. The evidence is scattered and sometimes difficult, but nevertheless sufficient to show that such lagoons were subject to a range of different kinds of ownership and fiscal and regulatory regimes.36 Regulation of such environments seems to have on occasion required special officials such as the ‘overseer of the marshlands’ (heleoreôn) attested for Peproioi in the late fifth or perhaps early fourth century BC.37 Like harbours, these bodies of water comprised marginal cases that in essence defined the outer limits of civic control. That basic reality is sufficient to explain one anomalous case frequently invoked as clear evidence for the direct control of territorial sea. A fourth-century BC Iasian decree honours the brothers Gorgos and Minnion in part for persuading Alexander the Great to return the ‘Little Sea’ (tês mikrês thalassês) to the city.38 Early scholars assumed that the Little Sea refers to the gulf shared by both Iasos and Bargylia and extending for roughly 10 km to the southwest.39 This would comprise a considerable marine chora, but scholars are now in agreement that the Little Sea refers rather to a lagoon in the marshy plain that forms the delta of the Sarı Çay.40 However extensive this lagoon may have been during the Hellenistic period (its name suggests it was a good deal larger than most such lagoons), it communicated with the sea only by a very narrow channel, rendering it an ‘almost completely landlocked nub of water.’41 It has been proposed 33

34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Descriptions of smuggling suggest that unregulated harbours were not uncommon: see, e. g., Chariton 1.11.4–2.1.9 with Bresson 2008: 99. On the absence of regulatory control in the region of the southern Argolid known as ‘the wild harbours’, see Lytle 2012a: 30. See Lytle 2012a: 8 nn. 17–9. The potential diversity of arrangements by which states, temples or individuals might limit access to or otherwise attempt to regulate fishing in lakes, rivers or ponds is also suggested by the papyri from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. This evidence is collected and examined in detail by Chouliara-Raïos 2003 and briefly summarised by Purpura 2008: 543–4. See, e. g., Traina 1988; Fantasia 1999; Horden and Purcell 2000: 186–90. For the evidence and detailed discussion, see Carusi 2008. IK 1.17. IK 28.30; Dittenberger, Sylloge3 307; Heisserer 1980: 171–9; Rhodes and Osborne no. 90; Lytle 2012a: 16–9. See, e. g., the commentary to Hicks no. 132. See the comments of Robert and Robert at BE 1973, no. 419; followed by, most recently, Reger 2010: 44; Bresson 2010: 450–1. Reger 2010: 44.

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that Gorgos and Minnion helped Iasos wrest control of this territory back from the city of Mylasa, located further to the east.42 For that otherwise landlocked polis, control of the Little Sea offered not only access to rich natural resources but also a harbour and access to the sea.43 Subject to territorial control like many other coastal lagoons or harbours, the Little Sea falls well short of suggesting that Greek poleis routinely laid claim to territorial waters. Indeed the limits of Iasian regulatory control are vividly attested by another roughly contemporaneous decree honouring a foreigner for making arrangements to combat piracy in Iasian coastal waters.44 Those measures reflect a struggle for basic maritime jurisdiction that argues strongly against the idea that Iasos could have ever plausibly claimed legal ownership of even de facto territorial waters.

3. The limits of regulatory reach 3.1 Marine resources and fishing rights The very question of ownership of the sea presumes the existence of valuable, finite marine resources. In the 21st century, disputes about ownership of the sea or its floor are increasingly related to the exploitation of oil, gas and mineral deposits. But historically, fishing constituted the most important marine economic activity, and disputes about rights to exploit marine fisheries, especially the rich fishing grounds of the North Atlantic, played a primary role in the evolution of modern maritime law.45 Scholars have frequently retrojected that history onto antiquity, presuming that exclusive access to marine fisheries was likewise of concern to ancient Mediterranean states. But the ecological, technological and institutional differences are profound, and there is little reason to expect to find similar disputes in antiquity. Ecologically, the Mediterranean offers no analogies for the fisheries of the North Atlantic. Technologically too, the differences are stark. Modern factory trawlers can process and preserve catches on board and transport them to markets on the other side of the globe. Nations necessarily attempt to limit within their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) the activity of foreign vessels that plunder resources while contributing nothing to local economies. By contrast, marine fisheries in the ancient Mediterranean were the focus of artisanal industries targeting a diverse range of seafood, usually within a short sail of the coast, with catches predominantly sold fresh in local markets. Only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries do we begin to find abundant evidence for concerns about encroachment by foreign fishing operations in Mediterranean coastal waters.46 In antiquity, when seasonal catches of schooling species exceeded local demand for fresh fish, the excess would have had to be salted or otherwise preserved on shore within a short distance of the fishing grounds. 42 43

44 45 46

For the likely role of Mylasa in this dispute, see Reger 2010: 44–9. Marine fishing was certainly important to the Iasian economy (Strabo 14.2.21), but there is little reason to treat the return of the Little Sea chiefly or exclusively in terms of fishing rights (compare, e. g., Bresson 2010: 451). IK 28.34.3–5. See, e. g., Imbart-Latour 1889; Fenn 1926b. These concerns often focus on operations employing technologies unattested in antiquity, such as large trawl nets driven by multiple boats under sail or steam; see, e. g., Apostolides 1883: 86; Faber 1883: 118; Dévedjian 1926: 319.

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So, too, where large-scale fisheries existed, these were generally conducted and controlled from fixed points on the coast.47 Ownership or regulation of such fisheries required no concept of ownership of the sea, and was easily governed by customary practice and terrestrial law, as will be discussed below (pp. 117–9). There exists no explicit evidence for ancient disputes over marine fishing rights. We have no civic decrees granting fishing rights to foreigners or special privileges to citizens, and no civic officials entrusted with policing territorial waters and regulating marine fisheries.48 Given the evidence for analogous economic activities like pastoralism, this silence is remarkable, but easily explained by the simple hypothesis that marine fisheries were unregulated. That hypothesis finds positive support in literary sources that associate a fisherman’s right of capture with a sea whose usage is enjoyed in common. Plato addresses such fishing rights explicitly in his Laws, which stipulate that ‘a fisherman shall be permitted to fish in all waters except harbours and sacred rivers, marshes and lakes’.49 Although this Platonic principle is sometimes dismissed as merely a convenient philosophical construct, contradicted by our ancient evidence for quotidian practice, the evidence suggests otherwise.50 Plato acknowledges that even in an ideal polis the right of free and open access for fishermen cannot simply be extended to include all inland waters, harbours, marshes and lagoons. Such distinctions were a feature too of the early modern Mediterranean. So, for example, even as recently as the 1920s, the Greek Inspector of Fishing broadly distinguished the fishing under his supervision into two categories: fishing in closed waters (‘pêche en eaux closes’) and fishing that was ‘free’ (‘pêche libre’). The former included primarily lagoons and inland waters, the latter virtually all marine fishing, which was customarily open access and likely to defy any attempts at regulation by the state.51 3.2 Marine fishermen, social status and the corrupting sea The legal distinction between marine and inland fisheries is paralleled by evidence attesting the distinct social status of marine fishermen. This too, it seems, is a feature of the Mediterranean longue durée.52 Depicted as driven by poverty to seek an insecure livelihood in a hostile environment, marine fishermen often lived and worked along remote coves and isolated headlands, regions conceived of as eschatiai, or ‘margins’, home especially to deities like Pan.53 If these spaces, which seem to have been freely inhabited and exploited, were considered liminal, the sea itself was a wilderness, lying well beyond all reach of law.54 Oppian’s 47 48 49 50 51 52

53 54

Cf. García Vargas, this volume. The evidence for pasturage offers a stark contrast; see Chandezon 2003. Plato, Laws 7.824b-c. See, e. g., Dumont 1977; addressed in detail by Purpura 2008; Lytle 2012a. Athanassopoulos 1923: 107–8. Anthropologists and ethnographers have frequently noted the distinctions between not only marine and inland fisheries but also the statuses of their respective fishermen; see, e. g., Parain 1936: 56–9, describing fishermen in Mediterranean coastal lagoons as ‘plus terrien que marin’. See, e. g., Radcliffe 1926: 116–40 (ancient portraits of fishermen); Borgeaud 1988: 60, 65, 214 n. 154 (Pan and fishermen); Buxton 1994: 97–104 (the sea and shore in myth); Lytle 2012a: 36–49. See, e. g., Theocritus, Idyll 21; Alciphron 1.10 (Alciphron was a Second Sophistic author writing in the second century AD but relying heavily on source material from Classical Athens; see Anderson 1997: 2190–3).

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poem On Fishing (second century AD) offers a vivid portrait of the fisherman crossing into the wilderness and suffering considerable hardships at great personal risk.55 Nowhere does Oppian suggest that his hero is constrained as to where or how he practices his trade. He risks a realm where, in contrast to the well-ordered empire of his addressees, Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, laws hold no sway.56 Like the poem’s subject matter – it is, after all, a poem that treats exclusively marine fishing – this portrait reflects a deeply-rooted categorical distinction. The third-century BC author Heracleides Criticus includes in his description of Anthedon the emphatic claim that the city’s inhabitants, nearly all fishermen, neither farm nor even own land, instead living in makeshift huts on the shore.57 These fishermen claim descent from the apotheosised fisherman Glaucus,58 who, half-fish and only at home in the sea, is a symbol of obvious resonance for a whole class conceived of as living and working outside the carefully circumscribed limits of more agrarian polis society. This dichotomy features in other ancient sources that characterise marine fishermen as ‘entirely ignorant of the agora’ and ‘as unlike the residents of cities and villages as the sea is foreign to the land’.59 However stereotyped, such portraits reflect basic realities. Fishermen were not farmers turning to part-time subsistence methods, but specialists. The diversity of marine fisheries found in Mediterranean coastal waters required mastery of a host of methods and a wealth of specialised knowledge concerning not only the habits and habitats of various species and the technologies required to capture them but also regarding related skills like navigation and the fabrication or maintenance of a wide array of equipment. All these activities relied in turn on knowledge of webs of relationships whereby catches could be sold, raw materials bought or bartered and specialised or manual labour sourced. As suggested by a range of anthropological research, these ancient fishermen would have together comprised distinct and closely-knit communities oriented strongly towards the sea.60 That orientation necessarily involved fishermen in a larger ancient ideology of the corrupting sea. Marine fishermen were unusually mobile, as illustrated, for example, by a passage in Dio Chrysostom’s seventh or ‘Euboean’ oration in which the author claims to have been shipwrecked in the ‘hollows of Euboea’ while attempting to cross over from Chios in a fishing vessel.61 For Dio, only reaching a polis can offer any hope of salvation, but for the fishermen, this landscape is their natural habitat, full of opportunity, where their legal status is largely irrelevant. They simply take up fishing for murex.62 Such accounts, and the mobility and freedom that they imply, help explain too the common identification between fishermen and very real refugees. For those without a polis and its privileges, including legal status, remote beaches offered the possibility of a kind of mar55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62

Oppian, On Fishing 1.9–55. Oppian, On Fishing 2.664–88. Heracleides Criticus 1.23–4. Glaucus was a popular sea-god whose myths are well attested in the literary sources. In some versions, Glaucus was a fisherman whose apotheosis and metamorphosis into a sea creature occurred at Anthedon. Alciphron 1.14 and 1.4, respectively. Acheson 1981; McGoodwin 2001; Mylona 2008: 67–9. Dio Chrysostom, Orations 7.2–3. For similar cases of mobility, characteristic of Mediterranean fishermen more generally (Horden and Purcell 2000: 192–4), see, e. g., Alciphron 1.2; 1.14; 1.20.

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ginal livelihood.63 The same is true more generally of a whole range of maritime trades, and marine fishermen were often associated with a larger class of thalattourgoi, or ‘men who work the sea’, a term sometimes used specifically of fishermen but also as easily of sailors engaged in maritime trade.64 Piracy too must be counted among such economic activities, and fishermen and pirates were frequently associated.65 In the ideology of the corrupting sea piracy is considered especially morally reprehensible, but all maritime trades are practised beyond the reach of, and often constructed as antithetical to, the law. Traditional concerns about the agricultural strength and virtue of the citizenry being somehow diluted by the ‘motley and base customs’ natural to such men as one finds in harbours are widely attested.66 The inclinations of the ‘seafaring mob’ are towards a lawlessness that ultimately reflects the status of the sea itself.67 One can only hope to confine and police it within the carefully circumscribed space of the harbour. 3.3 Harbours, duties and the sea There is little evidence, then, for state ownership of marine chorai or even claims to marine fishing rights. On the contrary, maritime tradesmen comprised a distinct class oriented towards a sea that was beyond the regulatory reach of the polis. Furthermore, it was widely understood that there existed a right of capture, with fishermen legally owning their catch and able to dispose of it as they saw fit. They might consume it, barter it or even give it away.68 Often, it seems, they were free to sell their catch directly to individual consumers.69 Those rights, however, in no way guaranteed free access to the marketplace. That fact is sufficient to explain the evidence that scholars have sometimes interpreted as taxes, fees or monopolies on marine fishing rights. This evidence can be better interpreted as pertaining to simple duties assessed on marketed catches.70 This is suggested both by the terms in which the duties are often described, for example as tithes on fish rather than as taxes on fishing rights or even on fishermen, as well as by the fact that these duties are occasionally named together with standard customs duties. For example, in the Hellenistic period tithes 63

64 65

66

67 68 69 70

See, e. g., Plutarch, Sulla 26.3–4 (refugees from Locrian Halae turned fishermen); Herodotus 7.137; Ephorus FGrHist 70 F56; Strabo 8.6.10 (Halieis [‘The Fishermen’] founded by refugees from Tiryns). See, e. g., Heracleides Criticus 1.23–4, noting that while nearly all Anthedonians are fishermen, many also work as shipwrights or as ferrymen; more generally, Lytle 2012a: 43–5. A close theoretical association between fishing and piracy is suggested by Aristotle’s discussion of livelihoods (Politics 1.1256a-b; with Shaw 1982–3: 17–20); see also, e. g., Alciphron 1.8 (fisherman contemplates turning to piracy) or Achilles Tatius 2.17 (pirates recruited from among ‘piratical fishermen’); and, in more detail, Gabrielsen 2001 (piracy as economic activity); Lytle 2012a: 45–7 (fishing and piracy). For the customs of seafarers, see Plato, Laws 4.704d (êthê kai poikila kai phaula hexein toiautê physei genomenê). The Athenian Stranger famously characterises the mere existence of a port as potentially fatal to the health of the polis, even at a distance of 80 stades. See, more generally, Momigliano 1944; Bourriot 1972; Vélissaropoulos 1980: 45–58; Lytle 2012a: 44–9. On the ‘seafaring mob’ (ton nautikon ochlon): Aristotle, Politics 7.1327b. See, e. g., Herodotus 3.42 or Alciphron 1.6 (gifting); 1.7 (bartering); 1.1 (consuming). See, e. g., Alciphron 1.9. Lytle 2007a; 2007b; 2012a: 19–24; Purpura 2008: 536–7.

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on fish, dekatai ichthyôn, are attested at Delos together with the regular 2 % customs duty and at Cretan Stalae together with both the regular customs duties and a duty on murex.71 It seems probable too that a tax attested at Hellenistic Delos, conventionally interpreted as a tax on murex fishing, was simply a duty on the delivery and sale of the captured murex, analogous to other duties on fish and murex, including the 5 % duty on fresh murex recorded in the Roman customs law of Asia.72 This evidence is hardly unexpected, arising where the sea and its largely unregulated fisheries met the carefully regulated spaces of ancient harbours. Here, not only were catches offloaded and typically, it seems, taxed, but fishermen might also be subject to additional fees.73 It was certainly within the power of Greek poleis to close their harbours to foreign vessels altogether, but that seems not usually to have been the case.74 To the contrary, our literary portraits suggest that marine fishermen felt very little in the way of constraints as to where and how they practised their trade, while the catches of foreign fishermen would have contributed both to supply in local markets and to the treasury via dues and fees paid in the harbour. 3.4 Lookouts and large-scale fisheries A final class of evidence bears more directly on the question of state ownership of fishing rights. This evidence concerns specific coastal fisheries, where fishing was usually conducted on a comparatively large scale, and, as reflected in the terms attested for them (thynneia, palamydeia, kêteiai), they targeted specific species. The key features of such fisheries are well known: the habits of bluefin tuna and other species such as bonito, bluefish and various mackerel resulted in their seasonal presence in sizeable schools in the shallow waters of certain Mediterranean bays and inlets and along the coasts of the Black Sea, the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. This ecology made profitable the deployment of technologies that ranged from simple beach seines to massive encircling nets deployed by multiple boats.75 Such fishing was usu71

72 73

74

75

Delos: IG XI.2 287.9–10. Stalai: Dittenberger, Sylloge3 524.4–8 (ICret III.6 7; Chaniotis no. 64). Also in the fourth century BC a 20 % duty on fish is attested at Colophon (Meritt 1935: 372–7, line 31; also Wilhelm 1939: 352–65); a similar 20 % duty, but not certainly on fish, is attested at Calymna (Dittenberger, Sylloge3 953.61; Segre 1944–45 no. 79.B.9). A Hellenistic sacred law from Myconus mentions revenues from an unspecified ‘duty on fish’ (Dittenberger, Sylloge3 1024.10: apo tou telous tôn ichth[y]ôn). Lytle 2007b. See, e. g., a sacred law from Cos specifying that the owners of fishing and short-haul merchant vessels based in the city’s harbour pay five drachmas annually to the Sanctuary of Aphrodite Pandamos and Pontia (SEG 50.766.27–9; Lytle 2007a: 108–9). Xenophon, Hellenica 5.1.23 can be interpreted as suggesting fishermen from islands in the Saronic Gulf regularly sold their catches in Piraeus. A similar phenomenon – fishermen from Eleusis selling their catches in Piraeus – is more certainly attested in a letter of Hadrian to Athens (IG II2 1103; Lytle 2007a). Scholars have argued that fixed tuna traps, madragues (French) or tonnare (Italian), were not known in the ancient Mediterranean: see, e. g., Gallant 1985: 21; Purpura 2007: 2167–73; 2008: 549–51; García Vargas and Florido del Corral 2010: 207–13; García Vargas, this volume, p. 266. Indeed it is certain that their use only spread to parts of the western Mediterranean as late as the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but some evidence suggests that, in specific regions,

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ally conducted in concert with highly-skilled observers, manning built or natural lookouts on shore.76 Some of these operations seasonally employed more than 70 individuals, with the capture, processing and subsequent trade in preserved fish and fish sauces contributing substantially to local and regional economies.77 Certain of the ancient terms for these fisheries, such as thynneion, might describe the fishing technology itself or, collectively, the fishery together with its lookouts and accompanying installations on shore.78 This reflects an import fact: due to ecology, technology and customary legal practice, these fisheries were tied directly to specific points on the coast often subject to private or public ownership, inviting civic regulation. In stark contrast to other marine fisheries, these fisheries have left a considerable documentary trail and it is such evidence that is most often cited in support of notions of ancient territprial waters or state ‘monopolies’ on marine fishing rights. Properly contextualised, however, the data suggest the opposite.79 The particular legal statuses of such fisheries clearly existed independent of legal claims on marine fisheries or the sea more generally. The evidence can be very briefly surveyed. A Hellenistic sacred law from Cos mentions ‘those having purchased the contract for a public lookout’.80 Clearly, there were on Cos publicly-owned lookouts, the leasing of which included the rights to deploy fishing operations in the adjacent water. But a second clause in the same inscription indicates that there also existed on Cos privately-held lookouts (lines 18–20). The polis did not exercise a monopoly even on tuna fisheries, let alone on marine fisheries more generally. Inevitably, some lookouts, or thynneia, were the property of gods.81 A fragment of Crates’ work on Athenian festivals attests the existence of a thynneion at the Attic deme of Halae Aixonides, the revenues from which the city allocated for a festival to Apollo.82 And a fifth-century BC inscription from near Halicarnassus records sales of properties seized after the owners defaulted on temple loans. Among those listed is a property that included both ‘the land … and the sea where the orkyneion is’.83 This orkyneion, the local term for thynneion, had fallen into the hands of the temple after its owner defaulted on his loan.84 Although commentators worry about the precise nature of the ‘the sea’ in question, the word-

76 77 78

79 80 81

82 83 84

fixed traps were in limited use already by the second century AD (see especially Oppian, On Fishing 3.640–8; Shepherd 2003). See, e. g., Aristotle, History of Animals 537a19; Plutarch Moralia 298c (Greek Questions); Aelian, NA 15.5; Philostratus, Imagines 1.13. See Aelian, NA 15.5; also IK 25.5–6, with Robert and Robert 1950a; Purcell 1995: 146–7; Fernández Nieto 2002: 239–47; García Vargas and Florido del Corral 2010: 207–13. Strabo, for instance, suggests (12.3.11) that the pelamydeia at Sinope were a wondrous sight to behold and comparable to other installations such as shipyards; Aelian notes that on Sicily the tuna fisheries required special warehouses (NA 13.16). Lytle 2012a: 24–36. Dittenberger, Sylloge3 1000.10: toi agoraxantes tan ônan skopas damosias. On the clauses concerning lookouts, see Vreeken 1953: 70–3; Lytle 2012a: 25–6. This is perhaps true also at Cos, where ‘the other lookout … the one at Nautileon’ (Dittenberger, Sylloge3 1000.11) seems to be distinct from lookouts both public and private. I suspect the lookout at Nautileion may have been sacred property leased by a temple (for earlier views, see especially Robert and Robert 1950b: 96 n. 2; Vreeken 1953: 73). Crates FGrHist 362 F2 ap. Photius, s. v. Kynneios; the Suda, s. v. Kynêeios (http://www.stoa.org/sol/). Dittenberger, Sylloge3 46.42–4: gên … kai tê[n] / thalassan hopou to orkyneion. See Thompson 1947: 185–6, s. v. orkynos; Archestratus, fragment 35 notes the word was used by

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ing is intended merely to specify that the purchase of this piece of land, with its lookout and any accompanying installations, included the attendant rights to deploy an associated fishing operation in adjacent waters. Customary practice usually required no such attempt at legal clarification, but it is not surprising in the context of a transfer of title as recorded here. Rather than suggesting that city-states routinely laid claim to territorial waters and the fishing rights therein, this inscription actually demonstrates one of the mechanisms whereby the rights to a large-scale fishery might pass from the private to the sacred domain and vice versa, without implying any concept of territorial waters or legal claims thereto. Indeed a polis might own the rights to individual lookouts even in the absence of any wider territorial control.85 And in certain cases the legal status of such fisheries might be even more complicated still. A Hellenistic arbitration from the southern Argolid attests a dispute involving Troezen and Arsinoë, its neighbour to the north across the narrow isthmus separating the Methana peninsula from the mainland.86 A key clause specifies that various parties suffering damages are to be compensated ‘from the common proceeds from the thynneia’.87 An earlier agreement provided for a coastal region to be held in common and this territory encompassed salt-works, quarries and other valuable resources including thynneia.88 Concessions to exploit these resources were leased, giving rise to shared proceeds. There is no evidence to suggest that any ancient polis ever associated the public lease of such fisheries with a claim to territorial waters or the state ownership of marine fishing rights more generally. Scholars have argued that the logic that such a claim would entail is only attested much later with the development of legal theories of territorial waters.89 3.5 A Byzantine monopoly and the Novels of Leo VI The unique problems posed by lookouts and associated fisheries are sufficient to explain a piece of evidence often seen as problematic and sometimes taken as proof of state monopolies on marine fishing rights. A passage in the pseudo-Aristotelian Oeconomica seemingly suggests that the city of Byzantium had during the Classical period, or perhaps even as early as the sixth century BC, laid general claim to marine fishing rights.90 Although corrupt, the passage does indeed appear to suggest the city appropriated ‘marine fishing’ (tês thalattês tên halieian).91 But ecological and historical contexts at Byzantium are sufficient to explain how pseudo-Aristotle’s shorthand could conflate the region’s coastal thynneia with marine fishing more generally. The seasonal passage of vast quantities of schooling fish through the narrows of the Bosphorus and the Hellespont made large-scale

85 86 87 88 89 90 91

fishermen around Samos to describe the tuna that others called kêtos. A similar usage survived into modern Greek (Apostolides 1883: 19; Economidis 1972–3: 526). Strabo (11.2.4) reports that the city of Clazomenae owned lookouts (skopai) on the western shore of the strait of Kerch (the Cimmerian Bosphorus). IG IV2.1 76–7 (Epidaurus); IG IV 752 (Troezen); Ager no. 138; Carusi 2005. Lines 43–4 (restored based on IG IV 752 with line numbers following Ager no. 138): apo tan koinan pothodôn tan ek tôn thynneiôn. On these fisheries, see Lytle 2012a: 27–30. Robert 1960: 159 n. 2. See, e. g., Fenn 1926a; 1926b: 468. Pseudo-Aristotle, Oeconomica 1346b20; Van Groningen 1933: 61. On the text, see Van Groningen 1933: 55.

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fisheries especially productive in that region, and ancient, medieval and early modern evidence agree in suggesting that they would have been deployed in unusually large numbers.92 There is good reason to reject the notion of an absolute monopoly on marine fishing rights at Byzantium. Whereas in many other Greek poleis, such as Cos, lookouts remained subject to a range of legal statuses, the Oeconomica is best interpreted as suggesting that Byzantium took the sweeping action of transferring them all to the public domain, with the revenues from their subsequent lease now accruing to the state.93 This system seems to have prevailed well into the Roman period.94 But there is no reason to believe that all marine fishing, let alone the sea more generally, was ever subject to state ownership at Byzantium during antiquity. It is precisely the coexistence of large-scale coastal fisheries, subject to ownership, together with openly and freely accessible marine fishing that gives rise in the Byzantine period to peculiar regulations in the Novels of Leo VI (AD 886–912). These decrees include ordinances intended to clarify the legal status of, and regulations concerning, trap nets (epochai).95 The sites associated with such traps were no longer always in the public domain and individual trap nets were often privately owned or in the hands of powerful institutions including churches, monasteries and associations. Leo considers it absurd that Justinianic law would guarantee that other fishermen have unimpeded access to the shoreline and usage rights at sea, thereby potentially infringing on the rights of trap owners.96 By making the coastline and seafloor encompassed by such traps subject to private ownership, Leo’s solution is to ‘happily sacrifice the legal notion of public domain and res communis in the name of property rights’.97

92

93

94

95 96

97

Dedications attest the existence of lookouts and large-scale fishing operations at two different locations at Parium during the Roman period (IK 25.5–6, with bibliography given above). At least one of these locations was leased from the state, and a similar dedication from Cyzicus suggests parallel circumstances there during the late Hellenistic period (Robert and Robert 1950b: 94–7; IMT 1539). For context and later periods, see, e. g., Dévedjian 1926: especially 396–434, for a catalogue of sites in the Turkish straits and the Sea of Marmara; Robert 1955: 272–4; Dumont 1976–7; Dagron 1995; Lytle 2012a: 31–4. See already Höppener 1931: 153, approved by Van Groningen 1933: 55. See too Carusi 2008: 179–80 and 188–9, for the suggestion that another measure mentioned in the same passage concerns not a monopoly on salt production but a tax on the salt that would have been imported in large volumes for preserving the catches of such fisheries. Strabo (7.6.2) suggests the Byzantines continued to derive considerable income from these fisheries while some of this revenue also made its way to Rome, probably as the result of being factored into communal liability (Brunt 1981: 168–9). Novels 56–7; 102–4; Dagron 1994: 43–50; 1995: 61–73; Purpura 2007: 2170–2; 2008: 550–1; García Vargas and Florido del Corral 2010: 214–5; Lytle 2012a: 33–4. A number of commentators have followed Leo (Novel 57) in assuming that such traps were therefore unknown to Justinian (see, e. g., Purpura 2008: 550). But that logic is unnecessary and ignores the importance of customary practice, or consuetudines, in Roman law (Dagron 1995). Dagron 1994: 48.

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4. The Roman Mediterranean 4.1 The sea in Roman law Leo’s seemingly radical revision of Justinianic law bears directly on the question of the status of the sea and its resources in Roman legal theory and practice.98 This is an issue that has long attracted scholarly attention, with various debates continuously renewed and seemingly multiplied in every modern scholarly language. Most such debates treat individual passages of the jurists or particular developments in Roman law, or the perceived contradictions between legal theory and independent data. Fortunately, the particular concerns of most such scholarship need not concern us here, and increased scholarly attention in recent decades to questions ranging from the social construction of law to Roman fiscal regimes to the analysis of specific epigraphic texts allows us to arrive at relatively certain conclusions about the status of the sea and its resources in Roman law, even if inevitably a number of thorny problems remain. For our purposes, it is enough to show that Roman legal theory as elaborated by the jurists was not invented in a vacuum but acknowledged and attempted to codify centuries of customary practice regarding the status of the sea and its resources. The evidence preserved in the Corpus iuris civilis is for the most part unproblematic.99 By ius naturale or ius gentium, certain things, including the air and the sea, are conceived of as res nullius, subject to the ownership of no one. By the same right, their use is considered common to all, communia omnium.100 Consequently, no one can be prohibited from fishing in the sea.101 The status of the sea is conceived of as extending to the shore that meets it, at least as far as the point reached by the highest tide. Fishermen could therefore not be prohibited from fishing from the shore, and the law is sometimes imagined to protect not only privileges of use and access but also even the right to build shelters on the beach.102 The jurists also treat the status of marine resources and the fisherman’s right of capture. Fish are, together with birds and wild beasts, considered res nullius, the property of no one, but susceptible to ownership by virtue of being captured.103 The same applies to most things found in the ocean or washed up on the beach.104 While our earliest juristic evidence for these principles is no earlier than the second century AD, the basic conception of the sea as a common resource owned by no one, but its fish subject to ownership upon capture, is, as we have seen, far more ancient and reflects widely shared Mediterranean custom. Gaius acknowledges as much when he speaks of the dichotomy between ius gentium and ius civile: the latter corresponds to the law of our own particular nation, or iure proprio civitatis nostrae, whereas the former is more ancient and

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See most recently Purpura 2008 and Marzano 2013: 235–67, both with bibliography. The evidence is collected and discussed already by Grotius in the seventeenth century, and in countless subsequent studies; for recent discussions, see, e. g., Ørsted 1998; Fiorentini 2003; Purpura 2008. Dig. 1.8.2.1; and, for the extent of the shore, Dig. 50.16.96; Dig. 50.16.112; Justinian, Institutes 2.1.1– 7. Dig. 47.10.13.7. Dig. 1.8.5. Dig. 41.1.1–3. Dig. 41.2.1; Dig. 1.8.3; with, again, the notable exception of shipwrecks; see, e. g., Dig. 47.9.1–12.

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arose with the human race, antiquius ius gentium cum ipso genere humano proditum est. It is, he adds, by this most ancient right that fish become the property of those who catch them.105 That tidy picture ignores, of course, many of the nuances attested already in our Greek sources. So, for example, a distinction is maintained between the sea and inland waters – although even here fishing rights were often in common and navigation rights protected – and similarly between the sea and harbours or coastal lagoons.106 The resources and activities conducted in the latter, including fishing, aquaculture and especially salt production, were often subject to lease and regulation.107 There also exists continued evidence for established practice in those provincial cities and regions that now fell under the jurisdiction of the emperor. This evidence has often been construed as suggesting Roman monopolies on marine resources. In fact, it is clear that before the third century AD no such Empire-wide monopolies existed, even for regulated activities such as salt production.108 Marine fishing was still very much free and in common.109 Much of the evidence relates to practices attested by Greek evidence already in earlier periods. In a letter to Athens, Hadrian seems to equate directly a local tax on fish with revenues from import duties, while a first-century AD inscription from Ephesus attests the construction of a designated customs house to collect a local duty on seafood.110 Seafood and murex seem also to have been subject to the Roman portorium: a 5 % duty on murex is attested in the lex portus Asiae and a long-lived dispute between publicani and the city of Histria is best interpreted as involving not a Roman monopoly on fishing but simply the collection of the portorium on fish and associated products.111 A Neronian tax law inscribed at Andriake suggests that duties on fish and murex likewise featured in Lycia.112 105 106

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Dig. 41.1.1–3 For the status of lakes, rivers and ports, see, e. g., Dig. 1.8.4–6; 43.14.1; 50.15.4.6; 50.16.112. Fishing rights were often held in common even in ports and on rivers, although they might also be treated as res publicae and therefore subject to lease: see Dig. 1.8.4.1; Justinian, Institutes 2.1.2; Dig. 43.14.1.6–7. The jurists argue that the right of capture necessarily applied even to fish in bodies of water on private property, although fishing rights might be effectively controlled by preventing trespass: see Dig. 41.2.3.14; Justinian, Institutes 2.1.12. Ponds used for aquaculture and their stock constituted an exception, as that which was either raised or already captured was not considered res nullius: see Dig. 47.10.13.7; Dig. 7.4.10.3. Polybius lists rivers and harbours among the many resources regularly leased to revenue farmers (6.17.2); for additional evidence, see, e. g., Serv. ad Verg. G. 2.161 (ed. Thilo 1887: 235); Strabo 4.1.13; Cicero, On the Agrarian Law 2.40; CIL 6.9854. Carusi 2008: 199–202, 235–46. The Roman ‘monopoly’ on murex dye production is similarly late and likewise limited: see Delmaire 1989: 455–64. See especially Purpura 2008: 541–3; similar arguments are advanced already by Ørsted 1998, but his attempt to yoke the evidence for sea fishing with that of salt production is misguided. Hadrian’s letter: IG II2 1103; Lytle 2007a. Ephesus: IK 11.1 20; Lytle 2012b, likely not a tax on inland fishing as generally assumed (compare, e. g., Purpura 2008: 539). The lex portus Asiae: SEG 39.1180, lines 20, 122–3; Lytle 2007b. Histria: IScM 1.67–8 = SEG 24.1108–9; De Laet 1949: 205–8; Purpura 2008: 537–9. The editio princeps is yet to appear, but for an initial report, see Takmer 2007: 173–4 (murex and fish appear as subject to duties in lines 5 and 23 respectively). A fragmentary inscription from Caunus may have pertained to the same (SEG 14.638, the so-called lex Cauniorum de piscando), but its evidence is uncertain.

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Finally, the evidence already surveyed suggests that lookouts and locations suitable for the deployment of thynneia were in the Roman period still subject to a range of customary statuses and regulatory regimes. Otherwise, the sea remained free and its usage held in common.113 4.2 Shifting contexts: social and economic history and informal rights Roman law may have acknowledged and attempted to codify what was already ancient customary practice but it would be far too neat, and misleading, to suggest that the ancient history of ownership and usage of the sea is therefore straightforward or static. To the contrary, the unparalleled continuity and reach of Roman power led to real changes in how many residents of the Empire conceived of the Mediterranean. On the scale of the individual ship or sailor it was still sometimes a treacherous wilderness, but from a more synoptic perspective it was now securely governed, indeed mare nostrum. In general, even at the height of Roman power a distinction is maintained between jurisdiction, or imperium, and the conditions required for legal ownership, dominium; the first was perhaps a precondition for but in no way required or even presupposed the possibility of the latter.114 On the other hand, Cicero captures shifting attitudes already in his description of how, thanks to Pompey’s efforts, the entire Mediterranean is ‘kept secure and controlled just as though it were a single harbour’.115 Cicero is, of course, speaking metaphorically, but it is nevertheless inevitable that a sea legally in common but securely in the grip of Roman political authority is sometimes spoken of as publicum or belonging to the Roman people.116 So too the emperor’s imperium, which of course included the entirety of mare nostrum, might sometimes be imagined to include a kind of dominium. Far more important developments in terms of how the sea and its resources were exploited stemmed rather from social and economic changes.117 The jurists explicitly acknowledge some of this context, but much of the change was beyond the scope of formal law. This distinction between law and informal rights is not trivial. Discussions about ownership, access and the sea in antiquity are almost always primarily about formal legal rights, yet anthropologists have shown that actual situations, both in societies where legal fishing rights exist and where they do not, often involve the existence or coexistence of informal rights. A wide range of diverse and often complex systems are documented, but very often such rights are conceptualised in terms of ‘fishing space’.118 Fishermen might respect one another’s fish113

114 115 116

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A frequently cited but enigmatic piece of evidence remains: CIL 13.8830 = ILS 1461 (first to third century AD). This inscription was discovered at Beetgum in Frisia and records a dedication on behalf of conductores piscatus to an indigenous goddess Hlundana. But it seems this dedication is not good evidence for the public lease of marine fishing rights: see Ørsted 1998: 20–21; Fiorentini 2003: 468–73; Purpura 2008: 541–2. See, e. g., Fenn 1926b: 717; Gutierrez-Masson 1993. Cicero, De Provinciis Consularibus 12.31. See, e. g., Celsus at Dig. 43.8.3pr. and similarly the use of publicum ascribed to Aristo at Dig. 1.8.10; for a survey of the scholarship and the view that publicum indicates merely res in usu populi, see Purpura 2008: 542–3. On all aspects of marine fisheries and aquaculture in the Roman Mediterranean so now especially Marzano 2013. See, e. g., Acheson 1981: 280–1.

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ing spaces, and these ‘agreements’ might evolve or be negotiated in a great variety of ways. Knowledge itself can play a role, with fishermen closely guarding information about how, when and where certain species can be caught. In more complex economies, the concentration of capital can play an even more decisive role in establishing de facto ownership rights at sea, as can technological innovation. In other words, even where the law explicitly guaranteed free access to the sea, with usage enjoyed in common, the actual circumstances of ancient fishermen would have been considerably more complex. For the most part, our ancient sources offer little in the way of detailed data, but informal rights are a feature already of our Classical and Hellenistic Greek evidence. Such rights are, in fact, precisely the subject of the very first piece of evidence we discussed: the fragment of Antiphanes, in which individuals complain that the various arrangements whereby certain of their fellow citizens are procuring personal supplies of fish amount to ‘buying up the sea’. There is good reason to believe, then, that even in the absence of legal transformation the social and economic shifts that accompanied the Roman Empire would have engendered real changes in how the sea and its resources were enjoyed. The problems are too complex to treat in detail here, but by looking briefly at a few texts we can sketch their broad outline. 4.3 The sea and its resources in theory and practice 4.3.1 Oppian, On Fishing 1.56–72 and Juvenal, Satires 4 At its height, Rome’s political authority easily encompassed the entirety of the Mediterranean. The power of the emperor was matched by a wealth that in terms of both his personal estate and treasury (patrimonium and fiscus) seems to have grown tremendously during the first two centuries AD. Despite explicit legal distinctions and the existence of clearly defined property rights, the realities of political power and periodic forceful appropriation inevitably gave rise to the idea that everything was within the grasp of the emperor. This notion is, for example, famously exploited by Seneca in his claim that Caesar omnia habet – the emperor possesses everything.119 As we shall see, that idea could be extended to include the sea and everything in it. But in historical terms a more realistic assessment is required. In fact, there is no evidence for any general claim to ownership of the sea, the shore or marine resources. It is possible that at least one relevant piece of evidence has generally been overlooked, a passage in Oppian’s On Fishing120 that describes the emperor fishing. Commentators follow the scholiast in suggesting that what Oppian describes is a marine piscina, different perhaps only in scale from the fish ponds often attached to the estates of the Roman elite.121 But the details suggest something else: the emperor is rowed over the sea in a fast ship to ‘a wide space with gentle swells’.122 That the fish have been fattened – or conditioned to respond to chum – by the em119 120 121

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Seneca, De Beneficiis 7.6.3. Oppian, On Fishing 1.56–72. See, e. g., the comment on this passage in Mair’s translation (1928), following the scholiast’s en tô bibariô, which borrows into Greek a Latin term, vivarium, which could describe any enclosure to keep animals, but is often used specifically of fish tanks and pens. Oppian, On Fishing 1.62.

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peror’s servants is not inconsistent with the possibility that at least by the late second century AD there existed a patch of unenclosed sea set aside for the exclusive use of the emperor, not unlike the waters along a short stretch of coast in the Bay of Naples set aside during the nineteenth century for the exclusive use of the Ferdinands.123 In this decidedly limited sense, the sea and its fish could indeed be said to belong to the emperor. But only in the most imaginative contexts is the emperor’s authority ever construed to include general ownership of the sea or a claim on its resources. Perhaps the best example is Juvenal’s wonderful fourth satire, which recounts the capture of a giant turbot in the sea off Ancona, its miraculous transport to Domitian’s villa at Alba Longa and a debate among the emperor’s council as to how to cook the huge fish. The episode engages with a range of literary genres, motifs and texts, as well as familiar moral discourses linking vice with the conspicuous consumption of seafood.124 Especially relevant for this discussion is a section in which Juvenal takes a familiar motif whereby fishermen make gifts of their catch to potentates and lends it satirical bite by suggesting that in this case the giant turbot was not given willingly, but that Domitian’s greed and violence were such that he was willing to seize by force anything he desired. Juvenal suggests that Domitian’s grasping was bolstered by two individuals, Palfurius and Armillatus, who declare in legal terms that ‘anything in the sea that was precious belonged to the emperor’ (quidquid conspicuum pulchrumque est aequore toto / res fisci est).125 Modern discussion over whether this should be considered the verdict of actual jurists, or merely the flattery of informers, is largely irrelevant: the image of agents stationed on the beaches and seizing the choicest specimens from impoverished fishermen is deliberately absurd126 and it is interesting that Juvenal does not imagine these agents justifying their seizures based on any legal claim like that suggested by Palfurius and Armillatus. To the contrary, they offer specious arguments that echo the comic stage: the fisherman’s prize first escaped from the emperor’s fishponds and therefore, like Gripus’ chest, is not res nullius after all! By suggesting that Domitian’s greed extended even to the sea Juvenal’s parody is clearly absurd yet remarkably effective: the emperor’s avariciousness cannot be constrained by law, customary practice or even environmental limits. In reality, Palfurius and Armillatus may as well have suggested that the emperor was similarly entitled to the moon and stars. Even in the twenty-first century, in an age of policed coastal waters and Exclusive Economic Zones, the difficulty of enforcing regulations at sea remains an intractable, some would argue insurmountable, problem. In antiquity there existed neither the infrastructure, institutions nor officials necessary to regulate the activities of marine fishermen along thousands of kilometres of coastline even had there existed any reason to wish to do so.127 The notion that 123 124 125 126 127

See, e. g., Badham 1854: 90. See especially Courtney 1980: 195–229; Deroux 1983; more recently, Luisi 1998; Santorelli 2012. Juvenal, Satires 4.54–5. Juvenal, Satires 4.46–52. Few attempts at regulation of any kind are attested, and these are limited in scope. For example, Claudius’ admiral, Optatus, in an attempt to introduce the parrotfish (Sparisoma Cretense) to the waters off the coast of Campania, seems to have tried to force fishermen to throw back any that they caught: see Pliny, NH 9.62–3.

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any valuable maritime resource belonged to the fisc is merely the product of literary fancy or imperial vanity, although the underlying logic that it entails would – like the notion of the sea as publicum and therefore res publica – be transformed by the medieval glossators and eventually play an important role in early modern debates about the status of the sea. 4.3.2 A Sicilian villa maritima and marine fishing rights Cicero in his On Duties discusses a fascinating case of fraud that scholars have on occasion interpreted as suggesting that the ownership of coastal estates sometimes entailed the possession of corresponding marine fishing rights.128 The case concerns a Sicilian estate sold by a local Syracusan Pythius to the Roman eques Canius. The basic nature of the ruse is not in doubt: Pythius, in collaboration with local fishermen, staged fishing just off his estate in order to suggest this activity was both common and productive in these waters, when in reality it was not. By one interpretation, Pythius’ fraud consisted merely of persuading Canius that the rights attached to his estate were more valuable than in actual fact. But Cicero’s account indicates not that fishing rights adhered to the property but rather that Pythius went out of his way to suggest that these fishermen were informally tied to his estate (hac villa isti carere non possunt) and that if Canius purchased it they would continue to provide abundant catches, probably at below market rates.129 Had Canius been less naïve about how actual fishing economies work, he would have set about loaning these fishermen money rather than merely insisting on buying the estate. Cicero’s account is careful to contrast the status of Canius, a rich and well-educated but naïve Roman, with that of the shrewd, unscrupulous, local moneylender Pythius, who is able to enroll the cooperation of these fishermen precisely on account of his trade: the fishermen are already indebted to him (qui esset ut argentarius apud omnes ordines gratiosus). The role of capital in determining informal fishing rights is well documented, and our ancient evidence fits a familiar pattern that suggests fishermen were often reduced by debt to conditions that approached indentured servitude, contributing their labour on terms favourable to the owners of fishing operations and forced to sell their catches to middlemen who enjoyed most of the profits.130 Why Pythius’ ruse so provoked Canius’ desire to purchase the estate can only be guessed at. It is possible he simply viewed a ready supply of fish for himself and his guests as an irresistible attraction, but it is likely that he saw a possibility for profit (incensus … cupiditate), whether through marketing the catch at Syracuse or through improving the estate with the construction along the shoreline of fish tanks, or piscinae, that these fishermen would keep

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Cicero, On Duties 3.14.58–60. Pythius’s reference to an aquatio is best interpreted as suggesting that these fishermen were tied to his estate in part because it offered vital access to fresh water (see, e. g., Turley 1942). See, e. g., Alciphron 1.2 (fishermen abused by an owner); 1.9 (fisherman driven by poverty to seek a wealthy patron); 1.13 (fisherman forced to take out a loan that he is unable to repay). It is a familiar tale: the British Naval Intelligence Division reported in the mid-twentieth century that only a third of Greek fishermen were independent, the rest were employed by and indebted to owners and wholesalers, who often charged as much as 100 % interest on loans (Darby 1944: 2.97–8).

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stocked.131 Such piscinae are known already in the second century BC and were increasingly a feature of villae maritimae during the century that followed.132 The construction of such piscinae might add tremendous value to a coastal villa.133 But their construction, as well as that of other infrastructure such as jetties or installations used to culture shellfish, also invited novel legal problems. The law was consistent in maintaining that beaches and coastlines were never attached to coastal properties;134 but by building such infrastructure it is clear that the owners of coastal estates essentially appropriated what had been common sea, a fact easily accommodated by customary practice but reconciled with accepted legal theory only by a certain amount of mental dexterity.135 The jurists suggest that such installations were treated as private property but that their construction could proceed only if it was determined that they would not impair common enjoyment of the beach or sea.136 Some scepticism is warranted: we have little evidence to suggest that such permissions were actually sought and social status no doubt played a role in how such determinations were made. At the same time we can be certain that the construction of villae maritimae gave rise to a further (and still depressingly familiar) problem of wealthy landowners attempting to guard jealously access to and usage of a coastline that the law determined to be held in common. It is noteworthy that, at least in theory, Roman law was more egalitarian than is often the case today, explicitly asserting that the owners of coastal estates could not prohibit access to the coast or prevent activities such as fishing from the shore. There were occasions when these legal principles determined real cases: a passage attributed to the third book of Marcian’s Institutes suggests the law prevailed in favour of fishermen even against the powerful owners of villas in Formiae and Capena.137 Additional evidence suggests both a recurring problem and that, where a case actually made it before a judge, the interests of the public usually prevailed.138 Nevertheless, the nature of informal rights and the reality of class disparities suggest that wealthy elites often got their way, especially when individual fishermen did not have patrons or a guild to represent their interests. The wealthy owners of coastal villas no doubt considered the shore and the sea to be for their exclusive enjoyment, jurists be damned. In the fourth century AD, St Ambrose, drawing on a range of sources reflecting attitudes attested already during the late Republic, paints a vivid portrait of such owners appropriating the sea for fishponds and shellfish cultivation, to the detriment of common use: ‘That gulf of the sea, one says, is mine, that one another’s. So the powerful divide among themselves even the elements’.139

131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139

Pythius implies that these catches could be marketed at Syracuse (hoc loco est Syracusis quidquid est piscium). Lafon 2001. See, e. g., Columella, On Agriculture 8.16.5; Varro, On Agriculture 3.2.17; Lafon 2001: 127–86; Marzano 2007: 47–61. Dig. 18.1.51 (the sale of a villa does not include the shoreline).. See, most recently, Purpura 2008: 542–3, with bibliography. See, e. g., Dig. 1.8.10; 41.1.30; 41.1.50; 43.8.3.1; 47.10.14. Cited in Dig. 1.8.4. See, e. g., Dig. 47.10.13.7, where the principle that the sea is held in common and fishing cannot be impeded is said to be ‘very frequently stated in rescripts’ (est saepissime rescriptum). Ambrose, Hexaemeron 5.10.27: Iste, inquit, sinus maris meus est; ille alterius. Dividunt elementa sibi potentes.

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4.3.3 Large-scale fisheries and two estates in Roman North Africa Another legal case attested in a much-discussed passage of Ulpian’s Libri opinionum involves different competing interests, but still in the context of large coastal estates.140 The basic events can be reconstructed: a single individual owned two such estates, the Botrian and the Geronian. These estates were likely in North Africa near the town of Botria situated between Carthage and Hadrumentum, a region where tuna fisheries are a feature of the longue durée.141 The owner chose to retain the Botrian but sell the Geronian, with the buyer of the Geronian agreeing as a condition of the sale not to invest in a large-scale tuna-fishing operation (piscatio thynnaria). The buyer or some subsequent owner tried to argue that because the sea is common to all and therefore not subject to servitude no such condition could be enforced and he should be free to conduct such a fishery. That the law decided in favour of the seller is sometimes imagined to have presented a clear contradiction between theory and practice – after all, if the sea were really common to all how could contract law prevent fishing in it? But the key to understanding the context of the case lies in realising that piscatio thynnaria refers specifically to the kind of large-scale operations that were closely tied to specific points on the coast and made use of lookouts and other infrastructure on land. In the stipulations related to the sale, the terms embodying the restriction were attached not to the sea but to the Geronian estate.142 The interests of the owner of the Botrian estate in enforcing the contract are not explicitly described but might be inferred: a Geronian fishery would catch tuna that he preferred to catch himself. Such an interest should hardly be surprising. The evidence for the production of salted fish and fish-sauces on a large scale, especially in the western provinces, is well known. Some of this production can be associated with coastal estates like that at Cotta in Mauretania Tingitana, where a salt-fish and garum factory seems to have operated between the first century BC and the third century AD. It has been suggested on reasonable grounds that this factory would have been supplied at least in part by an accompanying large-scale fishery, a thynneion or piscatio thynnaria.143 We likely hear about the dispute between the owners of the Botrian and Geronian estates in part because they were evenly matched, each powerful and well connected, able to represent forcefully their interests in court. But this was not always the case and, with capital-intensive fisheries in the hands of the wealthy elites, we can be certain that the owners of such estates often enforced their interests beyond what was strictly legal. Analogous processes are attested in the early modern Mediterranean, where the aristocratic owners of tonnare and madragues frequently sought to protect their investments not only by preventing the deployment of similar large-scale traps in nearby waters but even by attempting to limit the smaller-scale activities of fishermen.144 There is no reason to believe that all such fisheries in the western provinces were in private hands during the first three centuries AD or that this model of ownership represented 140 141 142 143 144

Dig. 8.4.13 pr. See, e. g., Santalucia 1971: 2.253–8; Kaser 1978; Hallebeek 1987; Wacke 1993; Purpura 2008: 546–9; Lytle 2012a: 34–6. Hallebeek 1987: 41; on tuna fishing in the region, Paskoff and Trousset 2004: 265–7. Hallebeek 1987; Wacke 1993: 18; Purpura 2008: 546–9. Ponsich and Tarradell 1965: 55–68; Trakadas 2005: 66–8. Lytle 2012a: 36 n. 98.

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an innovation of Roman rule. On the other hand, it seems that in later antiquity, even in the east, where lookouts and accompanying fisheries had previously been in the public domain, these were increasingly owned by elites or similarly powerful interests, with Leo’s Novels proving that by the ninth century AD such fisheries were largely in the hands of private landowners and powerful institutions. Unfortunately, we do not have the evidence to write a more nuanced history, but a snapshot of some of the processes at work are perhaps captured for the late fifth century AD on the Cimmerian Bosphorus, when an official of considerable standing inscribed a boundary marker indicating his possession of a particular stretch of coast with a newly-established fishery.145 Earlier in the same century an additional connection between public elites and such fisheries is suggested by Synesius of Cyrene, who characterises Andronicus as having leapt straight down from the tuna tower and into the governorship of Cyrenaica.146 These developments – the erosion of the importance of public domain and the increased concentration of resources in the hands of a narrowing class of aristocratic elites and powerful institutions, often religious – gradually but fundamentally changed the way in which the seashore was utilised and perceived. Leo, in issuing his Novels, may have, from a strictly juristic point of view, radically revised the status of sea and shore, but, from the perspective of the social and economic historian, in responding to institutional contexts and the interests of property owners he merely made into formal law what was already informal reality. A similar process would repeat itself in the West in subsequent centuries, and especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as the foundations of international maritime law were constructed, couched in terms and legal constructs borrowed or adapted from Roman law, but ultimately responding to the political, social and economic realities of a very different age. Ephraim Lytle Department of Classics, University of Toronto 125 Queen’s Park, Toronto ON M5S 2C7 [email protected]

5. References 5.1 Primary sources: epigraphic Ager, S. L. 1996. Interstate Arbitrations in the Greek World, 337–90 BC. Berkeley. Chaniotis, A. (ed.) 1996. Die Verträge zwischen kretischen Poleis in der hellenistischen Zeit (Heidelberger althistorische Beiträge und epigraphische Studien 24). Stuttgart. Hicks, E. L. (ed.) 1882. A Manual of Greek Historical Inscriptions. Oxford. Rhodes, P. J. and R. Osborne (eds) 2003. Greek Historical Inscriptions, 404–323 BC. Oxford. Segre, M. 1944–5. ‘Tituli Calymnii’, Annuario della Scuola archeologica di Atene e delle Missioni italiane in Oriente 22–3 (n. s. 6–7), 1–248 = M. Segre, Tituli Calymnii, Bergamo 1952.

145 146

SEG 48.994.1–4 (AD 478/9); Lytle 2012a: 34; on the career of Savagos, Vinogradov 1999. Letters 57.239–46.

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5.2 Primary sources: literary Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon, with an English translation by S. Gaselee (LCL 45). Cambridge MA 1969. Aeschines, Speeches, with an English translation by C. D. Adams (LCL 106). Cambridge MA 1919. Alciphron, Aelian and Philostratus, The Letters, with an English translation by A. R. Benner (LCL 383). Cambridge MA 1949. Ambrose, Hexameron, Paradise, and Cain and Abel, translated by J. J. Savage (The Fathers of the Church 42). New York 1961. Andocides, On the Peace, in Minor Attic Orators 1: Antiphon, Andocides, with an English translation by K. J. Maidment (LCL 308). Cambridge MA 1941. Archestratos of Gela, Greek Culture and Cuisine in the Fourth Century BCE, translated by S. D. Olson and A. Sens. Oxford 2000. Aristotle, History of Animals, with an English translation by A. L. Peck and D. M. Balme (LCL 437–9). Cambridge MA 1965–91. Ps-Aristotle, Oeconomica, in Aristotle: Metaphysics II, Books 10–14; Oeconomica; Magna Moralia, with an English translation by H. Tredennick (LCL 287). Cambridge MA 1935. Aristotle, Politics, with an English translation by H. Rackham (LCL 264). Cambridge MA 1932. Chariton, Callirhoe, with an English translation by G. P. Goold (LCL 481). Cambridge MA 1995. Cicero, On Duties, with an English translation by W. Miller (LCL 30). Cambridge MA 1913. Cicero, On the Agrarian Law, in Cicero: Pro Quinctio, Pro Roscio Amerino, Pro Roscio Comoedo, On the Agrarian Law, with an English translation by J. H. Freese (LCL 240). Cambridge MA 1930. Cicero, De Provinciis Consularibus, in Cicero: Pro Caelio, Pro Balbo, De Provinciis Consularibus, with an English translation by R. Gardner (LCL 447). Cambridge MA 1958. Columella, On Agriculture, with an English translation by H. B. Ash, E. S. Forster and E. H. Heffner (LCL 361, 407, 408). Cambridge MA 1941–55. Demosthenes, Orations 1: 1–17 and 20, with an English translation by J. H. Vince (LCL 238). Cambridge MA 1930. Demosthenes, Orations 2: 18–19, with an English translation by C. A. Vince and J. H. Vince (LCL 155). Cambridge MA 1926. Demosthenes, Orations 6: 50–59, with an English translation by A. T. Murray (LCL 351). Cambridge MA 1939. Dio Chrysostom, Discourses 1: Orations 1–11, with an English translation by J. W. Cohoon (LCL 257). Cambridge MA 1932. Dio Chrysostom, Discourses 4: Orations 37–60, with an English translation by H. Lamar Crosby (LCL 376). Cambridge MA 1946. Heracleides Criticus, On the Cities of Greece, in A. Arenz, Herakleides Kritikos, ‘Über die Städte in Hellas’: Eine Periegese Griechenlands am Vorabend des Chremonideischen Krieges (Quellen und Forschungen zur Antiken Welt 49). Munich 2006. Herodotus, The Persian Wars, with an English translation by A. D. Godley (LCL 118–20). Cambridge MA 1920–5. Isocrates, On the Peace, Areopagiticus, Against the Sophists, Antidosis, Panathenaicus, with an English translation by G. Norlin (LCL 229). Cambridge MA 1929. Justinian, Institutes, in Corpus Iuris Civilis 1. Institutiones, Digesta, edited by P. Krüger and T. Mommsen. Frankfurt 1968. Juvenal, Satires in Juvenal and Persius, with an English translation by S. M. Braund (LCL 91). Cambridge MA 2004. Leo VI, Novels, in Les Novelles de Léon VI le Sage, edited by P. Noailles and A. Dain. Paris 1944. Lycurgus, Against Leocrates, in Minor Attic Orators 2: Lycurgus, Dinarchus, Demades, Hyperides, with an English translation by J. O. Burtt (LCL 395). Cambridge MA 1954.

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Philostratus, Imagines, in Philostratus the Elder, Imagines, Philostratus the Younger, Imagines, Callistratus, Descriptions, with an English translation by A. Fairbanks (LCL 256). Cambridge MA 1931. Photius, Photii patriarchae lexicon (E-M) 2, edited by C. Theodoridis. Berlin and New York, 1998. Plato, Laws 2, with an English translation by R. G. Bury (LCL 192). Cambridge MA 1926. Plautus, Rudens (The Rope), in Plautus: The Little Carthaginian, Pseudolus, The Rope, with an English translation by W. de Melo (LCL 260). Cambridge MA 2012. Plutarch, Cimon, in Plutarch, Lives 2. Themistocles and Camillus, Aristides and Cato Major, Cimon and Lucullus, with an English translation by B. Perrin (LCL 47). Cambridge MA 1914. Plutarch, Pericles, in Plutarch, Lives 3. Pericles and Fabius Maximus, Nicias and Crassus, with an English translation by B. Perrin (LCL 65). Cambridge MA 1916. Plutarch, Sulla, in Plutarch, Lives 4. Alcibiades and Coriolanus, Lysander and Sulla, with an English translation by B. Perrin (LCL 80). Cambridge MA 1916. Plutarch, Greek Questions, in Plutarch, Roman Questions, Greek Questions, Greek and Roman Parallel Stories, On the Fortune of the Romans, On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander, Were the Athenians More Famous in War or in Wisdom?, with an English translation by F. C. Babbitt (LCL 305). Cambridge MA 1936. Polybius, The Histories 2. Books 3–4, with an English translation by W. R. Paton, revised by F. W. Walbank and C. Habicht (LCL 137). Cambridge MA 2010. Polybius, The Histories 3. Books 5–8, with an English translation by W. R. Paton, revised by F. W. Walbank and C. Habicht (LCL 138). Cambridge MA 2011. Seneca, Moral Essays 3. De Beneficiis, with an English translation by J. W. Basore (LCL 310). Cambridge MA 1935. Serv. ad Verg. G. [= Servius’ commentary on Virgil’s Georgics] in G. Thilo (ed.), Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii Bucolica et Georgica commentarii. Leipzig 1887. Synesius, Letters, in Synésios de Cyrène, Correspondance 3, edited by R. Garzya and D. Roques (Collection des Universités de France, série grecque 397). Paris 2000. Theocritus, Idylls, in Greek Bucolic Poets: Theocritus, Bion, Moschus, with an English translation by J. M. Edmonds (LCL 28). Cambridge MA 1912. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2. Books 3–4, with an English translation by C. F. Smith (LCL 109). Cambridge MA 1920. Varro, On Agriculture, in Cato and Varro: On Agriculture, with an English translation by W. D. Hooper and H. B. Ash (LCL 283). Cambridge MA 1932. Xenophon, Hellenica 2. Books 5–7, with an English translation by C. L. Brownson (LCL 89). Cambridge MA 1921.

5.3 Secondary literature Acheson, J. M. 1981. ‘Anthropology of fishing’, Annual Review of Anthropology 10, 275–316. Anderson, G. 1997. ‘Alciphron’s miniatures’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.34.3, 2188– 206. Apostolides, N. C. 1883. La pêche en Grèce: Ichthyologie, migrations, engins et manières de pêche, produits, statistique et législation. Athens. Athanassopoulos, G. 1923. ‘La pêche en Grèce’, Internationale Revue der gesamten Hydrobiologie und Hydrographie 11, 104–13. Austin, M. M. 2006. The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest: A Selection of Ancient Sources in Translation (2nd edition). Cambridge. Austin, M. M. and P. Vidal-Naquet 1977. Economic and Social History of Ancient Greece: An Introduction. London. Badham, C. D. 1854. Prose Halieutics: or, Ancient and Modern Fish Tattle. London. Bijnkershoek, C. van 1702. De Dominio Maris. The Hague.

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Borgeaud, P. 1988. The Cult of Pan in Ancient Greece. Translated by K. Atlass and J. Redfield. Chicago. Bourriot, F. 1972. ‘La considération accordée aux marins dans l’antiquité grecque: Epoques archäique et classique’, Revue d’histoire économique et sociale 50, 7–41. Bresson, A. 2007. L’économie de la Grèce des cités (fin VIe-Ier siècle a. C.). I. Les structures et la production (Collection U). Paris. Bresson, A. 2008. L’économie de la Grèce des cités (fin VIe-Ier siècle a. C.). II. Les espaces de l’échange (Collection U). Paris. Bresson, A. 2010. ‘Knidos: topography for a battle’ in R. van Bremen and J.-M. Carbon (eds), Hellenistic Karia: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Hellenistic Karia, Oxford, 29 June – 2 July 2006 (Études Ausonius Institute 28). Bordeaux, 435–51. Brunet, M. 1997. ‘Thasos et son Épire à la fin du Ve et au début du IVe s. avant Jésus-Christ’ in P. Brulé and J. Oulhen (eds), Esclavage, guerre, économie en Grèce Ancienne: Hommages à Yvon Garlan (Collection Histoire). Rennes, 229–42. Brunt, P. A. 1981. ‘The revenues of Rome’, Journal of Roman Studies 71, 161–72. Buxton, R. 1994. Imaginary Greece: The Contexts of Mythology. Cambridge. Cairns, F. 1991. ‘The “Laws of Eretria” (IG XII.9 1273 and 1274): epigraphic, legal, historical, and political aspects’, Phoenix 45, 296–313. Carusi, C. 2005. ‘Nuova Edizione della Homologia fra Trezene e Arsinoe (IG IV 752, IG IV2 76 + 77)’, Studi ellenistici 16, 79–139. Carusi, C. 2008. Il sale nel mondo greco (VI a. C.-III d. C.): Luoghi di produzione, circolazione commerciale, regimi di sfruttamento nel contesto del Mediterraneo antico (Pragmateiai 15). Bari. Chandezon, C. 2003. L’élevage en Grèce (fin Ve-fin Ier s. a. C.). L’apport des sources épigraphiques. Bordeaux. Chouliara-Raïos, H. 2003. I alieia stin Aigypto ypo to fos ton Ellinikon papyron 1–2. Ioannina. Courtney, E. 1980. A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal. London. Dagron, G. 1994. ‘Lawful society and legitimate power: Ἔννομος πολιτεία, ἔννομος ἀρχή’ in A. E. Laiou and D. Simon (eds), Law and Society in Byzantium: Ninth-Twelfth Centuries. Washington DC, 27–51. Dagron, G. 1995. ‘Poissons, pêcheurs et poissoniers de Constantinople’ in C. Mango and G. Dagron (eds), Constantinople and its Hinterland. Cambridge, 57–73. Darby, H. C. 1944. Greece 2: Economy, Geography, Ports and Communications [Great Britain Naval Intelligence Division] (B. R. 516a [Restricted], Geographical Handbook Series). London. De Laet, S. J. 1949. Portorium: étude sur l’organisation douanière chez les Romains, surtout à l’époque du haut-empire. Bruges. Delmaire, R. 1989. Largesses sacrées et res privata: L’aerarium impérial et son administration du IVe au VIe siècle (Collection de l’École française de Rome 121). Rome. Deroux, C. 1983. ‘Domitian, the kingfish, and the prodigies: a reading of Juvenal’s Fourth Satire’ in C. Deroux (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History 3. Brussels, 283–98. Dévedjian, K. 1926. Pêche et pêcheries en Turquie. Istanbul. Dumont, J. 1976–7. ‘La pêche du thon à Byzance à l’époque hellénistique’, Revue des études anciennes 78–9, 96–119. Dumont, J. 1977. ‘Liberté des mers et territoire de pêche en droit grec’, Revue historique de droit français et étranger 55, 53–7. Economides, P. S. 1972–3. ‘Katalogos ton ichthyon tis Ellados’, Hellenic Oceanology and Limnology 11, 421–598. Faber, G. L. 1883. The Fisheries of the Adriatic and the Fish Thereof: A Report of the Austro-Hungarian Sea-Fisheries, with a Detailed Description of the Marine Fauna of the Adriatic Gulf. London. Fantasia, U. 1999. ‘Aree marginali nella Grecia antica: Paludi e bonifiche’, in D. Vera (ed.), Demografia, sistemi agrari, regimi alimentari nel mondo antico. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Parma, 17–19 ottobre 1997 (Pragmateiai 3). Bari, 65–116. Fenn, P. T. 1925. ‘Justinian and the freedom of the sea’, American Journal of International Law 19, 716–27.

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Fenn, P. T. 1926a. The Origin of the Right of Fishery in Territorial Waters. Cambridge MA. Fenn, P. T. 1926b. ‘Origins of the theory of territorial waters’, American Journal of International Law 20, 465–82. Fernández Nieto, F. J. 2002. ‘Hermoskopeion = Thynnoskopeion: El final de un problema histórico mal enfocado’, Mainake 24, 231–55. Fernández Nieto, F. J. 2006. ‘Titularidad y cesión de los derechos de la pesca marítima en la antigua Grecia’ in H.-A. Rupprecht (ed.), Symposion 2003: Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte. Rauischholzhausen, 30. September – 3. Oktober 2003 (Akten der Gesellschaft für griechische und hellenistische Rechtsgeschichte 17). Vienna, 207–32. Fiorentini, M. 2003. Fiumi e mari nell’esperienza giuridica romana: Profili di tutela processuale e di inquadramento sistematico (Pubblicazioni della Facoltà di Giurisprudenza della Università di Trieste 53). Milan. Gabrielsen, V. 2001. ‘Economic activity, maritime trade and piracy in the Hellenistic Aegean’, Revue des études anciennes 103, 219–40. Gallant, T. W. 1985. A Fisherman’s Tale (Miscellanea Graeca 7). Ghent. García Vargas, E. and D. Florido del Corral 2010. ‘The origin and development of tuna fishing nets (almadrabas)’ in T. Bekker-Nielsen and D. Bernal-Casasola (eds) Ancient Nets and Fishing Gear (Monographs of the Sagena project 2). Cádiz and Aarhus, 205–27. Gordon, E. 2009 (October). ‘The development of the law of the sea in the 17th century: a bibliography of modern scholarship’, Yale Law Library Rare Books Blog. http://library.law.yale.edu/blogs/rare-books/2009–10 (accessed July 2014). Gutierrez-Masson, L. 1993. ‘Mare nostrum: imperium ou dominium?’, Revue internationale des droits de l’antiquité 40, 293–315. Hallebeek, J. 1987. ‘Legal problems concerning a draught of tunny: exegesis of D. 8.4.13pr.’, Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 55, 39–48. Hasebroek, J. 1928. Stadt und Handel im alten Griechenland: Untersuchungen zur antiken Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Tübingen. Heisserer, A. J. 1980. Alexander the Great and the Greeks: The Epigraphic Evidence. Norman. Höppener, H. 1931. Halieutica: Bijdrage tot de kennis der oud-grieksche visscherij. Amsterdam. Horden, P. and N. Purcell 2000. The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. Oxford. Imbart-Latour, J. 1889. La mer territoriale au point de vue théorique et pratique (Bibliothèque internationale et diplomatique 22). Paris. Kaser, M. 1978. ‘Der Privatrechtsakt in der römischen Rechtsquellenlehre’ in O. Behrens (ed.), Festschrift für Franz Wieacker zum 70. Geburtstag. Göttingen, 90–114. Konstan, D. 1983. Roman Comedy. London. Lafon, X. 2001. Villa maritima: Recherches sur les villas littorales de l’Italie romaine. IIIe siècle av. J.-C./ IIIe siècle ap. J.-C. (Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 307). Rome. Luisi, A. 1998. Il rombo e la vestale: Giovenale, Satira IV (Quaderni di Invigilata Lucernis 6). Bari. Lytle, E. 2007a. ‘Fishless mysteries or high prices at Athens? Re-examining IG II2 1103’, Museum Helveticum 64, 100–11. Lytle, E. 2007b. ‘The Delian purple and the lex portus Asiae’, Phoenix 61, 247–69. Lytle, E. 2012a. Hê thalassa koinê: fishermen, the sea and the limits of ancient Greek regulatory reach’, Classical Antiquity 31, 1–55. Lytle, E. 2012b. ‘A customs house of our own: infrastructure, duties and a joint association of fishermen and fishmongers (IK, 11.1a-Ephesos, 20)’ in V. Chankowski and P. Karonis (eds), Tout vendre, tout acheter: Structures et équipements des marchés antiques. Actes du Colloque International, Athènes, École Française d’Athènes, 16–19 juin 2009 (Scripta antiqua 42). Bordeaux, 211–22. Marx, F. 1928. Plautus Rudens: Text und Commentar (Abhandlungen der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Philologisch-historische Klasse 38.5). Leipzig. Marzano, A. 2007. Roman Villas in Central Italy: A Social and Economic History (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 30). Leiden.

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Marzano, A. 2013. Harvesting the Sea: The Exploitation of Marine Resources in the Roman Mediterranean (Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy). Oxford. McGoodwin, J. R. 2001. Understanding the Cultures of Fishing Communities: A Key to Fisheries Management and Food Security (FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 401). Rome. Meritt, B. D. 1935. ‘Inscriptions of Colophon’, American Journal of Philology 56, 358–97. Momigliano, A. 1944. ‘Sea-power in Greek thought’, Classical Review 58, 1–7. Mylona, D. 2008. Eating Fish in Greece from 500 BC to AD 700: A Story of Impoverished Fishermen or Luxurious Fish Banquets? (BAR International Series 1754). Oxford. Ørsted, P. 1998. ‘Salt, fish, and the sea in the Roman empire’ in I. Nielsen and H. S. Nielsen (eds), Meals in a Social Context: Aspects of the Communal Meal in the Hellenistic and Roman World (Aarhus Studies in Mediterranean Antiquity 1). Aarhus, 13–35. Oudendijk, J. K. 1970. Status and Extent of Adjacent Waters: A Historical Orientation (Nova et vetera juris gentium. Ser. B. 2). Leiden. Parain, C. 1936. La Méditerranée: Les hommes et leurs travaux. Paris. Paskoff, R. and P. Trousset. 2004. ‘Les activités littorales et halieutiques’ in H. Slim, P. Trousset, R. Paskoff et al. (eds), Le littoral de la Tunisie: Étude géoarchéologique et historique (Études d’Antiquités africaines). Paris, 255–97. Ponsich, M. and M. Tarradell. 1965. Garum et industries antiques de salaison dans la Méditeranée occidentale (Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études hispaniques 36). Paris. Purcell, N. 1995. ‘Eating Fish: the paradoxes of seafood’ in J. Wilkins, D. Harvey and M. Dobson (eds.), Food in antiquity. Exeter, 132–49. Purcell, N. 2005. ‘The ancient Mediterranean: the view from the customs house’ in W. V. Harris (ed.), Rethinking the Mediterranean. Oxford, 200–32. Purpura, G. 2007. ‘Servitus thynnos non piscandi (D. 8.4.13 pr.)’ in F. M. D’Ippolito and G. Franciosi (eds), Filia: Scritti per Gennaro Franciosi 3. Naples, 2163–74. Purpura, G. 2008. ‘Liberum mare, acque territoriali e riserve di pesca nel mondo antico’ in J. Napoli (ed.), Resources et activités maritimes des peuples de l’Antiquité. Actes du Colloque International de Boulogne-sur-Mer, 12, 13 et 14 Mai 2005 (Cahiers du littoral 2.6). Boulogne, 533–54. Radcliffe, W. 1926. Fishing from the Earliest Times (2nd edition). London. Reger, G. 2010. ‘Mylasa and its territory’ in R. van Bremen and J.-M. Carbon (eds), Hellenistic Karia: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Hellenistic Karia, Oxford, 29 June – 2 July 2006 (Études Ausonius Institute 28). Bordeaux, 43–57. Robert, J. and L. Robert 1950a. ‘Pêcheurs de Parion’, Hellenica 9, 80–94. Robert, J. and L. Robert 1950b. ‘Pêcheurs de Cyzique’, Hellenica 9, 94–7. Robert, L. 1955. ‘La pêche à Parion’, Hellenica 10, 271–82. Robert, L. 1960. ‘Sur un décret des Korésiens au musée de Smyrne’, Hellenica 11–2: 133–76. Rougé, J. 1966. ‘Le droit de naufrage et ses limitations en Méditerranée avant l’établissement de la domination de Rome’ in R. Chevallier (ed.), Mélanges d’archeologie et d’histoire offerts à André Piganiol 3. Paris, 1467–79. Santalucia, B. 1971. I Libri Opinionum di Ulpiano. 2 vols (Fondazione Nobile Augostino Poggi 8–9). Milan. Santorelli, B. 2012. Giovenale, Satira IV: introduzione, traduzione e commento (Texte und Kommentare 40). Berlin and Boston. Shaw, B. D. 1982–3. ‘Eaters of flesh, drinkers of milk: the ancient Mediterranean ideology of the pastoral nomad’, Ancient Society 3–4, 5–31. Shepherd, E. J. 2003. ‘La tonnara di Baratti’ in C. Mascione and A. Patera (eds), Materiali per Populonia 2 (Quaderni del Dipartimento di archeologia e storia delle arti 56). Pisa, 271–80. Takmer, B. 2007. ‘Lex Portorii Provinciae Lyciae: Ein Vorbericht über die Zollinschrift aus Andriake aus neronischer Zeit’, Gephyra 4, 165–88.

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Trakadas, A. 2005. ‘The archaeological evidence for fish processing in the western Mediterranean’ in T. Bekker-Nielsen (ed.), Ancient Fishing and Fish Processing in the Black Sea Region (Black Sea Studies 2). Aarhus, 47–82. Thompson, D. W. 1947. A Glossary of Greek Fishes. London. Traina, G. 1988. Paludi e bonifiche del mondo antico: Saggio di archeologia geografica (Centro ricerche e documentazione sull’antichità classica Monografie 11). Rome. Turley, J. P. 1942. ‘Hic Aquatio: Cicero, De Officiis III, 14, 59’, The Classical Journal 37, 485–9. Van Groningen, B. A. 1933. Aristote. Le second libre de l’Économique. Édité avec une introduction et un commentaire critique et explicatif. Leiden. Vanderpool, E. and W. P. Wallace. 1964. ‘The sixth century laws from Eretria’, Hesperia 33, 381–91. Vélissaropoulos, J. 1980. Les nauclères grecs: Recherches sur les institutions maritimes en Grèce et dans l’Orient hellénisé (Hautes études du monde gréco-romain 9). Geneva. Vinogradov, Y. G. 1999. ‘The late Classical Bosporus and early Byzantium (in the light of dated Bosporan inscriptions of the fifth century)’, Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 5, 245–69. Vreeken, W. A. L. 1953. De lege quadam sacra Coorum. Ditt. Syll.3 1000. Groningen. Wacke, A. 1993. ‘Freedom of contract and restraint of trade clauses in Roman and modern law’, Law and History Review 11, 1–19. Walker, K. G. 2004. Archaic Eretria: A Political and Social History from the Earliest Times to 490 BC. London. Wilhelm, A. 1939. ‘Athen und Kolophon’, in W. M. Calder and J. Keil (eds), Anatolian Studies Presented to William Hepburn Buckler (Publications of the University of Manchester 265). Manchester, 345–68.

Carmen Alfaro Giner

Purple in the ancient Mediterranean world: social demand and the exploitation of marine resources

1. Introduction Prehistoric hunter-gatherers sought their food in the ecological environment that was closest and most familiar to them. In the case of coastal populations, logically, that environment was the sea. They would have known of the characteristics of the muricidae, or marine gastropods, which secrete a white liquid, found in the hypobranchial gland beneath the gills, that changes colour when exposed to oxygen and sunlight. Those who broke the shells in order to eat the contents would have been left with an indelible reddish dye on their hands.1 From this first contact with dye-producing shellfish, humans would soon have come to appreciate the dye’s full potential, learning the complex process of obtaining dyes with which to colour the body itself, textiles or other objects. It was soon realised that it was the white secretion from the hypobranchial gland of these animals (both male and female) that enabled them to obtain a beautiful colour to enhance human ornamentation.2 As the exploitation of this important marine resource expanded, the ability to obtain colour would have enabled those who carried on its manufacture to exercise a degree of social and economic control. Marine-derived dyes have been the subject of extensive scholarly writings, especially in the nineteenth century.3 Defining their colours is a difficult task. To A. Locard (1884), ‘la pourpre a une coloration violette foncé, et le nom d’hyacinthe convient au violet pâle; mais dans ces deux violets, on sent que le fond rouge domine sur les autres tons’.4 Many of these colours could also be obtained from plants, but the result was different from the point of view of quality and symbolism. In this paper, I aim to ascertain the form of economic exploitation of this resource and utilise this to help us understand the extraordinary demand for it in the Roman world. Despite the limited data available, I shall try to establish whether this marine resource was considered a public good or if restrictions were placed on harvesting it during the Roman 1

2 3 4

Curiously, muricidae are not abundant among the Paleolithic accumulations of seashells used as adornment, neither in coastal caves, nor in the interior (Montes 1991; Borrello and Micheli 2004). Perhaps this may be due to the hardness of the shell, which made it difficult to perforate and use as a personal adornment. The recent scholarly discussion on the origin of the art of purple dyes extends to thousands of pages: for example Reinhold 1970; Brunello 1973; Baker 1974; Cardon 2007. Schmidt 1842: 104–51; Lacaze-Duthiers 1859: 6; Locard 1884: 182–6. Locard 1884: 183.

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Republican and Imperial periods. I shall also attempt to calculate whether if, in today’s terms, this harvesting would be considered sustainable or if it was overexploited. A full understanding of many of these issues, however, requires a deeper knowledge of the harvesting areas and processing than the current state of research allows us.

2. The Mediterranean muricidae and their environment In the Mediterranean there are only three varieties of muricidae: (1) Hexaplex trunculus L.; (2) Bolinus brandaris L.; and (3) Stramonita haemastoma L., the red-mouthed rockshell. Hexaplex trunculus produces the darkest colour and the dye is stronger (because of the high level of an indigotin-like precursor). Bolinus brandaris produces a lighter pinkish tint. The dye from Stramonita haemastoma, having a higher proportion of red pigments (dibromoindigotin), is not as blue as that from H. trunculus. When the other two species were used for dye production, a certain amount of H. trunculus often had to be added to make the dye stronger. According to the latest chemical research, the idea is emerging that the intensity of the tone depends on the animal’s sex (fig. 4.1, p. 145).5 This was not known to the ancients, however, so the presence of more females than males, or vice versa, could alter the intensity of the dye. The end result may also vary depending on the technical conditions employed. The process can be slowed down if the dye is prepared away from the sunlight. If this is done, the worker has half an hour in which to make use of the ingredients for a good dye. The most concentrated and darkest dye was the most highly valued, especially if it was used twice to dye the most precious cloth or dibapha (of silk, wool or, with somewhat poorer results, linen). An iridescent colour, with various shades of the same hue, secured the highest price. One of the most interesting aspects of the characteristics of these muricidae relates to the influence of the environment. The ecosystem in which they lived and the treatment which they underwent during and after harvesting are important. Firstly, we must remember that each of these species lives at a different depth. ‘Although Hexaples trunculus lives in waters as deep as 120 m, it is more frequent in shallow waters at depths of between 1 m and 10–20 m in areas where the bivalves, on which it feeds almost exclusively, proliferate’;6 Bolinus brandaris lives between 10–150 m7 and Stramonita haemastoma does not live below a depth of 2–3 m.8 The classical authors believed that the quality of the water in which the muricidae lived had a great influence on the successful development of these animals. The intensity of marine harvesting is also a concern. At the present state of our knowledge, however, we cannot determine whether there were certain areas of the Mediterranean which held special advantages, or if these continue to exist today. Muricidae seem to have been found in waters with a temperature range much wider than previously thought, from the cold Atlantic to the warmer parts of the eastern Mediterranean. Tracing their evolutionary progress in such a vast environment is a highly difficult task.

5 6 7 8

André Verhecken’s experimental work: Verhecken 1994. Cardon 2007: 578. Cardon 2007: 567. Cardon 2007: 583.

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Human exploitation of other marine resources would also have had an influence on the populations of these three marine gastropods. Production areas of purple dye would have felt the impact of continued harvesting, though not to the current degree of imbalance caused by trawler fishing. Some written sources imply that overfishing took place, or so it would appear from the words of Pliny the Elder. He describes the best times to fish as being after midsummer or before spring, giving the muricidae time to reproduce and recover the strength of their purple dye at other times of the year. Pliny adds a very interesting phrase: sed id tinguentium officinae ignorant, cum summa vertatur in eo.9 I believe that the sense of ignorant here is that operators of such officinae, or workshops, intentionally ignored a reality of which they were aware (and, therefore, ignored the issues of weakness or reproduction and continued to fish in order to satisfy their economic interests) rather than that they were ignorant of this reality and continued to fish innocently. Aristotle’s malacological and environmental knowledge provides important insights into the lifecycle and harvesting of murex. These biological studies were made possible through the author’s detailed personal observations as well as his contacts with fishermen. The latter played an important role in his understanding of the process of reproduction and the times suitable for harvesting that have come down to us.10 In his discourse, Aristotle describes the ecosystems at several locations along the eastern Mediterranean and around the Propontis (Sea of Marmara), where there was an abundance of muricidae.11 He thought the size of mature animals varied depending on environmental conditions, a theory that was subsequently taken up by many authors, especially Pliny. For example, the murex found in the Sea of Marmara near the cities of Sigeum and Lectum in the Troad were considered to be large, while smaller specimens were to be found elsewhere, for instance ‘in the Euripus [the strait between Euboea and Boeotia] and on the coast of Caria’.12 All these areas were particularly rich in antiquity.13 Aristotle believed that nature could induce modifications in the sizes and characteristics of the molluscs, especially concerning the colour of the dye obtained and the size. He clearly distinguished the difference between smaller and larger sizes in terms of the age of the animal and the variation in size according to the environmental circumstances. Moreover, Aristotle observed the influence of the habitat of the mollusc (protected or unprotected bays): ‘those which are found in the bays are large and rough, most with a black bloom’; by contrast, ‘the specimens that are found along the coast and on the rocks are small-sized, and the bloom in their case is of a reddish hue’.14 In other cases, his explanations of the differences in size and colour are less convincing, as, for example, when he reports that ‘if the bay or cave in question faces north for example, the dye will be blackish; if it faces south, it will be red’.15

9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Pliny, NH 9.133. Aristotle, History of Animals 5.547a15. Mylona 2008: 50–60. Aristotle, History of Animals 5.547a15; Alfaro and Mylona 2014, 150–1. Mylona 2008: 50–60. Aristotle, History of Animals 5.547a15. Aristotle, History of Animals 5.547a15.

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3. From east to west: the expansion of purple production activity During the Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean an advanced knowledge of muricidae, the raw material for dyes for high-quality textiles and wall paintings, developed.16 Attempting to prove whether one culture or another – Phoenician or Greek – was the first to use this purple dye is irrelevant here. As evidenced by the wonderful, albeit brief, work of P. Faure, the high priority accorded by the ancient Greeks to this resource is clearly seen from the evidence of archaeology and literary sources.17 On the other hand, we need to consider the possibility that this activity began long before the Bronze Age.18 The study of the development of technology in prehistory is fascinating and shows that progress was costly and slow. For example, before eastern societies began to weave with heddles (for which there is no evidence before the sixth millennium), textiles were made using techniques closely related to those of basketry, but utilising delicate threads of linen or hemp.19 In the case of purple-dye technology too, some developments must have occurred before the Bronze Age. That it was possible to use colour from muricidae must have been common knowledge in the Levant at an early stage. Today, we know that some parts of the magnificent sixth-millennium BC textiles from Nahal Hemar (Israel) meticulously studied by T. Schick included purple-dyed yarns deriving from nearby coasts.20 Ugaritic texts mention argamanu, which is interpreted as marine purple; the Bible and archaeological evidence from the south eastern Mediterranean region confirm the importance of wearing purple (called argaman or tekhelet depending on the shade).21 Phoenician production was intense in Levantine coastal workshops, with their rich historical significance.22 After the so-called ‘Dark Age’ of Greek culture (tenth to seventh century BC) the number of marine-purple workshops in the Aegean increased and reached a high point in the Classical period. Thanks to recent research we are now able to plot a much more com-

16 17 18 19 20 21

22

Jackson 1916; Jensen 1965; Karali 1999; 2005; Sotiropoulou 2005. Faure 1991; see also Reese 1987; 2000; Jensen 1963; Aloupi et al. 1990; Bruin 1970; Karali 2005; Carannante 2010; Constantinidis and Karali 2011; Moulherat and Spantidaki 2007. Barber 1991: 223–5; Haubrichs 2005: 133. Alfaro 2012. Schick 1989; also Spanier (ed.) 1987. Over many years a vast literature focused on deciphering the meaning and composition of these two colours – considered close to the divine or sublime – has developed: see, for example, Faure 1991; Spanier (ed.) 1987; Karmon and Spanier 1988. Cf. also Gertwagen, this volume, p. 351. McGovern and Michel 1984; 1985; 1990. It should be borne in mind that the Phoenicians were considered the originators of this technology. The Greeks called them phoinikes (phoinix = red) because of the colour of those who worked with purple; in Sparta, phoinikis = ‘red military cloak’. Compare also Aristophanes, Lysistrata 1140; Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 11.3. Cartledge (1979) suggests red was used for the cloaks because (1) the colour was considered to have magical properties and (2) it disguised bloodstains, but principally because of the availability of red dye. In his Description of Greece, Pausanias (3.21.6) claims that next to those of Phoenicia, the best molluscs from which to make purple dye are those of Laconia (the area south of Sparta, perhaps including Cythera and the islands closer to the coast).

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prehensive map of the purple-dye industry in the eastern Mediterranean, but, even so, there are certainly sites which existed and have not yet been identified.23 The central and western Mediterranean area is also rich in archaeological and literary evidence for purple-dye production.24 Regrettably, few major studies have been undertaken on this material thus far, probably due to the complex nature of the process that was undertaken in a purple-production workshop. Systematic harvesting of the muricidae, as distinct from casual predation, may be an age-old activity in the Mediterranean Sea. While we have only limited information for Archaic times, we have details about harvesting techniques of the Classical period involving pots, underwater traps or apnea divers (i. e., free divers).25 Thus, I suggest that this transition could have been driven by the developing demand for these animals in the dye industry. After their primary use as a source of food and ornamentation, the extraction of dye was an important secondary economic use. Roman times, especially the final years of the Roman Empire, witnessed the development of a very high volume of production. We must, nonetheless, keep in mind that the primary function of muricidae in antiquity, as in modern times, was as food.26 It is important to identify, first of all, the environment that was necessary for the optimal development of the dye industry. It is very possible that the expansion of the purple-dye technique into the wider Mediterranean region occurred in parallel with the processes of Greek and Phoenician colonisation, commencing in the ninth and eighth centuries BC. In the case of the Phoenicians, small islands off the mainland were a frequent choice for new settlements. The ideal setting for producing dye was a lagoon or wide bay with calm waters and a variety of water depths where the three sought-after species might live. At least, this seems to be the scenario indicated by the available archaeological remains. To produce the dye, it was essential to have easy access to sea salt (from salt-pans) and fresh water. Similarly, the process of dyeing requires fresh water and additional salt. It also requires vats, along with ashes or some other form of bleach to modify the pH value of the mixture. An adjacent forest was useful, to supply the fuel necessary to make and maintain a series of fires for heating the metal vats in which the liquid was reduced. According to Pliny, these vats were made of ‘lead’.27 In Ibiza, near the most important coastal workshop studied to date (Pou des Lleó), there is a mine of lead-rich galena (lead sulphide). Undoubtedly, most crucial of all was a vast supply of molluscs to provide the glands containing the dye precur-

23 24

25 26

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Alfaro and Mylona 2014, 161–2. On the northern Adriatic, see Di Filippo-Balestrazzi 2011; on the area of Rome, see Di Filippo-Balestrazzi 1998; on the city area of Cumae, see Alfaro and Fernández 2014; on Leptis Magna, see Blanc 1958; on the important workshops of Meninx in Tunisia, see Drine 2000; on Euhesperides (Libya), see Wilson 2004; on Taranto, with its enormous deposits of trunculus and brandaris, see Cardon 2007: 581; on Ibiza, see Alfaro 2002; Costa and Wild 2004; Alfaro and Costa 2008; Ramón 2004; on Cádiz and its environs, see Bernal-Casasola et al. 2008; 2011. Aristotle, History of Animals 5.547a15; Oppian, On Fishing 4.593–616. Even today, it is possible to buy spiny dye-murex, Bolinus brandaris, in the markets of the cities of southern France, southern Spain and the Levant; less frequently, because of the extreme toughness of its flesh, the banded dye-murex, Hexaplex trunculus, is sold. The same applies to the Adriatic and other Mediterranean areas. Pliny, NH 9.133. He is referring to tin or plumbum album.

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sors. Thus a great deal of manpower was required. All these requirements enable us to sketch out the environmental qualities that the production site should possess. The Hellenistic period represents an important step forward for the purple business.28 Many cities of mainland Greece, its most important islands and the Asia Minor littoral developed their own fisheries and purple-production workshops. The taste for luxury spread to the most powerful of their citizens, following the example of the great and idealised Alexander or his father Philip II of Macedon, whose tomb glittered with light-gold threads and purple-dyed silk fabric. From this period we have evidence of important dye-production sites, some of which began their activity in previous centuries and somewhere production went on into the period of the Roman Republic. Whilst we are unable to make an exhaustive list of the workshops that existed during this period, we do know the most significant ones, such as those at Hermione (whose tradition of purple production is mentioned by Plutarch29), Delos in the Cyclades,30 Kouphonissi and Palaikastro in Crete31 and Euhesperides in Libya32 amongst many others.

4. An important question: ‘secondary use’ of murex shells When we consider the economic and social use of Mediterranean muricidae, we do not think simply of a luxury item used to symbolise the power and distinction of the aristocracy. Nor do we think of them only as ingredients in the daily diet. These animals were utilised in many other activities of daily life too, as archaeological and literary evidence amply demonstrate. The presence of murex shells in areas adjacent to the purple-production workshops allows us to trace their use. This ‘secondary use’ of the shells of muricidae has long been accepted by scholars. Once the animals had been used to make dye, their shells were collected periodically from the workshops for various purposes. Depending on their intended use, they may have been crushed into different sizes or even turned into powder. This powder was actually a pure lime of extraordinary quality. To start with, fine lime was highly useful in the very process of the preparation of the liquid dye, as a pH reducer. Crushed, high-quality lime could be used for plastering walls and floors. The shells could be used as a multipurpose building material, especially for mosaic floors and waterproof ponds, but also for the construction of walls and embankments against rainwater.33 Many examples could be given, but two references related to the transport of these shells should suffice here.34 Murex powder was also used in ancient medicine and magic, two closely-linked areas in terms of technique and knowledge. For example, whilst the meat of gastropods was considered tough and indigestible, its liquid was thought to possess laxative properties: ‘depuis Hip28 29 30 31 32 33

34

Monaghan 2000. Plutarch, Alexander 36. Bruneau 1969; 1978. Bosanquet 1904; Reese 1987; 2000. Reese 1970–80; Wilson 2004; Tébar and Wilson 2008. Dell’Aglio 2015, 440–1, figs. 10–4. The remains of a structure found in Taranto, near the Mar Piccolo, included rows of Greek wine amphorae driven into the ground at an angle and covered with a mixture of murex shell and lime mortar. Bruneau 1969: 765–7, fig. 3; Karali 2014.

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pocrate jusqu’à Oribase, la plus grand nombre des médecins grecs ou latins reconnaissent qu’il existe dans les mollusques testacés deux principes différents … la chair est lourde et difficile à digérer … tandis que la partie liquide … est naturellement laxative’.35 Powdered murex was used as a base for ointments of different types. Dioscorides recommends the use of burnt murex as a tooth powder, for reducing superfluous flesh, as well as for cleaning and healing wounds. He also suggests that crushed murex shell can be cooked with anointing oil and applied against hair loss; powdered and dissolved with vinegar, it reduces swelling of the spleen; administered in incense, it causes bursts of hot flushes that encourage placental expulsion.36 Pliny the Elder also recommends an ointment made from the powdered ash of murex shell mixed with honey as a remedy for female chest complaints,37 all kinds of ulcers38 and other conditions.39 Here, it must be understood that it is burnt murex shell ground to a powder that is utilised.40 Locard (1884) pointed out that ‘Galen est un des auteurs qui semble le moins partisan de l’utilité des mollusques dans l’alimentation … ils nourissent peu et engendrent le sang noir’41 (clearly a magical conception based on the principle of similia similibus). Galen believed, however, that powdered bucinum shell (our Stratonita haemastoma) had aphrodisiac powers and helped against impotence.42 Religion and magic are also linked to the use of muricidae. In their private symposia, the gods consume all sorts of shellfish, including purple snails.43 Powdered murex shell is a fine antidote against poisons used in charms.44 Regrettably, we have no information as to how the reuse of discarded murex shells was organized. Was this waste material simply obtained in exchange for periodic cleaning of the floor? Or was it paid for? Either way, this recycling activity suggests that the dye industry was ‘sustainable’ from an ecological point of view. The accumulation of dye-workshop debris would have been an inconvenience and we can assume that (in many cases) the piles of shells represent only a part of the detritus of the arduous work of producing dye from muricidae.45

35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45

Locard 1884: 216. Dioscorides, De Materia Medica 2.4; 2.7. Pliny, NH 32.129. Pliny, NH 32.108. Pliny, NH 32.68; 32.78; 32.82–9; 32.95–8; 32.106; 32.108; 32.127; 32.129. Locard 1884, 215–20. In the dye manufacturing process, it is necessary to make a fire in order to heat the boiler, and burnt remains of murex shells are frequently recovered from the workshops. These may well have fallen from the suspended cauldron and broken, and were perhaps subsequently collected for dye production. We have no concrete information on these processes, but it is likely that these sites could provide in the future the clarification we seek. Locard 1884, 217. Galen, De remediis parabilibus 2.37 (487 Kühn). Athenaeus 3.85c-e. Pliny, NH 9.80; 32.125. I am grateful to Eloisa Sanchez Bernaldez (biologist attached to the Andalusian Historical Heritage Institute) for her suggestions concerning the volume and formation of malacological accumulations at the meeting ‘Arqueomalacología III’, Cadiz 3–4 December 2012.

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5. Purple production in the Roman world Roman culture inherited from Greece, among many other things, a love of Homer. He was required reading for every youth belonging to the ruling classes. The frequent descriptions of robes wrapping the bodies of the Greek heroes that appear in the Iliad and the Odyssey must have produced a desire for emulation. Moreover, Virgil encapsulates the importance of purple as an element of identity, what could be termed a ‘social standard’, of the aristocracy, when, in the Aeneid, he describes the camp of the Rutulians with soldiers who carry, in addition to bright and golden garments, colourful purple plumes (purpurei cristis).46 Roman garments employed the colour purple as a symbol of class and status. The tunica angusticlavia of an equestrian and the tunica laticlavia of a senator were characterised by two purple strips over the white cloth of linen or wool, depending on the season. The strips fell from each shoulder to the hem, both at the front and at the back. The sleeves also usually had a fringe at the wrist.47 This was also the case for the togas worn by children and adults. Both had a purple band stiched on to the white fabric.48 But there were also completely purple cloaks. In Roman Greece, men continued to wear rectangular-shaped cloaks in the tradition of the old himation, which, in earlier times, had enveloped the Greek philosophers (fig. 4.2). An interesting Etruscan bronze sculpture known as the ‘arringatore’49 carries one of these Greek-style mantles which became fashionable once again with the advent of neo-Atticism in the early Roman Empire, especially in the eastern provinces. Roman women of high social class also used purple dye in their dress, as evidenced in the paintings from Pompeii (fig. 4.3). Soft robes and veils made from fine wool, silk or byssus fibres were a sign of distinction. It should be kept in mind that in the early Republic, the use of purple was unrestricted. In later times, under the Empire, wearing the ‘royal purple of Tyre’ known as sacer murex became the exclusive preserve of the imperial family. This dye had a very high proportion of H. Trunculus, leaving the other varieties, lighter or pinker, the so-called conchylian colours, to be used freely by anyone who could afford them.50 The Augustan principate marks a high point for the price of murex purple dye, which was very high compared to dyes derived from other raw materials.51 Pliny the Elder compares its price to that of pearls.52

46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Virgil, Aeneid 9.161–3. Bender-Jørgensen 2011; Schieck 2005: 13. Wilson 1924. Granger-Taylor 1982. Schmidt 1842. Gonfreville 1848: 465; Jackson 1916: 60; Evans 1969: 479; Alfaro 1984: 209. Pliny, NH 9.124: margaritis praetia et fecit.

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Fig. 4.1: Experimentally produced purple dye. Top, Bolinus Brandaris male (left) and female (right); below, Hexaplex trunculus male (left) and female (right). (Photo courtesy of A. Verhecken).

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Fig. 4.2: Statue of Augustus wearing a purple himation, Corinth Museum. (Author’s photo).

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In the Roman economy, muricidae were utilised both as a foodstuff53 and as a component in the vibrant dye industry. The latter’s economic importance was reflected in its high turnover, with profits far surpassing those from the sale of muricidae as a foodstuff.54 Nevertheless, in both cases, they constitute an economic resource. As a foodstuff, they were used at both the domestic and industrial level in cetariae, salting vats (i. e., murex were used in the production of salted fish products). There are many sites where facilities for the manufacture of dye and the large-scale production of salted fish are situated close together.55 Under Roman rule, purple production continued in the Aegean56 and reached its greatest extent in the late Imperial and Byzantine periods.57 At this time, we encounter purple-production workshops along the entire Mediterranean littoral: at Mozia in Sicily; Kydonia (Chania) in Crete (a highly interesting site which still awaits publication); Ibiza,58 etc. At many of these sites production goes back to an earlier period, evolved from a Hellenistic or Phoenician-Punic tradition,59 but other sites developed during the Roman Empire as did, for example, the vast workshop at Meninx in Tunisia.60 In general, in all areas with an established tradition of purple-dye production, manufacture was vigorous in late antiquity.

6. Social demand in the Roman world During the long history of Rome, the inhabitants of the shores of the Mediterranean – that the Romans called mare nostrum, ‘our sea’ – used the purple colour as a sign of distinction. It was used to denote the social group to which one belonged or to distinguish certain members within it. The red-blue dye of muricidae came to be considered a symbol of high social status, characteristic of the nobility and the imperial family.61 Owing to the difficulty of obtaining the product and its high price, murex dye soon became an exclusive commodity. Its use was available to a social minority only: the elite who could afford it. Over time, the demand for some types of the dye, used by the army or by the wealthy of all social classes, increased, and its trade constituted an element of great economic importance. Therefore the legal control enforced during the period of the late Roman Empire (following much older laws) represents an effort to restrict the use of certain shades 53

54

55 56 57 58 59 60 61

Current studies do not permit us to determine the proportion used as a foodstuff. The presence of Bolinus bandaris in mosaic images described as asartoron (‘unswept floor’) or the ‘remains of the feast’ (fig. 4) indicate that marine snails of this species were very popular among the powerful of all Roman provinces: Finet and Olive 2005: 109. They remain popular today; not only are they consumed in the Adriatic region, but across the Mediterranean and to the Atlantic Spanish coast (in Andalusia they are called cañaílla). We can even imagine the possibility of another secondary use – the preservation of the molluscs as a foodstuff by salting them – after the hypobranchial glands had been removed in the process of obtaining the liquid for dye production: see Pliny, NH 9.126. Bernal-Casasola et al. 2008. Karali 2005: 162. Alfaro and Costa 2008: 196, fig. 1. Alfaro and Tébar 2004: 197. Some excavated in Ibiza (Alfaro and Tébar 2004; Costa and Wild 2004; Costa and Alfaro 2008; Alfaro and Costa 2008) and Mozia (J. I. S. Whitaker, 1921; K. Ziegler, 1933). Drine 2000. Schneider 1959; Reinhold 1970: 7–15; Blum 1998.

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Fig. 4.3: Venus and Mars: wall-painting from Pompeii. (Bridgeman Art Library). achieved in specific ways. This control is evidenced by the state legislation concerning purple-production workshops.62 How was it achieved? By taking control of the distribution and use of the commodity in its various forms and converting many centres (the most traditional ones) into baphia or imperial dye works. These dye workshops are listed in the Notitia Dignitatum, a work compiled in the late fourth century AD by the order of the emperor Theodosius as an instrument of government for his sons, Arcadius and Honorius. 63 The ruling powers were especially interested in the procurement of military clothing, whose distribution was within the domain of the public aerarium.64 In fact, there were mo-

62 63 64

Persson 1923; Napoli 2004. Hoffmann 1969; Wild 1976; see also Neira Faleiro’s commentary to the edition of the Notitia. Delmaire 1989.

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Fig. 4.4: Mosaic with ‘Remains of the feast’: Bolinus brandaris and Murex trunculus, Vatican Museums. (Author’s photo). nopolies, textile factories or gynaecea,65 which used dyed purple bands to decorate certain parts of the clothing. In addition to large areas of the eastern Mediterranean (Cyprus, Syria, the Dardanelles strait and the Palestine littoral including Tyre, Sarepta, Sidon, Beirut, Haifa or Tel Siqmona), the Notitia cites several specific places in the western part of the Empire. All of them were under the charge of a responsible officer (the procurator baphii Tarentini, Salonitani, Cissensis, Venetiae et Histriae, Syracusani, Girbitani, Telonensis, Narbonensis, Procurator baphiorum omnium per Africa and insularum Balearum in Hispania).66 The Balearic baphium seems to have been concentrated around the islands of Ibiza and Formentera (both with a strong traditional presence of Phoenician and Punic populations). Our knowledge of the small workshops in Mallorca and Minorca (where H. de Lacaze-Duthiers carried out his experiments) is growing. The site known as Pou des Lleó goes back to the early Byzantine period.67 In Italy, there were noteworthy workshops in the Venetian area, especially in Colonia Iulia Concordia and on the Istrian peninsula.68 Cumae and the Naples area did not contain any of the large imperial workshops, but there are some indications of purple production 65 66 67

68

Wild 1967; 1976. Notitia Diginitatum 11.64–73. Alfaro and Tébar 2004; Costa and Wild 2004. In ancient Baetica, or more specifically the Strait of Gibraltar, including the Mauretania Tingitana territories, purple-production workshops of great interest, associated with cetariae workshops, have been identified through D. Bernal-Casasola’s work at the University of Cádiz. However, these workshops were outside the western boundary of the baphia mentioned above. Di Filippo-Balestrazzi 2011.

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in the former.69 The baphium Tarentini left huge accumulations of snail shells in the Gulf of Taranto. Regrettably, the site has not yet been excavated. In southern France, Toulon and Narbonne are areas of production worthy of mention; in North Africa production took place on Djerba and elsewhere, all part of the omnium baphium per Africa, under the leadership of the same procurator. Dye workshops were organised as murilegulis vel linteariis.70 Purple fishers depended on the workshops for a market.71 The head of each workshop of the baphium, who was an intermediary between the procurator and workers, would ensure that the work was done at the necessary pace. An edict for the western Empire issued by Valentinian I and preserved in the Theodosian Code mentions them as praepositi.72 It is not possible to establish whether those responsible for the baphia workshops were also identified by this title, nor whether the praepositi could be people, perhaps local people, who knew the fishermen and the procurator well.

7. The trade in purple by individuals Roman epigraphy speaks of those engaged in the sale of wool and other raw materials dyed with purple: the so-called purpurarii,73 who were present in Puteoli, Capua, Aquileia, Parma, Faventia, Narbo, Lugdunum, etc. In inland areas of Europe too we find evidence of their presence. These are places where people worked with materials tinted with marine dyes, especially wool threads. Moreover, trade in silk threads dyed with different colours took place throughout the Roman Empire. These could subsequently be woven into garments and other products – in small quantities, given the high price that purple-dyed yarns fetched in the market. On the Iberian peninsula only two sources mentioning purpurarii have been noted. One problematic reading74 refers to a woman from Gadir (Cádiz).75 The other one mentions two purpurarii from Córdoba,76 an inland city, but easily accessible by boat along the Guadalquivir river. These professionals were engaged in the sale and trade of purple in all formats (dye, yarn dyed and prepared in hanks, possibly also dyed with the purple hues that were permitted for more common use). A famous funeral stele in Parma dedicated to C. Pupius Amicus shows us the tools characteristic of these professionals (fig. 4.5): small containers for transporting dye, hanks of dyed yarn, a weighing scale and a possible spatula for mixing.77 This evidence enables us to highlight the importance of trade within a major production area, such as the Strait of Gibraltar, based particularly in the splendid Bay of Cádiz.78 Long-distance trade is more difficult to trace. Scholars disagree on the transportation net69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

Alfaro and Fernández forthcoming . Codex Theodosianus 10.20. The conchyleguliis from the Codex Theodosianus 10.20. Codex Theodosianus 7.20.10. Vicari 2001: 74, 95, 100. Alfaro 1984, 216–7. CIL 2.1743. CIL 2.2235. Alfaro 1984: 218, with bibliography; Macheboeuf 2004. Bernal-Casasola et al. 2008.

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Fig. 4.5: Gravestone of the purpurarius C. Pupius Amicus, Museo de Parma. (Photo courtesy of the German Archaeological Institute, Rome, D-DAI-ROM-67.1633).

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work of purple dye from the major production centres of the Mediterranean coastal regions to the textile production sites located in the interior. We do not have any amphorae associated with the transport of liquid dye (which required delicate handling owing to its propensity to deteriorate rapidly). Two amphorae recovered from Delos were filled with crushed shells showing the holes typically resulting from the extraction of dye.79 This indicates that amphorae were at least used to transport shells for ‘secondary use’. In my opinion, dyed yarn was sold on for further use. Whether the threads were dyed directly on the shore (presumably the reason why vats were found there), or in dying workshops in nearby cities (like those of Pompeii) is something we cannot ascertain in every case. The evidence from Ibiza allows us to conclude that the point of export for all dyed products from the island would have been the only important port in the area, Ebussus city.80

8. Questions for future research Ongoing studies concerning the production and use of purple in Roman times constitute a large field of activity. Interdisciplinary studies, involving historical, social, economic, legal, literary, iconographical and, of course, textile aspects, are increasingly being utilised by the numerous scholars working on the topic. To these must be added technical, ecological, archaeo-malacological and chemical studies. Such a cross-disciplinary research direction will lead to a more precise understanding of the position of purple in ancient times. Currently, many questions remain unanswered. We do know, however, that muricidae were harvested as food and also for the dye industry, as well as for a wide variety of activities that used the discarded shells. We have seen that murex-based activities may even have contributed to the over-exploitation of the malacological riches. Work involving murex was probably a seasonal activity, both in Greek and Roman times, and this raises the question as to whether the conchylioleguli and murileguli of our late Roman sources were occupied with other tasks at different times of the year. An ethnographic example proves an object lesson here: instead of a specialised division of labour, inhabitants of the coast of Ibiza worked in recent times at various occupations depending on the season and their needs . Some fished or made nets and traps, while also cultivating their land and husbanding their small herds of cattle. Until recently, they extracted lime from stones, made pitch to caulk their ships, produced charcoal and even built their own fishing boats. Such a reality, in a territory that has changed only superficially, is very significant. The autarky between the sea and the land has to be kept in mind. We need to keep an open mind and review the entrenched and erroneous concept of job specialisation. The various forms of the exploitation of resources in coastal areas and the nature of related occupations require further investigation. The economic control of marine resources at the state level is certainly an important area of future research. We know that in the Greek cities strict legal standards were exercised 79 80

Bruneau 1969. Alfaro 2002; Alfaro and Tébar 2004: 206–7; Costa and Alfaro 2008: 198. The island seems to have been an important place for wool production. Indeed, Diodorus of Sicily, quoting Timaeus, tells us that ‘the island is only moderately fertile, possessing little land that is suitable for the vine, but it has olive trees which are engrafted upon the wild olive. And of all the products of the island, they say that the softness of its wool stands first in excellence’ (Diodorus of Sicily, 5.16, translated by C. H. Oldfather, LCL).

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concerning the harvesting and processing of seafood products and the exploitation rights of certain harvesting areas that were considered better by being close to the best fishing grounds.81 Under the Roman Empire, control was no longer dependent on the specific rule of each city, but was a very broad diffuse system. Did the powerful arms of the Roman state really reach the most remote beaches of its empire? Was the maintenance of a procurator for the control of the production in each dyeing area effective? These are all crucial questions that should be explored. Concerning purple-dye production, new research methods might be applied to generate new insights. When assessing the archaeological evidence from workshops, we normally pay attention only to the percentages of the three species of muricidae mentioned above. However, the particular make-ups of each of the huge accumulations of shells must be carefully observed in order to attest if pre-selection of the molluscs took place before the preparation and processing of the dyestuff. Was it possible to use certain vats only for a specific kind of muricidae? Some malacological remains seem to suggest this may have been the case.82 This question relates to that of whether or not the ‘fishermen/dye workers’ could have obtained specific colours from each type of mollusc, and then perhaps mixed the results to create different hues. The evidence from some workshops seems to indicate this may have been the case; but this needs to be demonstrated through further experimentation. At present, we do not know if different dyes from different vats could be combined without generating chemical reactions unfavourable to the final result. In the years to come, an important focus should be the archaeological approaches applied to the actual situation in different areas of the Mediterranean littoral. This would indeed require much hard work and cooperation on the part of scholars. Thus, while the way forward may be difficult, we will find the answers – in the absence of substantial written sources – in the piles of shells that were accumulated by the fishermen/dye workers. The potential of the archaeological data should not be underestimated, and we must combine its assessment with legal, literary, epigraphic and numismatic studies. Only the results of a comprehensive multidisciplinary study will enable us to fully understand this important industry and its place within the ancient economy. This research project was supported and funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture in Spain, ref. no. HUM2007–61138/HIST. Carmen Alfaro Giner Departamento de Historia de la Antigüedad y de la Cultura Escrita, Universidad de Valencia Avenida Blasco Ibáñez 28, E-46010 Valencia [email protected]

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Fernández Nieto 2006. Alfaro and Fernández 2014.

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9. References 9.1 Primary sources Aristophanes, Birds, Lysistrata, Women at the Thesmophoria, with an English translation by J. Henderson (LCL 179). Cambridge, MA 2000. Aristotle, History of Animals 2: Books 4–6, with an English translation by A. L. Peck (Loeb Classical Library 438). Cambridge, MA 1970. Codex Theodosianus: The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions, translated by Clyde Pharr et al. (The Corpus of Roman Law 1). Princeton 1952. Diodorus of Sicily, Library of History, 3: 4.59–8, with an English translation by C. H. Oldfather (LCL 340). Cambridge MA 1939. Dioscorides: Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarbus, De materia medica, with an English translation by L. Y. Beck (Altertumswissenschaftliche Texte und Studien 38) Hildesheim 2005. Galen, De remediis parabilibus, in Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia 14, with a Latin translation by C.G. Kühn. Leipzig 1827. La Notitia Dignitatum: Nueva edición crítica y comentario histórico, with a Spanish translation, by C. Neira Faleiro (Nueva Roma 25). Madrid 2005. Pausanias, Description of Greece, 2: Books 3–5 (Messenia, Laconia, Elis 1), with an English translation by W. H. S. Jones and H. A. Ormerod (LCL 188). Cambridge MA 1926. Plutarch, Alexander, in Plutarch, Lives 7: Demosthenes and Cicero, Alexander and Caesar, with an English translation by B. Perrin (LCL 99). Cambridge MA 1914. Virgil, Aeneid 2: Books 7–12, with an English translation by H. Rushton Fairclough, revised by G. P. Goold (LCL 64). Cambridge MA 2001. Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, in Xenophon 7: Hiero, Agesilaus, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, Ways and Means, Cavalry Commander, Art of Horsemanship, On Hunting, Constitution of the Athenians, with an English translation by E. C.Marchant and G. W. Bowersock (LCL 183). Cambridge MA 1925.

9.2 Secondary literature Alfaro, C. 1984. Tejido y cestería en la Hispania prehistórica y romana. Madrid. Alfaro, C. 2002. ‘Ebussus y la producción de púrpura en el Imperio romano’, in M. Khanoussi, P. Ruggeri and C. Vismara (eds), Atti dell XIV Convegno di Studio sull’Africa Romana. Rome, 681– 96. Alfaro, C. 2012. ‘Textiles from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Tell Halula (Euphrates valley, Syria)’, Paléorient 38, 41–54. Alfaro, C. and B. Costa 2008. ‘New contribution to the study of purple day production in Ibiza: the finds of Cala Olivera’, in Alfaro and Karali (eds) 195–208. Alfaro, C. and G. Fernández 2014. ‘Las tonalidades del tinte púrpura y las posibles estrategias de uso de los muricidae en los talleres de la Antigüedad: el caso del territorio de Cumas (Italia)’, in J. J. Cantillo, D. Bernal and J. Ramos (eds.), Moluscos y púrpura en contextos arqueológicos Atlántico-mediterráneos. Cadiz, 329–38. Alfaro, C. and D. Mylona 2014. ‘Fishing for purple shellfish in ancient Greece: acquisition technology and first steps in purple dye production’, in Alfaro, Tellenbach and Ortiz (eds) 151–67. Alfaro, C. and E. Tébar 2004. ‘Aspectos históricos, económicos y técnicos de la producción de púrpura en la Ibiza romana’, in Alfaro, Wild and Costa (eds) 195–210. Alfaro, C. and L. Karali (eds) 2008. Vestidos, textiles y tintes: Estudios sobre la producción de bienes de consumo en la Antigüedad. Actas del II Symposium Internacional sobre Textiles y Tintes del Mediterráneo en el mundo romano (Atenas, 24 al 26 de noviembre, 2005) (Purpureae Vestes 2).Valencia.

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Alfaro, C., J. P. Wild and B. Costa (eds) 2004. Purpureae Vestes: Actas del I Symposium Internacional sobre textiles y tintes del Mediterráneo en época romana (Ibiza, 8 al 10 de noviembre, 2002). Valencia. Alfaro, C., J.-P. Brun, P. Borgard et al. (eds) 2011. Textiles y tintes en la ciudad antigua: Actas del III Symposium Internacional sobre textiles y tintes del Mediterráneo en el mundo romano (Nápoles, 13 al 15 de noviembre, 2008) (Purpureae Vestes 3). Valencia. Alfaro, C., M. Tellenbach and J. Ortiz (eds) 2014. Purpureae Vestes IV: Production and Trade of Textiles and Dyes in the Roman Empire and neighbouring regions (Valencia, 5–6 nov. 2010) (Purpureae Vestes 4). Valencia. Aloupi, E., Y. Maniatis, T. Paradellis and L. Karali-Yannacopoulou 1990. ‘Analysis of a purple material found at Akrotiri’ in D. A. Hardy, C. G. Doumas, J. A. Sakellarakis et al. (eds), Thera and the Aegean World III.1. Archaeology. Proceedings of the Third International Congress, Santorini, Greece, 3–9 September 1989. London, 488–90. Baker, J. T. 1974. ‘Tyrian purple: an ancient dye, a modern problem’, Endeavour 33.118, 1–17. Barber, E. J. W. 1991. Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, with Special Reference to the Aegean. Princeton. Bélis, M. 1999. ‘The use of purple in cooking, medicine and magic: An example of interference by the imaginary in rational discourse’ in R. Buxton (ed.), From Myth to Reason, Studies in the Development of Greek Thought. Oxford, 295–316. Bender-Jørgensen, L. 2011. ‘Clavi and non-clavi: definitions of various bands on Roman textiles’, in Alfaro, Brun, Borgard et al. (eds) 75–81. Bernal-Casasola, D., L. Roldán, J. Bánquez et al. 2008. ‘Un taller de púrpura tardorromano en Carteia (Baetica, Hispania): Avance de las excavaciones preventivas en el conchero de Villa Victoria (2005)’, in Alfaro and Karali (eds) 209–26. Bernal-Casasola, D. A. M. Sáez and M. Bustamante. 2011. ‘Purpura y pesca en el Gadir tardopúnico’, in Alfaro, Brun, Borgard et al. (eds) 157–80. Blanc, A. C. 1958. ‘Residui di manufattura di porpra a Leptis Magna e al Monte Circeo’, in R. Bartoccini, Il porto romano de Leptis Magna. Roma, 185–210. Blum, H. 1998. Purpur als Statussymbol in der Griechischen Welt. Bonn. Borrello, M. A. and R. Micheli 2004. ‘Spondylus gaederopus, gioiello dell’Europa preistorica’, Preistoria Alpina 40, 71–82. Bosanquet, R. C. 1904. ‘Some “Late Minoan” vases found in Greece’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 24, 317–29. Bruin, F. 1970. ‘Royal purple and the dye industries of the Mycenaeans and Phoenicians’, in Mollat, M. (ed.), Sociétés et Compagnies de commerce en Orient et dans l’Océan Indien (Actes du VIIIe Colloque International d’Histoire Maritime, Beyrouth, 5–10 Septembre 1966). Beirut, 73–90. Bruneau, P. 1969. ‘Documents sur l’industrie délienne de la pourpre’, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 93, 759–91. Bruneau, P. 1978. ‘Deliaca II’, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 102, 110–3. Brunello, F. 1973. The Art of Dyeing in the History of Mankind. Vicenza. Carannante, A. 2010. ‘Archaeomalacological data from the Bronze Age industrial complex of Pyrgos-Mavroraki (Cyprus). A non-dietary mollusc exploitation case’, Munibe 31, 156–67. Cardon, D. 2007. Natural Dyes. Sources, Tradition, Technology and Science. Trento. Cartledge, P. 1979. ‘Hoplites and heroes: Sparta’s contribution to the technique of ancient warfare’, The Journal of Hellenic Studies 97, 11–27. Constantinidis, D. and L. Karali 2011. ‘A proposed survey of east Mediterranean murex heaps from the Bronze Age to Roman times: a GIS analysis of possible trade networks’, in Alfaro, Brun and Borgard (eds) 151–5. Costa, B. and C. Alfaro 2008. ‘La explotación de los recursos del mar en las islas Pitiusas durante la Antigüedad’, in J. Napoli (ed), Resources et activités maritimes des peuples de l’Antiquité: Actes du Colloque International de Boulogne-sur-Mer, 12, 13 et 14 Mai 2005 (Cahiers du littoral 2.6). Boulogne, 59–76.

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Costa, B. and S. Wild 2004. ‘La producció de porpra en época romana a Ebusus. Excavacions al jaciment arqueològic de Pou des Lleó/Canal d’en Martí (Eivissa, Illes Balears)’ in Alfaro, Wild and Costa (eds) 175–93. Delmaire, R. 1989. Largesses sacrées et Res privata: L’Aerarium impérial et son administration du IVe au VIe siècle. Rome. Dell’aglio, A. 2015, ‘Taranto nel III secolo a.C.: nuovi dati’, in La Magna Grecia da Pirro ad Annibale: Atti del 52° Convegno di Studi sulla Magna Grecia. Taranto, 431–61. Di Filippo-Balestrazzi, E. 1998. ‘La porpora a Roma’, in O. Longo (ed.), La porpora: Realtà e immaginario di un colore simbolico. Atti del Convegno di Studio. Venezia, 24 e 25 ottobre 1996. Venice, 149–202. Di Filippo-Balestrazzi, E. 2011. ‘La produzione di porpora nell’area di Venezia’, in Alfaro, Brun and Borgard (eds) 215–27. Drine, A. 2000. ‘Les fouilles de Meninx: Résultats des campagnes de 1997 et 1998’, in M. Khanoussi, P. Ruggeri and C. Vismara (eds), L’Africa Romana. Atti del XIII Convegno di Studio, Djerba, 10–13 Dicembre 1998. Rome, 87–94. Evans, J. G. 1969. The Exploitation of Molluscs. London. Faure , P. 1991. ‘La pourpre, invention égéenne’ in R. Laffineur and L. Bach (eds), THALASSA. L’Egée préhistorique et la mer: Actes de la troisième rencontre égéenne internationale de l’Université de Liège, Station de Recherches Sous-marines et Océanographiques, Calvi, Corse, 23–25 avril 1990 (Aegeum 7). Liège, 311–3. Fernández Nieto, F. J. 2006. ‘Titularidad y cesión de los derechos de la pesca marítima en la antigua Grecia’ in H.-A. Rupprecht (ed.), Symposion 2003: Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte. Rauischholzhausen, 30. September – 3. Oktober 2003 (Akten der Gesellschaft für griechische und hellenistische Rechtsgeschichte 17). Vienna, 207–32. Finet, Y. and C. Olive 2005. ‘I mollusqui marini dell’alimentazione gallo-romana della Gallia Transalpina’ in Conchiglie e Archeologia (Preistoria Alpina 40; Preistoria Alpina Supplement 1). Trento, 107–14. Gonfreville, M. D. 1848. Art de la teinture des laines en toison, en fil et en tissu. Paris. Granger-Taylor, H. 1982. ‘Weaving clothes to shape in the ancient world: the tunic and toga of the Arringatore’, Textile History 13, 3–25. Haubrichs, R. 2005. ‘L’étude de la pourpre: histoire d’une couleur, chimie et expérimentation’ in Conchiglie e Archeologia (Preistoria Alpina 40; Preistoria Alpina Supplement 1). Trento, 133–60. Hoffmann, D. 1969. Das Spätrömische Bewegungsheer und die Notitia Dignitatum (Epigraphische Studien 7). Düsseldorf. Jackson, J. W. 1916. The Geographical Distribution of the Shell-Purple Industry (Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society 60.7). Manchester. Jensen, L. B. 1963. ‘Royal purple of Tyre’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 22, 104–18. Jensen, L. B. 1965. The Story of Royal Purple. Sarasota FL. Karali, L. 1999. Shells in Aegean Prehistory (BAR International Series 761). Oxford. Karali, L. 2005. ‘Testimonianze della produzione della porpora nell’Egeo nell’antiquità’ in Conchiglie e Archeologia (Preistoria Alpina 40; Preistoria Alpina Supplement 1). Trento, 161–6. Karali, L. 2014. ‘Recent research on purple dye production in the Mediterranean: how many purple dye worlds! The case of Greece’, in J. J. Cantillo, D. Bernal and J. Ramos (eds), Moluscos y púrpura en contextos arqueológicos Atlántico-mediterráneos. Cadiz, 283–86. Karmon, N. and E. Spanier 1988. ‘Remains of a purple dye industry found at Tel Shiqmona’, Israel Exploration Journal 38, 184–6. Lacaze-Duthiers, H. de 1859. ‘Mémoire sur la pourpre’, Annales des Sciences Naturales 4e série, Zoologie 12, 5–84. Locard, A. 1884. Histoire des mollusques dans l’antiquité. Lyon. Macheboeuf, C. 2004. ‘Pourpre et matières textiles: des ateliers aux tabernae’, in Alfaro, Wild and Costa (eds) 137–43. McGovern, P. E. and R. H. Michel 1984. ‘Royal purple and the pre-Phoenician dye industry of Lebanon’, MASCA Journal 3, 67–70.

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McGovern, P. E. and R. H. Michel 1985. ‘Royal purple dye: tracing chemical origins of the industry’, Analytical Chemistry 57, 1514A-22A. McGovern, P. E. and R. H. Michel 1990. ‘A dye for gods and kings’, Archaeology 43.2, 33. Monaghan, M. 2000. ‘Dyeing establishments in Classical and Hellenistic Greece’, in D. Cardon and M. Feugière (eds), Archéologie des textiles des origines au Ve siècle. Actes du colloque de Lattes, oct. 1999 (Monographies Instrumentum 14). Montagnac, 167–72. Montes, R. 1991. ‘La Cueva de los Aviones. Un yacimiento del Paleolítico Medio (Cartagena, Spain)’, Memorias de Arqueología de la Región de Murcia 2, 35–58. Moulherat, C. and J. Spantidaki 2007. ‘A study of textile remains from the 5th century BC discovered in Kalyvia, Attica’, in C. Gillis and M.-L. B. Nosch (eds), Ancient Textiles: Production, Craft and Society. Oxford, 163–6. Mylona, D. 2008. Fish-Eating in Greece from 500 BC to AD 700: A Story of Impoverished Fishermen of Lavish Fish Banquets? (BAR International Series 1754). Oxford. Napoli, J. 2004. ‘Art purpuraire et législation à l’époque romaine’, in Alfaro, Wild and Costa (eds) 123–36. Persson, A. W. 1923. Staat und Manufaktur im Römischen Reiche. Lund. Ramón, J. 2004. ‘Evidències d’elaboració de porpra i fabricació de teixits a sa Caleta (Eivissa)’, in Alfaro, Wild and Costa (eds) 165–74. Reese, D. S. 1970–80. ‘Industrial exploitation of murex shells: purple-dye and lime production at Sidi Khrebish, Benghazi (Berenice)’, Libyan Studies 11, 79–93. Reese, D. S. 1987. ‘Palaikastro shells and Bronze Age purple-dye production in the Mediterranean basin’, Annual of the British school at Athens 82, 201–6. Reese, D. S. 2000. ‘Iron Age shell purple-dye production in the Aegean’, in J. W. Shaw and M. C. Shaw (eds), Kommos IV. The Greek Sanctuary. Princeton, 643–5. Reinhold, M. 1970. The History of Purple as a Status Symbol in Antiquity (Collection Latomus 116). Brussels. Schick, T. 1989. ‘Nahal Hemar Cave. Cordage, basketry and fabrics’, Antiqot (English Series) 18, 31–43. Schieck, A. 2005. Die koptischen Textilien. Gewebe und Gewänder des ersten Jahrtausends aus Ägypten. Cologne. Schmidt, W. A. 1842. Forschung auf dem Gebiete des Altertums I: Die Purpurfärberei und der Purpurhandel im Altertum. Berlin, 96–212. Schneider, K. 1959. ‘Purpura’, RE 23.2, 2000–20. Sotiropoulou, S. 2005. ‘La pourpre dans l’art cycladique: identification du pigment dans les peintures murales d’Akrotiri (Thèra, Grèce)’ in Conchiglie e Archeologia (Preistoria Alpina 40; Preistoria Alpina Supplement 1). Trento, 167–76. Spanier, E. (ed.) 1987. The Royal Purple and the Biblical Blue: Argaman and Tekhelet. The Study of Chief Rabbi Dr Isaac Herzog on the Dye Industries in Ancient Israel and Recent Scientific Contributions. Jerusalem. Tébar, E. and A. Wilson 2008. ‘Classical and Hellenistic textile production at Euesperides (Benghazi, Libya): preliminary results’, in Alfaro and Karali (eds) 49–59. Verhecken, A. 1994. ‘Experiments with the dyes from European purple-producing shellfish’, Dyes in History and Archaeology 12, 32–5. Vicari, F. 2001. Produzione e commercio dei tessuti nell’Occidente romano (BAR International Series 916). Oxford. Whitaker, J. I. S. 1921. Motya: A Phoenician Colony in Sicily, London 1921. Wild, J. P. 1967. ‘The “Gynaeceum” at “Venta” and its context’, Latomus 26, 648–76. Wild, J. P. 1976. ‘The Gynaecea’, in R. Goodburn and P. Bartholomew (eds), Aspects of the Notitia Dignitatum (BAR International Series 15). Oxford, 57–98. Wilson, A. 2004. ‘Archaeological evidence for textile production and dyeing in Roman North Africa’, in Alfaro, Wild and Costa (eds) 155–64. Wilson, L. M. 1924. The Roman Toga. Baltimore. Ziegler, K. 1933. ‘Motya’, RE 16, 387–407.

Robert I. Curtis

Ancient processed fish products

1. Introduction The study of ancient processed fish products is a relatively recent phenomenon.1 In 1832, Heinrich Karl Ernst von Köhler, curator of antiquities at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, published a seminal monograph that draws upon a wide array of literary sources to identify fish byproducts and relates them to those being produced in contemporary Black Sea fisheries.2 His monograph, however, generated little interest until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but even then the approach remained primarily literary.3 Although these works increased our awareness of these commodities as part of Graeco-Roman society, they added little to our understanding either of the important place they held in the ancient economy or the nature of the products themselves and how they were produced. This situation changed dramatically in the middle of the twentieth century. In 1952 Pierre Grimal and Thomas Monod connected the ancient fish sauces and how they were produced with their modern counterparts in Southeast Asia. Nine years later, Claude Jardin investigated the nutritive value of the ancient products through biochemical and microbiological analysis of modern nuoc-mam. And, finally, in 1965, Michel Ponsich and Miguel Tarradell’s monograph on the fish-salting industry in Roman Spain and North Africa defined criteria now used to identify installations elsewhere.4 These three mid-century contributions, the correspondence of ancient products with modern ones, the employment of scientific disciplines to examine the nature of fish byproducts and the use of archaeological evidence to investigate how these products were made, set the study of ancient processed fish on new and firm foundations and generated heightened awareness of and increased attention to these products by historians, classicists, archaeologists and scientists. Interest in ancient fishery byproducts has significantly expanded since the middle of the twentieth century, as archaeologists and food scientists have increasingly partnered to share the fruits of their work. Ajinomoto, Inc., a leading world producer of food seasonings, especially monosodium glutamate (MSG), for example, recently conducted a study of the biochemical characteristics of first-century AD fish sauce remains found in the ‘Garum 1 2 3 4

Curtis 2005: 31–4. Köhler 1832. Eberl 1892; Zahn 1912. Grimal and Monod 1952; Jardin 1961; Ponsich and Tarradell 1965, republished in an expanded second edition by Ponsich in 1988.

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Shop’ at Pompeii in order to compare them with those of modern Southeast Asian products and see if the two shared similar traits.5 Studies of present-day fish sauces in the context of modern health concerns reveal much about the health of ancient Romans whose diet included significant amounts of processed fish. A team of food scientists, for example, in imitating ancient fish sauce, recently claimed to have produced more quickly a sauce that is even more nutritious than its modern counterpart.6 An experimental archaeologist, combining ancient literary evidence with her experience as a chef, has attempted to reproduce ancient fish sauces in order to define their nature, to identify how they were used in Roman cuisine and to categorise the physical remains of fishery byproducts discovered in archaeological contexts.7 The archaeology of Roman fish products has made tremendous strides in two particular areas: the location and excavation of Roman salting installations with their array of salting vats (cetariae) and the study of amphorae, terracotta commercial transport vessels, and their painted labels (tituli picti). Physical remains provide information on production facilities and identify areas of the Empire that produced fishery products. For many reasons archaeological excavation has concentrated in the western Mediterranean, particularly in Spain, France, North Africa and Sicily, while that in the east, save for the Black Sea area, has lagged significantly.8 Amphorae, found in shipwrecks, ports and rural and urban dwellings, provide information on what products entered the Roman market, who conducted the trade and what routes were used to distribute them.9 Since manufacturing and trade form the subject of separate chapters in this volume, I will focus on the products themselves, the many forms that they took, how they were made and what role they played in Graeco-Roman society.

2. Processed fish products For those who lived near the sea, lakes or rivers fresh fish were available either for catching or for purchasing directly from fishermen or from vendors in local markets. But fish do not survive long out of water and begin to spoil almost immediately after death. Consequently, fresh fish must be consumed quickly in the local area, since they can be transported only short distances. For this reason, fresh fish often underwent some sort of processing to delay or to prevent spoilage in order to lengthen the time of storage or to permit long-distance trade. These processes included drying, smoking, salting or a combination of these methods. Archaeological evidence of facilities for drying and smoking fish is almost impossible to identify. All that one needs to dry fish is an open space where fish, cleaned and gutted, can be exposed to the air and sun; smoking requires only the suspension of fish over a smokey fire, whether by hanging them from a pole or arranging them on a wooden frame. If man5 6 7 8

9

Curtis 1979; Smriga et al. 2010. Aquerreta et al. 2002; Rovere et al. 2008. Grainger 2007; 2010; 2011; 2014. The bibliography on ancient fish-processing centres is large: see, for example, Étienne and Mayet 2002; Bekker-Nielsen (ed.) 2005; Botte, this volume. Annalisa Marzano has recently (2013) published an overview of Roman exploitation of marine resources, including fishing, fish processing and aquaculture. The number of publications on amphorae and trade routes is likewise large: see, for example, Peacock and Williams 1986; Parker 1992; and Lowe, this volume.

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Fig. 5.1: Malpe, India: Drying of salted fish outside the port harbour. (Wikipedia public domain photo by Rudolph A. Furtado, 24 January 2008). made structures, such as drying racks, were used, they were probably temporary or made of perishable materials, such as wood. Fish-salting, however, has left an abundance of evidence, literary and archaeological.10 Processors did not waste any part of the fish, but used everything to produce two general types of fish byproduct: salt-fish and fish sauce.11 Manilius, in book five of his poem Astronomica, for example, describes fishermen processing their catch of tuna on the shore. Since his description is poetic, not technical, the specifics of the process are somewhat vague and incomplete; the general understanding, nevertheless, is clear. Fishermen ensnare the tuna with nets and drag them to shore where, after dispatching them with knives, they proceed to butcher them.12 Here, as Manilius explains, but without naming them, each fish provides material for two basic products. One part is better ‘with its juices removed’ (illa datis

10

11 12

The best evidence for drying fish comes from Pharaonic Egypt and the ancient Near East. That inhabitants of these areas also salted fish is probable, but the evidence is scattered, both geographically and chronologically, and ambiguous: Curtis 2001: 174–5, 239–40; Ikram 2000. Diphilus of Siphnus (Athenaeus 3.121c) alone mentions salted fish eggs, or caviar. Fish roe probably went into material used to produce fish sauce: Georgacas 1978: 146–9, 167–9. Manilius, Astronomica 5.656–66.

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[sucis pars] melior), the other ‘with its juices retained’ (sucis pars illa retentis).13 The former product is salt-fish, the latter is fish sauce. Manilius then goes on to describe fish sauce production in greater detail, leaving his reader to wonder how fishermen made salt-fish. Before looking at the ancient evidence, we should first understand the basic principles involved in fish-salting and how modern processors accomplish their task. 2.1 Principles of fish processing Fish begin to spoil almost immediately upon death because of natural processes and the action of bacteria. Enzymes in the muscle and gastro-intestinal tract break down proteins through autolytic proteolysis and create an environment for spoilage-causing micro-organisms to thrive. The fact that fish on average contain 70 % water also contributes to the posthumous growth of bacteria resulting in putrefaction. The bacterium Clostridium botulinum type E, also present in fish, releases toxins that render fish harmful to consume. In addition, oxidation of fat creates rancidity. The best way to produce salt-fish, a byproduct that for the most part retains its original shape, is, therefore, to remove the gastro-intestinal tract, gills and blood by gutting and to reduce the water content of the meat by osmosis with salt. A minimum salt concentration of 10 % is necessary to kill spoilage bacteria. Osmosis draws water out of the fish tissue and replaces it with salt. Over time, the salt concentration in the outer layers of the fish tissue equalises with that in the surrounding brine. The process slows as salt passes from the brine into the outer fish tissues to the same degree as the inner tissues absorb salt from the outer layers. The fish meat becomes dense and contracted, and a sharp, salty flavour replaces both the odour and taste of raw fish. Various factors influence the rate and efficiency of the process: ambient temperature, fish species, size, freshness and fat content, and purity and particle size of salt. For less fatty fish species, drying and/or smoking to remove any excess moisture often follows salting (fig. 5.1). Any fish can be salted, but pelagic species, such as tuna, mackerel, herring, anchovy and sardine, are the most popular.14 This holds true for fish sauce as well. Since all fish processed with salt undergo fermentation, technically speaking the term ‘fermented fish product’ includes salt-fish. Fish sauces, however, are produced in salt concentrations often greater than 20 % with whole, uneviscerated fish or viscera of large species. Proteolytic enzymes, especially of the gastro-intestinal tract, over time break down fish tissue at the same time as salt replaces moisture through osmosis. The fish loses its shape and begins to liquefy as protein dissolves into amino-nitrogen compounds. Decomposition is not complete and a residue, or paste, settles to the bottom of the resulting fish sauce. Although fish sauce is the usual result desired, depending on the time allowed for the mixture to ripen, a partially hydrolysed fish paste can be the preferred end product.15

13 14 15

Manilius, Astronomica 5.670. Cutting 1962: 162; Voskresensky 1965: 111–5; Owens and Mendoza 1985; Pedrosa-Menabrito and Regenstein 1988; Maas-van Berkel et al. 2004: 8–12. Orejana and Liston 1982: 199–203; Owens and Mendoza 1985; Wang and Hesseltine 1986: 336.

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Fig. 5.2: Modern processed fish. Foreground: salted/dried snapper from Malaysia; dried anchovy. Background (left to right): Colatura di Alici (Italy), nuoc-mam (Vietnam), patis (Philippines), fish sauce (China), shottsuru (Japan) and bagoong (Philippines). (Author’s photo).

2.2 Modern salt-fish Before salting, fish must undergo initial preparation. To reduce or prevent the action of proteolytic enzymes both large and small fish are gutted to remove the gastro-intestinal tract and then washed. Large fish are scaled and filleted or cut into pieces that are often scored to increase the surface area on which the salt acts and so to facilitate osmosis (fig. 5.2). For example, in Spain processors scale then cut tuna into long strips of boneless fillets with a thickness of no more than 5 cm.16 In general, depending on the thickness of the fish or fish pieces, 80 % of the moisture is replaced by salt within five days, 100 % within three weeks. Any further time of exposure to salt constitutes ‘ripening’ for flavour. For instance, ripening of anchovies (Engraulis encrasicholus) can last from six to seven months.17 16 17

Avery 1950: 21; Maas-van Berkel et al. 2004: 16–7. Shewan 1951: 81; Cheftel 1965: 221.

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Fig. 5.3: Barrels containing salted anchovies await loading. Strait of Kerč, between Nymphaeum and Tyritake. (Photo courtesy of Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen). The choice of salt is important since it contains natural impurities, both chemical and biological, that affect texture, flavour and keeping quality. Since contamination with calcium and magnesium chlorides and sulphates reduce penetration and so increase the salting time required, sometimes leading to spoilage of the interior parts of the fish meat, in general the purer the salt the better. Heating reduces bacterial contamination in both solar and rock salt. Grain size is also important. Too fine grain particles increase the rate of removal of moisture from the fish flesh causing coagulation of surface tissues that restricts further moisture elimination. Too large grain size slows down the penetration of the salt and allows time for spoilage to occur.18 The two major processes used to produce salt-fish are dry and wet salting.19 The initial steps in dry, or kench, salting and wet salting, or pickle curing, are identical. Both processes employ a layering system whereby, after spreading down a bed of salt, the rest of the container is filled with alternating strata of salt and fish or fish pieces laid down at right angles to the one below. After laying down a final coating of salt, the container is covered.

18 19

Shewan 1951: 81–4; Étienne and Mayet 2002: 16; Maas-van Berkel et al. 2004: 25–6. Brining, a process using salty water rather than dry salt, is primarily a quick preparation preliminary to drying and smoking and so will not concern us.

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From here, the processes diverge. In kench salting, the brine that forms naturally by osmosis is allowed to drain out. To maintain even salting throughout, either more salt must be added on the top than on the bottom or the fish need to be restacked occasionally, with the lower layers of fish placed on top and the whole repacked with fresh salt. The fish can be kept in the same container or, after drying, placed in another one, such as a box or barrel, for storage or transport (fig. 5.3). For wet salting, weights placed on top of a loose cover increase the penetration of salt into the fish tissue and ensure that the brine that naturally forms covers the fish to prevent the oxidation of unsaturated fatty acids that accelerates spoilage. Since over time water formed by osmosis dilutes the brine, more salt needs to be added periodically to maintain proper salinity. Fish can be kept in the same container or transferred along with the brine into another container for storage or transport. Each process has its advantages and the choice of process depends upon many factors. Kench salting, for example, is best for lean fish, since fatty fish, such as anchovies, sardines and mackerel, exposed to the air quickly turn rancid. In addition, the desired product also dictates specific actions. Fish mildly cured receive only a little salt or have high concentrations for only a short period of time, followed perhaps by drying or smoking. Hard cures designed for long-term storage require increased concentrations of salt for extended periods of time. And, finally, various containers can be used; those most often chosen include barrels and vats. Vat salting is the best way to accommodate catches of migratory fish when large quantities are involved.20 2.3 Ancient salt-fish No ancient writer describes how salt-fish was produced, but Columella in his work On Agriculture comes close to describing wet salting when he says that salting fish is similar to salting pork.21 He advises his reader to place a bed of parched salt of moderate size in the bottom of a container (seria). On top of that, arrange a thick layer of meat cut into pieces of about a Roman pound each. Add a layer of salt, and then another layer of meat alternately until the top of the container has been reached. Coat the final layer of pork with salt and place on top of that some heavy weights. He then adds, ‘And this flesh is always preserved, just as salt-fish is preserved in its own liquid (et tanquam salsamentum in muria sua permanet)’.22 Cato alludes to kench salting.23 After describing the salting of pork that, as for Columella, involved arranging alternating layers of salt and meat, he advises that, after five days, the pieces on the bottom should be rotated to the top while maintaining the same alternation of meat and salt. Clearly, ancient processes for salting pork parallel rather closely both modern methods for salting fish. Many questions remain. What species were salted? How were

20 21 22

23

Cutting 1962; Cheftel 1965; Voskresensky 1965: 109; Maas-van Berkel et al. 2004: 26–30. Columella, On Agriculture 12.55.4. Cf. Pliny, NH 31.83 (muria salsamentorum) ; 32.88 (menarum muria); Quintilian, Orator’s Education 8.2.3 (duratos muria pisces); Ulpian at Dig. 33.9.3 (lacertas quoque cum muria sua contineri). For the lacertus, or Spanish mackerel, see Thompson 1947: 120–1; for an amphora containing a sauce made from maena (sprat), see Bernal-Casasola 2009: 13–4; see also Curtis 1991: 8 n. 9, 31–2, 166 n. 31. Cato, On Agriculture 162.

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fish prepared before being placed into the vessel and what were their characteristics when removed? Literary, epigraphic and archaeological sources provide some of the answers. Greeks and Romans processed a variety of fish species, identification of which has dramatically increased due to heightened interest in skeletal fish remains found in amphorae in shipwrecks, in port cities and in dumps where fish, for various reasons, had been discarded as refuse.24 Large and small fish, especially pelagic species, known from skeletal remains to have been processed include bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), Spanish mackerel (Scomber japonicus) and the closely-related horse mackerel or scad (Trachurus trachurus), amberjack (Seriola dumerilii), various sea bream (Sparidae), mullet (Mugilidae), wrasse (Labridae), anchovy (Engraulis encrasicholus), sardine (Sardina pilchardus), sardinella (Sardinella aurita), picarel (Spicara smaris) and white sea bream (Diplodus sargus). These species, especially tuna, mackerel, anchovy and sardine, closely reflect the fish that ancient authors most often indicate as salted.25 Processed forms of these fish, or rather primarily their bones, have been documented archaeologically, but therein lies a problem yet unresolved. Distinguishing bones as remnants of salt-fish or of fish sauce remains difficult. Criteria now used include the species and size of fish, extant skeletal components and degree of articulation of the bones. Bones of very large fish, such as tuna, for instance, would most likely represent salt-fish, as would the fully articulated bones of small fry, such as sea bream or mullet, and of small fish, such as anchovy.26 Sally Grainger, based on her experiments with reproducing ancient fish sauces, has recently challenged this model. She concludes that some fish sauce, in this case allec, was packed in amphorae as a semi-processed emulsion, allowing enzymic hydrolysis to continue while the amphorae were in transit.27 In this view, bones found in amphorae, even if fully articulated, may represent nascent fish sauce rather than finished salt-fish. Latin salsamentum, derived from sal (salt), designated any salted meat, though its primary reference was to salt-fish. Greeks, on the other hand, employed a variety of nouns and adjectives to distinguish salt-fish forms. In doing so, they provide valuable details of the ancient salting process. In addition to using the general term for salt-fish, tarichos,28 Greeks also gave specific names to salt-fish dependent upon a variety of factors, such as the species of fish processed, the shape or form in which they were cut up, whether the fish were scaled or not, and, by implication, how much salt was used and how long the fish stayed in contact with it. Salted pieces of large fish sometimes took their names from the fish itself, such as thynnades or thynneia from the tuna.29 Fish names in diminutive form can designate particular salt-fish, as in kolidia, for mackerel, or korakidia, an uncertain fish species, perhaps 24

25

26 27 28 29

Van Neer and Lentacker 1994: 58; Bruschi and Wilkens 1996; Delussu and Wilkens 2000; Desse-Berset and Desse 2000; Sternberg 2000; Van Neer and Ervynck 2004; Van Neer et al. 2006; 2010. Thompson 1932; Van Neer and Ervynck 2004. Galen, On the Properties of Foodstuffs 3.40 (747 Kühn), lists the following fish as suitable for salting: korakinoi, mullet, small tuna, sardine, pilchard, mackerel and possibly whale (kêtôdê de tôn thalattiôn zôôn). For whale fishing, see Bernal-Casasola 2010. Desse-Berset and Desse 2000. Grainger 2011: 127–8. Georgacas 1978: 155–61. Athenaeus 3.116e; 3.118d. Hesychius (Schmidt ed. 1858, 1.330) defines thynnades as a ‘slice of salted fish’ (temachê tarichou).

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bolti.30 Participants in Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae, or The Learned Banqueters, at one point turn to a discussion of salt-fish and the literary works in which it appears. In doing so, they name other fish that were processed, including sturgeon (tarichos antakaion) and tuna of various ages and sizes, such as the skordylê (Latin cordyla), a very young tuna, pêlamys (Latin pelamys), a young tuna of about twelve months and hôraion (Latin horaeum), a tuna of indeterminate age or one cured in the proper season.31 Pliny the Elder in his Natural History states that tuna are cut into parts (hi [= thynni] membratim caesi);32 Manilius says the same thing and implies that fishermen gutted large fish before salting when he remarks that one part of the tuna was processed with the juices removed.33 The ‘juices’ refer to natural water within the fish muscle but also to blood, gills and innards, particularly the stomach and intestines, material used to make fish sauce. Draining the blood may have been the purpose of removing the anterior portion of the heads of Spanish mackerel (Scomber japonicus) as was the case in several amphorae from the first-century AD Sud Perduto II shipwreck.34 The specificity of Greek vocabulary allows further glimpses into the butchering process and provides hints at the appearance of salt-fish. Ômotarichos, for example, denotes the shoulder portion of the tuna, a type of salt-fish that Diphilus of Siphnus says was called kêtêma, a term related to kêtos denoting any large fish.35 Athenaeus states that some tuna slices received the name melandrya, a term apparently derived from its resemblance to pieces of darkened oak splinters.36 Certain Greek terms indicate that some cuts took specific shapes, triangular (trigonon), rectangular (tetragonon) or cubic (kybion). Although size is never stipulated, the pieces would need to be small enough to pass through the mouth and neck of an amphora. Why the shapes varied remains unknown; perhaps they were customary to particular regions.37 And, finally, fish were processed sometimes with scales (tarichos tilton) and at times without them (tarichos lepidôton), though the reason for this is not specified.38 30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37

38

Xenocrates ap. Oribasius 2.58.152; Thompson 1947: 37, 79–90, 122–5, 272; Curtis 1991: 133, n. 107. Athenaeus 3.116a-121c; Pollux, Onomasticon 6.48; Plautus, Captivi 851; Pliny, NH 9.48; Thompson 1947: 79–90. Pliny, NH 9.48. Manilius, Astronomica 5.664–72; cf. CIL 15.4782: abdo(mina) [sc. Thynni] m(embratim) c(aesa). Desse-Berset and Desse 2000: 75–9. Not all amphorae in the wreck contained mackerel with their heads cut off. Athenaeus 3.121b; Georgacas 1978: 167–9. The titulus painted on a fragment of a Dr. 21/22 amphora found at Cumae seems to identify its contents as a large fish, probably a tuna, CET(us): see Botte 2008: 444–5; cf. n. 25 above and Plautus, Captivi 851. Athenaeus 7.315d-e; Pliny NH 9.48; Varro, On the Latin Language 5.77; Martial 3.77.7. Trigônon: Athenaeus 3.116c; Plautus, Captivi 851; tetragônon: Athenaeus 3.116b; kybion: Athenaeus 3.116e; 3.118a-b; 3.121e; Pliny, NH 9.48; 32.151; Martial 5.78.5; Varro On the Latin Language 5.77. Rectangular-shaped tuna remains (tetragona) found on amphora fragments in fifth-century BC Corinth may have come from North Africa or Chersonesus in the Black Sea: Williams 1979; Curtis 1991: 115, pl. 1a. Pollux, Onomasticon 6.49; Athenaeus 3.118e (purchased already scaled from a salt-fish merchant, tarichopôlês). Fish fillets found in fifth-century BC Corinth retained their scales: Williams 1979. An amphora found at Olbia on Sardinia contained whole fish of several species covered with scales: see Bruschi and Wilkens 1996: 167.

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Fig. 5.4: Salting vats (cetariae) at Sexi (mod. Almuñecar) in southern Spain. (Photo courtesy of Benedict Lowe). Romans had a basic knowledge of the natural processes at work in salting fish. Galen, for example, states that salt draws moisture out of fish and reduces and contracts them, but warns that some fish, like red mullet, being naturally dry, become hard and leathery like hides when salted. He adds that fish with firm and moist bodies are best for salting, and lists bolti, grey mullet, small tuna, sardine, pilchard and Saxitana, the Spanish mackerel salted at Sexi (mod. Almuñecar) in southern Spain (fig. 5.4).39 Fish salted with scales were probably rather coarser and rougher to the touch than those salted without them. Fish were sometimes lightly salted (akropastos), at other times moderately salted (hêmitarichos, or hêminêron) or fully salted (teleios), probably dependent upon the fish-to-salt ratio or the length of time the fish were in contact with the salt.40 The degree of salting would naturally yield products of differing consistency. This seems borne out in the description of salt-fish by Xenocrates of Aphrodisias, who describes a range of salt-fish that differs according to the nature of the fish and the length of the salting pro-

39 40

Galen, On the Properties of Foodstuffs 3.40 (747 Kühn). One amphora found in the Pecio Gandolfo wreck bore a label identifying its contents as Saxitani: see Liou and Almeida 2000: 14–6. Lightly salted: Xenocrates ap. Oribasius 2.58.150; moderately salted: Athenaeus 3.117a; 3.118 f.; 3.121b; Xenocrates ap. Oribasius 2.58.151; fully salted: Athenaeus 3.120d.

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cess.41 He states that some salt-fish were dry with a hard consistency, others softer. Other types, he continues, were more fleshy, still others fatty. He describes salt-fish that had aged for a time as shrivelled, while newly-processed products were less so. He also notes that there were types exposed for a mid-range of time. Since he does not specify any particular time frame, presumably the processor relied on his experience to recognise when the desired product was ready. The decision on which type of salt-fish to prepare probably depended on storage and transport requirements. Xenocrates, for example, states that salt-fish with hard flesh do not easily spoil, while softer ones do.42 He says that ômotarichos (see above), being less fatty, did not easily go bad, while Diocles of Carystus (ap. Athenaeus) speaks similarly about hôraion.43 Compared to fish sauce amphorae, few commercial transport containers bear painted inscriptions (tituli picti) that identify their contents as salt-fish. One product, abbreviated as COD or CORD, however, does appear among these labels. Most scholars concur that this titulus refers to the cordyla, a young tuna, processed in Mauretania Tingitana, especially at Lixus on the Atlantic coast and Tingis in the strait.44 Several tituli provide a hint at the nature of the product itself. A vessel found in Saintes, Charente-Maritime, for example, carries a titulus, the first four lines of which read co(r)d(ula) arg(uta) vet(us) / excell(ens) / sumaur / aaaa. Latin argutus means sharp or pungent, especially of odour or taste, and is found applied as well to some fish sauces.45 Some processed cordyla apparently had a sharp taste or odour, but not all, as the term does not appear in every titulus. Salt-fish probably had a distinct odour, some stronger than others, depending on the type of fish used and level of salting. A second-century AD pot of processed carp, whether as salt-fish or fish sauce is unclear, found at Mons Claudianus in the eastern Egyptian desert, when excavated still had ‘a strong and distinctive odour, not unlike “gentlemen’s relish” (salted, spiced anchovy paste)’.46 What then made cordyla sharp? Perhaps the process included an additive of some kind. Salt-fish, primarily mullet, discovered in an ancient dump at Myos Hormos (mod. Quseir) on Egypt’s Red Sea coast had apparently been spiced with coriander, an aromatic herb, and safflower oil.47 Whether these ingredients had been added during the salting process or later when the fish were placed in the vessel is unknown. Another possibility is that arguta denoted a product similar to Swedish surstrømming, a strongly odoriferous herring product intentionally produced using a moderate amount of salt and robust bacterial putrefaction.48 Following the adjective arguta on the amphora from Saintes is the word vetus, ‘aged’. The next two words, excellens and sumaur, seem to be adjectives of quality. The fourth line contains four consecutive letter ‘A’s, generally accepted 41 42 43 44

45 46 47 48

Xenocrates ap. Oribasius 2.58.133–5. Xenocrates ap. Oribasius 2.58.134. Diocles of Carystus ap. Athenaeus 3.120e. For cod, see Liou 1987: 66–9; Laubenheimer et al. 1993; Étienne and Mayet 2002: 39–40; but, cf. Blänsdorf and Horst 1988. Identity of place of origin comes from many tituli with the abbreviation cord(yla) tin(gitana) or cord(yla) lix(itana), following the product name: see Liou 1987: 68; Teichner and Pons Pujol 2008; Cerri 2009; Van Neer et al. 2010: 171. Pliny, NH 15.18; Laubenheimer et al. 1993. Van Neer et al. 2006: 175. Van Neer et al. 2006: 176–83. Mackie et al. 1971: 12; Knochel 1993: 217.

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by scholars as indicating four years.49 The exact meaning of vetus beyond ‘aged’ is difficult to say, but, in combination with the ‘A’s of line four, it seems to imply that the product’s appearance on the market was delayed for four years.50 The vessel, therefore, contained ‘excellent young tuna of the highest quality, sharp, aged four years’. What, then, can be said about Graeco-Roman salt-fish products from these scattered bits of information? Processors produced a multitude of salt-fish products exhibiting a variety of flavours dependent upon many factors, such as fish species, additives and degree of saltiness, and having a range of shelf lives, presumably to satisfy a clientele with diverse tastes and differing needs. Many species of fish received processing, but the preponderance of evidence points to a preference for the same pelagic types popular in modern fisheries.51 The ancient salting process, as in modern factories, involved four basic steps, though many variables came into play in determining the final product. First, processors cleaned and gutted the fish, setting aside material from the gastro-intestinal tract to produce fish sauce. Some fish were scaled, others not. Large fish, such as tuna, were filleted and sliced into specific shapes, such as triangles, rectangles or cubes. Fry or small fish were gutted, but otherwise remained whole (see figs 5.1–2). Although in some cases the head was cut through to drain the blood, nevertheless, the fish remained recognisable.52 Second, domestic processors salted fish in relatively small containers, such as the seria, a terracotta vessel smaller than a dolium, whilst commercial installations used large vats (cetariae). In some parts of the Empire wooden barrels may have been used. Excavators at Fos in southern France, for example, discovered remains of a first-century AD wooden barrel that had been made waterproof by a layer of pitch on the interior. Embedded in this material were found complete skeletal remains of small sardines.53 Third, the salting process involved laying down salt, perhaps parched, and whole eviscerated fish or fish meat in alternating layers until the top of the vessel had been reached. To judge from the archaeological evidence of limestone slabs found in salting vats in Tyritake in the Bosphoran Kingdom and possibly roof tiles found at Plomarc’h in western Gaul, weights were placed on top of the final layer of salt.54 This, and references to fish bottled with its own brine, implies use of the wet-salting method. Dry salting was doubtless used as well for those products that received drying after salting. The desired product determined how long the fish remained in contact with the salt. Literary sources indicate that lightly-salted products were soft, moist, fleshy and, being easily spoiled, had a short shelf life. Those fully salted, and probably dried as well, were dry, stretched or shrivelled, rough to the touch and had a long shelf life. 49 50 51 52

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What sumaur means is unclear, perhaps the equivalent of summum, the ‘highest’: cf. Liou and Almeida 2000: 13; Étienne and Mayet 2002: 40. Cf. Martial 11.52.7: vetus et tenui maior cordyla lacerto. Some tituli designating three years have been found on other amphorae: see Liou and Almeida 2000: 11–3. Freshwater fish were also salted: see Xenocrates ap. Oribasius 2.148–52. This seems implied by Synesius of Cyrene (early fourth century AD), who relates a story about villagers, living near his estate in southern Cyrenaica far from the coast, who were so ignorant of fish that to show them proof he smashed before their eyes a jar of salted fish from Egypt. The fish must have been whole for him to make his case: Synesius, Letters 148. Desse-Berset and Desse 2000: 82–3. Curtis 1991: 75, 122.

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And, fourth, salted, then dried, salt-fish were packed for transportation in baskets or barrels, both made of perishable materials. Pickle-cured products were bottled with their own brine (muria) in terracotta vessels, many of which have survived.55 2.4 Modern fish sauces Although few Mediterranean countries still produce fish sauce, most notably French pissala and colatura di alici of Cetara, Italy, both small-scale productions, fermented fish products contribute significantly to the diet of inhabitants of many Southeast Asian countries, particularly Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines (see fig. 5.2).56 Although the details of the traditional methods of production for each byproduct vary to a greater or lesser extent from one country to another and even between one region of a country and another, such as in fish-to-salt ratio, species and size of fish, additives and length of ripening, the general principles remain the same. While home producers might use wooden barrels or terracotta vessels and commercial establishments employ concrete vats, the process in each case is similar. The fish most often used include herring, sardine, mackerel and especially anchovy.57 Processors place whole fish into a container and mix in fine-grained salt, including sea and rock salt, in a specified ratio that can vary but is usually 5:1 or less.58 This fish-to-salt ratio and the relatively low pH of 5.0 to 6.5, common in the best fish sauces, are not conducive to the growth of bacteria. This reduces the likelihood of putrefaction and minimises the chance of botulism poisoning. Prepared correctly, fish sauce is neither rotten nor dangerous to consume.59 Once the container is filled, processors place weights on the mixture, cover the vat and allow fermentation in the sun to continue for up to eighteen months. Heating the material can accelerate fermentation time.60 Following fermentation, they remove the liquid sauce either by ladling from the top or by draining from a conduit at the bottom of the vat. The fish sauce is filtered until clear and often undergoes a period of aging before bottling. Producers frequently wash the residue of undissolved fish material with hot, salty brine, sometimes inserting first-quality fish sauce, herbs, molasses and other additives for colour or taste, and allow it to ferment before extracting a lower-quality sauce. Shelf life for some fish sauces can be up to two years or longer.61 Fish pastes, such as Philippine bagoong, the residue of patis, are made in a similar fashion to fish sauce, but, when made for themselves, autolytic enzymes play a less important 55 56 57 58

59 60 61

Athenaeus 3.119b; Curtis 1991: 137–8. The koubia[r]ion, noted in POxy 14.1657, may be a container of unknown material designed to hold salt-fish, though its exact meaning is unclear. Lee et al. 1993; Daveau et al. (eds) 2007; Carannante et al. 2011; Buccini 2011. Steinkraus et al. 1983; Owens and Mendoza 1985; Lee et al. 1993; Ruddell 1993; 2007; Saisithi 1994; Lopetcharat et al. 2001; Wongkhalaung 2004. Wongkhalaung 2004: 654–5. In the Philippines and Vietnam, some processors initially pack fish and salt in layers: Mackie et al. 1971: 4. Saisithi (1994: 125) states that the layer method is best for large fish and a salt-and-fish mix for small fish. Mackie et al. 1971; Curtis 2009. The threat of possible carcinogens in fish processed with salt remains unresolved: Curtis 1991: 24–6; Thongthai and Gildberg 2005: 243–5. Mackie et al. 1971: 6; Beddows 1985: 20–2; Saisithi 1994: 122–3; Lopetcharat et al. 2001: 67; Thongthai and Gildberg 2005: 246–8. Mackie et al. 1971; Beddows 1985; Lopetcharat et al. 2001.

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role and the fermentation period is considerably shorter at several weeks to a few months. Achieving the desired taste determines the length of fermentation. The result is a thick paste often containing small pieces of fish meat (see fig. 5.2).62 2.5 Ancient fish sauces Manilius, without naming the product, states that fish sauce comes from that part of the tuna ‘with its juices retained’ (sucis pars illa retentis).63 That this refers to the gastro-intestinal tract seems implied from the fact that his contemporary, Pliny the Elder, says that fish sauce is made from the viscera and other fleshy parts of fish.64 Manilius’ not-very-detailed poetic description does provide a few specifics. He describes fisherman using both large and small vessels (lacus et Bacchi dolia) to mix salt with fish to produce a liquid that he characterises as a ‘bloody mass of putrid confusion’ (illa putrescentium sanies). The Geoponica, a Byzantine agricultural manual, however, provides a more straight-forward description and deserves full citation:65 The so-called liquamen is made in this manner: the intestines of fish are thrown into a vessel and salted. Small fish, either the best smelt, or small mullet, or sprats, or anchovy, or whatever is deemed to be small, are all salted together and, stirred frequently, are fermented in the sun. After it has been reduced in the heat, garum is obtained from it in this way: a large, strong basket is placed into the vessel of the aforementioned fish, and the garum streams into the basket. In this way the so-called liquamen is strained through the basket when taken up. The remaining refuse is allec. The Bithynians prepare it in this manner: it is best if you take small or large sprats, but if not, anchovy, or horse-mackerel, or mackerel, or even alica, and a mixture of all, and throw these into a baker’s kneading trough, in which they are accustomed to knead meal. Tossing into the modius of fish two Italian sextarii of salt, mix up thoroughly in order to strengthen it with salt. After leaving it alone for one night throw it into a vessel and place it without a lid in the sun for two or three months, agitating it with a shaft at intervals. Next take it, cover it, and store it away. Some add to one sextarius of fish, two sextarii of old wine. Next, if you wish to use the garum immediately, that is to say not ferment it in the sun, but to boil it, you do it this way. When the brine has been tested, so that an egg having been thrown in floats (if it sinks, it is not sufficiently salty), and throwing the fish into the brine in a newly-made earthenware pot and adding in some oregano, you place it on a sufficient fire until it is boiled, that is until it begins to reduce a little. Some throw in boiled-down must. Next, throwing the cooled liquid into a filter you toss it a second and third time through the filter until it turns out clear. After having covered it, store it away. The best garum, the so-called haimation, is made in this way: the intestines of tuna along with the gills, juice, and blood are taken and sufficient salt is sprinkled on. After having left it alone in the vessel for two months at most, pierce the vessel and the garum, called haimation, is withdrawn.66 62 63 64 65

66

Mackie et al. 1971: 7–9; Steinkraus et al. 1983: 488–505; Beddows 1985: 22–8; Wang and Hesseltine 1986: 335–6; Saisithi 1994: 115; Thongthai and Gildberg 2005: 220. Manilius, Astronomica 5.670–74. Pliny, NH 31.93–5. Pliny the Elder (NH 31.93–5), Isidore of Seville (Etymologies 20.3.19–20), Ps.-Gargilius Martialis (62, Rose ed. 1874: 224–7) and Ps.-Rufius Festus (Breviarium, Förster ed. 1873: 23) give similar but greatly abbreviated descriptions of the process. On the questionable dating of the latter two texts, see Curtis 1991: 11–2. Some information in the Geoponica derives from much earlier agricultural writers: see Dalby 2011: 13. Geoponica 20.46.1–6.

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Fig. 5.5: Dolia in ‘Garum Shop’ (Reg. I.12.8) in Pompeii, first century AD. (Photo courtesy of Benedict Lowe). The ancient process for making fish sauce is fairly clear and closely parallels modern methods. First, ancient and modern processes utilise the gastro-intestinal tract of large fish or whole uneviscerated small fish and fry of large fish, especially pelagic species.67 Second, both processes are indifferent to the size of container; the critical factor is the fish-to-salt ratio, here roughly 8:1, or strength of the brine, and the time allowed for fermentation. Modern fish sauces are saltier than ancient ones, having a fish-to-salt ratio ranging from 2:1 to 5:1. The Geoponica’s kneading trough and Manilius’ dolia, like those in Pompeii’s ‘Garum Shop’ (fig. 5.5), imply small, domestic production, while Manilius’ vat (lacus) recalls Roman salting installations where archaeologists have uncovered many large tanks for bulk processing (see fig. 5.4).68 67

68

Ps-Gargilius Martialis (62, Rose ed. 1874: 226) names naturally fatty fish, such as salmon, eel, shad, sardine and herring. On the herring, see also Curtis 1984a. Unlike the author of the Geoponica, Gargilius prescribes layering the fish, herbs and salt, as if preparing salt-fish. He specifies that if the fish are small, they are used whole; if large, cut into pieces. After a week, he stipulates that two or three times daily for twenty days the material should be stirred with a wooden stake. Mackie et al. 1971: 3–7; Beddows 1985: 5; Saisithi 1994: 122; Lopetcharat et al. 2001: 67.

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Third, the ancient process of fermentation in the sun seems to have been shorter than the modern one, one to three months compared to three to twelve months or more.69 Fourth, ancient and modern processes mix fish and salt together, though in both cases some sauces initially begin with a layer-method before mixing. Ancient processors, like their modern counterparts, doubtless used fine-grained salt to ensure complete, or nearly so, hydrolysis of small fish and fish innards. Roman large-scale salting installations established on beaches obtained salt from nearby salt-marshes or evaporation of seawater.70 Fifth, ancient and modern domestic processes both allow for a faster method of fermentation by boiling. Sixth, though the basic ingredients are salt and fish, ancient processors often added herbs, spices, grape juice or wine. More may have been at work here than a desirable taste. Spices added to modern fish sauces reduce bacterial contamination, while creating enhanced colour and aroma.71 Seventh, the end results of both ancient and modern fermentation processes are a liquid and an undissolved residue. Both processes filter the liquid until clear and sometimes age the product beyond the fermentation stage.72 While modern processors leach fish sauce residue to produce a second-quality sauce, it remains unclear if ancient processors did so as well. When finished, modern processors use the residue as a fertiliser or animal food; ancient producers used it as a cheap, inferior sauce (allec).73 The similarity in preparation processes between ancient and modern fish sauces permits a more precise definition of the ancient products. Romans considered as a fish sauce the brine (muria) produced in making salt-fish and used it in similar ways.74 More specifically, however, Roman fish sauces were fermented liquids and pastes produced by enzymic proteolysis. Garum was the clear, filtered liquid and the main objective for the hydrolysis of fish material with salt. Literary and archaeological evidence indicate that a single fish species or a mixture of species could be used to make garum.75 Allec, a paste, was the residue of garum production (fig. 5.6). Although Cato implies that it was a cheap sauce suitable for farmhands, by Pliny’s day it was more acceptable and was made for itself from small fish and, in an expensive variety, from oysters, sea anemones, sea urchins and the livers of red mullet.

69 70 71 72

73 74 75

Ps-Gargilius Martialis describes use of a ‘solid, well-pitched vessel of three or four modii’ (62, Rose ed. 1874: 226–7); one modius equals c. 9 litres. Egyptian papyri also reveal many examples of domestic production of fish sauce that doubtless used small vessels: see Curtis 1991: 131–41; Drexhage 1993; Dumitrache 2011. Beddows 1985: 5; Saisithi 1994: 122–3; Lopetcharat et al. 2001: 67. García del Toro 1979: 39–44; Ponsich 1988: 44–8; Hesnard 1998; Étienne and Mayet 2002: 16; Botte 2009: 67–70. Kilinc et al. 2006. Ps-Gargilius Martialis’ recipe includes several herbs and spices, such as dill, mint, pepper and cinnamon. Mackie et al. 1971: 7; also suggested by Ps-Gargilius Martialis and Ps-Rufius Festus; cf. Apicius 7.16.14 (allec collatus) and CIL 4.7110 (liquamen optimum saccatum). On vetus, see CIL 4.5726 (muria vetus); Curtis 1991: 165, 169. Mackie et al. 1971: 4; Beddows 1985: 6. Romans sometimes used the term loosely to mean fish sauce: see Curtis 1991: 7–8. Geoponica 20.46.1; 20.46.3; Van Neer et al. 2010: 162. An amphora found in Baetica in Spain contained a sauce utilising several different fish species plus two mammals, pig and an unknown ungulate: see Bernal-Casasola 2009: 11–3.

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Fig. 5.6: Residue of garum (allec) in a dolium of the ‘Garum Shop’. (Author’s photo). In the latter cases, presumably processors did not allow hydrolysis to proceed to completion nor did they filter the sauce.76 Liquamen remains something of an enigma. A first-century AD Pompeian mosaic showing vessels with tituli picti mentioning garum and liquamen that replicate painted labels on numerous actual liquamen and garum vessels implies that liquamen was a sauce distinct from garum.77 What that difference was, however, remains uncertain. Based on modern parallels, it seems to have been the result of subsequent washings of garum residue (allec) with warm brine.78 This may also explain why by the early fourth century AD the terms garum and liquamen had become almost synonymous.79 Laccatum and lymphatum, though still, like liquamen, rather mysterious, were most likely mixed fish sauces.80 Tituli picti nam76

77 78

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Cato, On Agriculture 58; Pliny, NH 9.66; 31.95; Curtis 1984a: 151–2; Owens and Mendoza 1985: 277. Cambodians make nuoc-mam-gau-ca entirely from fish livers at a ratio of 10:1 for eight days: Beddows 1985: 5. Curtis 1984b. For tituli picti of liquamen, see, for example, CIL 4.2588; 5705; 5711; 5716; 9415. Sally Grainger draws overly fine distinctions, I think, when she argues that garum was a dipping sauce made only from fish viscera and blood, while liquamen was a cooking condiment made from whole fish. She concludes that allec, the residue of garum and liquamen production, did not contain any bones: Grainger 2007; 2010; 2011; 2014. Curtis 1978: 46–52; Edict of Diocletian 3.6–7; Caelius Aurelianus, On Chronic Diseases 2.1.40 (garum, quod appellamus liquamen); 2.3.70 (ex garo … quod vulgo liquamen appellant). CIL 4.4733; 4741; 5605; 5607; 5609–13; 5640; 5644–6; García Vargas and Florido 1996: 201; Étienne and Mayet 2002: 52–3; Lagóstena-Barrios 2004: 208–17; Carre et al. 2009; Van Neer et al. 2010: 164.

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ing these products as contents most often appear on known fish-sauce amphorae, such as Dressel Forms 7–11, and contain product advertising slogans, such as excellens, vetus and argutum, frequently associated with fishery byproducts.81 They are both probably fish sauces containing an additive, lacca, a medicinal herb, in the case of laccatum, and water for lymphatum. Since ancient sauces, being liquid, have not survived, except for the dry, bony residue (allec) of fish-sauce production, their appearance is impossible to gauge.82 Pliny says that garum could be blended to the colour of old honey-wine (mulsum), but does not describe its basic colour.83 The colour of the best modern sauces varies somewhat from clear, straw-yellow to amber to dark brown. Fish paste, such as Philippine bagoong, is a thick, pasty, greyish to reddish-brown, partially-hydrolysed mash of undissolved fish material (see fig. 5.2).84

3. Processed fish products in ancient society Numerous fish-salting installations processed fish in amounts far exceeding local needs and shipped the excess to regional and more distant markets throughout the Roman Empire. These fish byproducts provided a livelihood for many people and, for some, such as Aulus Umbricius Scaurus of Pompeii, a comfortable life or better.85 Some large-scale, commercial fish processors, acting collectively, even established formal organisations, such as the societates of Spanish fish salters from Gades, Malaca and New Carthage, while shippers, such as the negotiatores allecarii of Lower Germany and Britain, also specialised in the transportation of these products.86 Studies of commercial amphorae have allowed scholars not only to trace the routes followed by these goods to market but also to estimate the relative contribution of these products to Roman long-distance trade.87 Although it is difficult to judge the expense of processed fish, several studies indicate that their cost over time was not out of line with other ordinary food products, such as wine, oil and pork. They were, in most cases, apparently readily available and priced so as to be affordable to people of all economic classes.88 What needs did these products meet that they played such an important role in the Roman economy and in Roman life generally? Galen provides an answer when, referring to people with chronic diarrhoea, he states that garum added to a dish of lentils and beets creates ‘a very pleasant and useful medicine and food’.89 Even a cursory reading of the ancient sources reveals that fish byproducts were rarely described as ‘very pleasant’, either in contemplation of how they were made or of their smell. Pliny the Elder, for example, calls garum ‘that secretion of putrefying matter’. Columella 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

Curtis 1984–86; Cerri (2007: 38–9; 2009: 331–2), for the same reasons, suggests that laccatum was a salt-fish, specifically the lacertus, or Spanish mackerel. A caramelised layer of brownish material found in a salting vat at Plomarc’h in western Gaul may be remains of fish sauce: Curtis 1991: 75. Pliny, NH 31.95. Mackie et al. 1971; Wang and Hesseltine 1986; Saisithi 1994. Curtis1984b; 1988b; Costantino 2011. Étienne 1970; García del Toro 1979; Curtis 1984a; 1991: 62–4, 78–9, 83; Immerzeel 1990. Curtis 1988a; Bekker-Nielsen 2002; Ejstrud 2005; cf. n. 9 above. Curtis 1983; Ervynck et al. 2003; Dumitrache 2011. Galen, On the Properties of Foodstuffs 1.1.42 (477–8 Kühn) .

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notes that salt-fish could smell strong and Petronius portrays a cook at Trimalchio’s dinner as ‘reeking with muria’.90 Poor-quality processed fish doubtless existed, particularly those that had an excess of bacterial contamination during processing. But even good fish sauce, exposed to air, becomes stale. Martial mentions an amphora tainted with spoiled garum and Apicius even describes a way to rejuvenate fish sauce having a foul odour.91 Some of the same authors who decry the characteristics of processed fish, however, also praise them. Pliny, two sentences before disparaging it, calls garum ‘a kind of exquisite liquor’, and, later on, claims that it could be diluted and drunk – not that it actually was. Martial devotes an entire epigram in praise of the famously expensive Spanish product garum sociorum, the same sauce that Seneca derides as a ‘bloody mass of decayed fish’.92 While most authors acknowledge the strong smell of processed fish products and the unappetising salting process itself, and satirists often use both to criticise perceived foibles of contemporary society, nevertheless, Romans consumed processed fish in large quantities. 3.1 Food When Athenaeus’ philosophers turned to eating, they first partook of pieces of salted tuna (horaion), an hors-d’oeuvre that initiated a long discussion of salt-fish.93 The primary function of salt-fish, normally served during the gustatio, was to stimulate the appetite for the remaining courses.94 Before consumption, salt-fish had to be washed to reduce its saltiness, and was often served hot, either stewed, baked or broiled.95 Martial describes a gustatio composed of lettuce, leeks and a piece of tuna (cybium) hidden in sliced egg, and both Apicius and Cicero mention a dish of salt-fish and cheese (tyrotarichum).96 Though salt-fish was the more substantial food, nevertheless, its function in the Roman meal was less remarkable than that of fish sauces, which received notoriety in literary sources because of their preparation process and odour. But, there were also important, practical reasons for their greater visibility. As the condiment of choice, they played a conspicuous role both in cooking and in food consumption. Pliny notes that the taste of salt was desired in eating garum.97 This is also true for modern fish sauces, where salt is the predominant taste. But ancient sauces, like their modern counterparts, offered more than that. The aroma and taste of modern fish sauce presents an ammonical, meaty and cheesy blend, attributable to a combination of active taste components, such as volatile fatty acids, ketones and free amino acids, especially glutamic acid that is present in concentrations sometimes exceeding 3,000 mg/100 ml of fish sauce.98 90 91

92 93 94 95 96 97 98

Columella, On Agriculture 8.17.13; Petronius, Satyricon 70; Pliny, NH 31.90; 31.93. Martial 6.93.6; Apicius 1.7. Low-quality fish sauces, particularly those bacterially contaminated during processing with biogenic amines, especially putrescine and cadaverine, have a strong, unpleasant odour: Stute et al. 2002. Pliny, NH 31.94; Martial 13.102; Seneca, Letters 95.25; see n. 111 below. Athenaeus 3.116a-121e. Celsus, On Medicine 1.2.8; Athenaeus 3.120c-d. Athenaeus 3.117c; 3.119c-d; 3.121c; Plautus, Poenulus (The Little Carthaginian) 240–4. Martial 5.78; Apicius 4.2.17; Cicero, Letters to Friends 9.16.9 (= Shackleton Bailey no. 190); cf. Martial 10.48, for mackerel (lacertus) served with egg. Pliny, NH 31.87–8. Beddows 1985; Lopetcharat et al. 2001: 76, 79–82; Park et al. 2002: 915.

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Consequently, fish sauce added to many foods imparts the taste not only of salt but of umami, producing a distinctly savory flavour created by the combination of taste and smell.99 Biochemical analysis of fish-sauce remains (allec) found in the ‘Garum Shop’ of first-century AD Pompeii shows that its amino acid composition closely paralleled that of modern Italian and Southeast Asian fish sauces, most notably in the dominance of glutamate, glycine and alanine.100 Consequently, many foods today closely approximate the taste of food enjoyed by ancient Romans.101 In Southeast Asia consumption of fish sauce as a seasoning for almost every dish annually reaches into the hundreds of millions of litres, supplying upwards of 300 million people with 60–70 % of their daily protein needs.102 Comparable statistics for ancient Romans are lacking, but the fact that they consumed large quantities of fish sauce can be surmised from extensive fish-salting installations located throughout the Empire, the prominent place fish sauces held in Roman long-distance trade, their frequent mention by literary sources in the context of cooking and eating, and the fact that of some 465 recipes found in the cookbook attributed to Apicius, over 75 % include a fish sauce. While until early this century the opinion was widely held that the cookbook was a collection of recipes only the wealthy could afford, it is most likely a compilation of recipes collected over time by cooks for cooks, and, so, also includes a reasonable representation of popular dishes consumed by members of an urban, sub-elite population.103 Romans used fish sauce as a seasoning in lieu of salt during cooking, as a sauce poured over a main dish and as a condiment or dipping sauce at the table.104 Fish sauces seasoned various meats, especially pork, eggs, numerous vegetables, such as cabbage, lettuce and onions, and even fish, including oysters.105 Recipes often called for mixed garums, such as a spiced sauce (garum piperatum) and garum mixed with wine (oenogarum), oil (garelaion), vinegar (oxygarum) and water (hydrogarum).106 Since mixed sauces do not appear on amphora labels, they were most likely created by home producers or cooks in the kitchen.107 To access sauces more easily during food preparation, cooks transferred the sauce from amphorae into smaller vessels, such as the one-handled urceus frequently found in Pompeian

99 100 101 102 103 104

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Umami is the taste of foods rich in glutamic acid and two ribonucleotides, 5’-inosinate and 5’-guanylate: Yamaguchi 1998; Ninomiya 2002; McCabe and Rolls 2007. Smriga et al. 2010. Curtis 2009. Saisithi 1994; Wongkhalaung 2004. Grocock and Grainger (eds) 2006: 13–25. These uses have their parallel in Thai nam pla that serves both as a flavouring in a recipe and as a dipping sauce: Wongkhalaung 2004; cf. n. 78 above. Petronius (Satyricon 70) links muria with condiments (muria condimentisque). Horace, Satires 2.8.9, 2.8.42–52; Martial 13.82; Apicius. For a more extensive treatment of various culinary uses of fish sauce, with full documentation, see Curtis 1978: 63–74. Petronius, Satyricon 36; Martial 3.50.5; Historia Augusta, Elagabalus 29.5; Apicius (Grocock and Grainger 2006: 347, 355–6). Hesychius (Schmidt ed. 1858: 1.416) mentions garel(ai)on, garum and olive oil, a term unknown in Latin. Ps-Gargilius Martialis (62, Rose ed. 1874: 224–7); Apicius (Grocock and Grainger 2006: 386). One papyrus lists a series of food items that includes separately garum and oinogarum: see Dumitrache 2011.

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homes.108 At the table, sauces functioned as side dishes displayed in tableware of various shapes and sizes and intended for specific uses, such as dipping or pouring. Among these was the acetabulum, a term derived from Greek oxybaphon, a dish that Athenaeus says held oxygarum.109 Other possibilities include the ampulla, a two-handled glass flask, the paropsis, a small dessert dish, and the bikos garitikos, a flat saucer or bowl.110 Romans also produced specialty garums. One example received particular notoriety because of its expense: garum sociorum, made from mackerel only in salting installations in New Carthage in Spain.111 The author of the Geoponica describes how to create haimation, a special garum made from only the intestines, gills and blood of tuna, a product that he calls ‘the best garum’, probably to be identified with the otherwise unknown ‘black garum’ (garos melan).112 Pliny speaks of a special garum castimoniarum made expressly for Jews.113 Nothing else is known of this kosher sauce or whether it is to be identified with fish remains found in Masada or with garum castum recorded on painted labels on a few amphorae.114 3.2 Ancient medicine Ancient dietetics sought to guide a healthy lifestyle and to prevent disease through diet and exercise geared to personal lifestyle and environmental conditions. Relying on sensual observation and experience, medical writers, such as Galen, categorised perceived powers inherent in specific foods in terms of opposites, such as heating and cooling, moist and dry, laxative and binding, and created a list of foods helpful in maintaining a balance of humours necessary for good health.115 Salt-fish and fish sauce had particular characteristics that physicians could employ in their ministrations. Salt-fish appeared dry and stretched and, so, were assumed to possess powers of aridity and thinning. Saltiness gave to salt-fish and fish sauce the powers of heat and dryness, and experience showed that both stimulated the ap108 109

110

111 112

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Curtis 1991: 91–2; cf. Athenaeus 3.67e; 9.366c; Ribechini et al. 2009. Petronius (Satyricon 36) describes a servant pouring peppered garum from a wineskin over fish. Sidonius Apollinaris (Letters 9.13.4) says that one of the duties of the ‘master of the feast’ was to prepare and distribute oxygarum: see Hudson 2010: 667. On vessels for side dishes, see Dannell 2006. The term gargarion was sometimes used instead of oxybaphon: see Scholia on Nicander, Theriaca 526; Curtis 1978: 71–4; Grainger 2007: 107–9. Susan Weingarten interprets a potter’s stamp on a paropsis, [par]absidi aematini, to indicate a vessel for holding haimation, a special fish sauce mentioned in the Geoponica (20.46.6): Dannell 2006: 166, n. 46. Pliny, NH 31.94; Étienne 1970; García del Toro 1979. Geoponica 20.46.6; Aetius 3.83; Curtis 1991: 8, n. 11. Van Neer and Parker (2007) report the find at Aila Aqaba, Jordan, of a late first-century AD local vessel containing the gill apparatuses of over 30 medium-sized tuna, which they identify as the remains of haimation; cf. the experiments of Dissaraphong et al. (2006) on hydrolysis of tuna viscera that resulted in increased browning of the resultant sauce. Pliny, NH 31.95. CIL 4.2569; 2609; 5660–2; Corcoran 1958; Curtis 1991: 165–6; Cotton et al. 1996; Shanks 2010. Palladius (Opus Agriculturae 3.25.12) mentions a non-fish sauce made from pears (liquamen de piris castimoniale). Edelstein 1967. For a concise, helpful discussion of Galen’s view on dietetics, see Powell’s introduction to Galen, On the Properties of Foodstuffs: 1–18.

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petite and moved the bowels.116 Consequently, the properties of processed fish products – dryness, attenuation, heat, appetite stimulation and laxative – gave physicians a food they could use to treat ailments characterised by symptoms of an opposite nature. For example, constipation called for a laxative and lack of appetite required an appetite stimulant. The latter quality doubtless explains the common appearance of salt-fish in the gustatio. Ancient writers list a myriad of medical problems that called for salt-fish or fish sauce, either alone or, most often, in simple and compound medicines and culinary recipes. Some suggestions seem fairly reasonable, considering their assumed powers, such as a cure for mouth ulcers or indigestion, but for others the connection is illusive. For example, some remedies betray the influence of folk medicine or superstition, as when Pliny recommends grilled snails served with garum and oil for stomach ailments, especially if the number of snails is odd.117 Romans approached veterinary medicine in the same way as human medicine, and, consequently, prescribed similar remedies, including those involving processed fish products.118 Regardless of the real efficacy of processed fish products assumed by Greeks and Romans, salt-fish and, especially, fish sauce did provide significant health benefits, but not in ways they would have imagined. Since ancient and modern sauces share a common production method using similar fish species and possess a comparable biochemical profile, Graeco-Roman fish byproducts likewise provided consumers with a significant source of protein in the form of amino acids, especially glutamate, lysine and aspartic acid, various nitrogenous compounds, certain minerals, such as phosphorus, calcium, magnesium and iron, and vitamin B-12. Protein in fish sauce is of a quality comparable with that of meat, milk and eggs.119 Although salt-fish also provides protein to the diet, it is less important nutritionally, since it is eaten primarily as an hors-d’oeuvre. Fish sauce and fish paste, on the other hand, being condiments used in nearly all foods, though not consumed in large amounts at any one time, enter into the diet one or more times daily. Their cumulative effect on the health of ancient Romans, therefore, was probably similar to that of modern fish sauces on the health of inhabitants of Southeast Asia.

4. Conclusion Greeks and Romans caught a wide variety of fish, which they processed with salt into byproducts that functioned as both food and medicine. Faced with the problem of the perishability of freshly-caught fish, through close observation and doubtless trial and error, they developed standard methods to produce a palatable and safe foodstuff capable of long-term storage and long-distance transportation. Salt-fish became a staple among appetisers consumed during the Roman meal, while fish sauce was an indispensable condiment used both in cooking and dining. Fish sauce gave to Graeco-Roman cuisine the taste of umami, the same flavour created by modern Southeast Asian fish sauces. This should elicit little surprise, since ancient fish-processing methods closely parallel modern techniques. Unaware of their

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Celsus, On Medicine 2.29; Galen, On the Thinning Diet 11. Pliny, NH 30.44. Curtis 1978: 74–83; 1991: 27–35. Mackie et al. 1971; Saisithi 1994; Wongkhalaung 2004; Thongthai and Gildberg 2005; Smriga et al. 2010.

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true nutritional value, Greeks and Romans nevertheless recognised a relationship between processed fish and good health, and used them for medical and dietetic purposes. Robert I. Curtis Department of Classics, 221 Park Hall University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602 [email protected]

5. References 5.1 Primary sources Aetius, Aetii Amideni Libri Medicinales 1–4, edited by A. Oliveiri (Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 8.1). Leipzig 1936. Apicius, translated by C. Grocock and S. Grainger. Apicius. Totnes 2006. Caelius Aurelianus: On Acute Diseases and On Chronic Diseases, with an English translation by I. E. Drabkin. Chicago 1950. Cato: On Agriculture: Cato, Varro, translated by W. D. Hooper and H. B. Ash (LCL 283). Cambridge MA 1934. Celsus, On Medicine, 1: Books 1–4, translated by W. G. Spencer (LCL 292). Cambridge MA 1935. Cicero, Letters to Friends 2, with an English translation by D. R. Shackleton Bailey (LCL 230). Cambridge, MA 2001. Columella, On Agriculture, with an English translation by H. B. Ash, E. S. Forster and E. H. Heffner (LCL 361, 407, 408). Cambridge MA 1941–55. Edict of Diocletian, in S. Lauffer (ed.), Diokletians Preisedikt. Berlin 1971. Galen, On the Properties of Foodstuffs, translated by O. Powell. Cambridge 2003. Galen, On the Thinning Diet, in P. N. Singer (ed.), Galen: Selected Works. Oxford 1997. Ps-Gargilius Martialis, in V. Rose, ‘Aringus, der Hering’, Hermes 8, 1874, 224–7. Geoponika: Farm Work, translated by A. Dalby. Totnes 2011. Hesychius 1–2, edited by M. Schmidt. Amsterdam 1858–68, reprinted 1965. Historia Augusta 2: Caracalla, Geta, Opellius Macrinus, Diadumenianus, Elagabalus, Severus Alexander, The Two Maximini, The Three Gordians, Maximus and Balbinus, with an English translation by D. Magie (LCL 140). Cambridge MA 1924. Horace, Satires, Epistles, The Art of Poetry, with an English translation by H. R. Fairclough (LCL 194). Cambridge, MA 1926. Isidore: The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, translated by S. A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Bach and O. Berghof. Cambridge 2006. Manilius, Astronomica, with an English translation by G. P. Goold (LCL 469). Cambridge MA 1977. Martial, Epigrams 1: Spectacles, Books 1–5, with an English translation by D. R. Shackleton Bailey (LCL 94). Cambridge MA 1993. Palladius, Opus agriculturae and De veterinaria medicina, edited by R. H. Rodgers. Leipzig 1975. Petronius, Satyricon, in Petronius, Seneca: Satyricon, Apocolocyntosis, with an English translation by M. Heseltine and W. H. D. Rouse, revised by E. H. Warmington (LCL 15). Cambridge MA 1913. Plautus, Captivi (The Captives), in Plautus: Amphitryon, The Comedy of Asses, The Pot of Gold, The Two Bacchises, The Captives, with an English translation by W. de Melo (LCL 60). Cambridge MA 2011. Plautus, Poenulus (The Little Carthaginian), in Plautus: The Little Carthaginian, Pseudolus, The Rope, with an English translation by W. de Melo (LCL 260). Cambridge MA 2012. Pollux, Onomasticon, edited by E. Bethe (Lexicographi Graeci 9). Leipzig 1931, reprinted Stuttgart 1967.

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Quintilian, The Orator’s Education, 2: Books 3–5, with an English translation by D. A. Russell (LCL 125). Cambridge MA 2002. Ps-Rufius Festus, in W. Förster (ed.), Breviarium rerum gestarum populi Romani. Vienna 1874. Scholia Nicander, in H. Keil (ed.), Scholia in Theriaca. Leipzig 1856. Seneca, Epistles (Letters) 3: Epistles 93–124, with an English translation by R. M. Gummere (LCL 77). Cambridge MA 1925. Sidonius, Letters: Books 3–9, with an English translation by W. B. Anderson (LCL 420). Cambridge MA 1965. Synesius: The Letters of Synesius of Cyrene, translated by A. Fitzgerald. Oxford 1926. Varro, On the Latin Language 1: Books 5–7, with an English translation by R. G. Kent (LCL 333). Cambridge MA 1938. Xenocrates ap. Oribasius, in Oribasius: Collectionum Medicarum Reliquiae, edited by J. Raeder (Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 6.1). Leipzig 1928.

5.2 Secondary literature Aquerreta, Y., I. Astiasarán and J. Bello 2002. ‘Use of exogenous enzymes to elaborate the Roman fish sauce “Garum”’, Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 82, 107–12. Avery, A. C. 1950. Fish Processing Handbook for the Philippines. Washington DC. Beddows, C. G. 1985. ‘Fermented Fish and Fish Products’ in B. J. B. Wood (ed.), Microbiology of Fermented Foods 1–2. London, 2.1–39. Bekker-Nielsen, T. 2002. ‘Fish in the ancient economy’, in K. Ascani, V. Gabrielsen, K. Kvist et al. (eds), Ancient History Matters: Studies Presented to Jens Erik Skydsgaard on his Seventieth Birthday (Analecta Romana Instituti Danici Supplementum 30). Rome, 29–37. Bekker-Nielsen, T. (ed.) 2005. Ancient Fishing and Fish Processing in the Black Sea Region (Black Sea Studies 2). Aarhus. Bernal-Casasola, D. 2009. ‘Ánforas, pesquerías y conservas entre la Baetica y el Adriático. Pinceladas para futuras investigaciones arqueológicas’, in S. P. Mattioli and M.-B. Carre (eds), Olio e pesce in epoca romana. Produzione e commercio nelle regioni dell’Alto Adriatico. Rome, 3–24. Bernal-Casasola, D. 2010. ‘Rome and whale fishing – archaeological evidence from the Fretum Gaditanum’, in C. C. Monfort and R. Morais (eds), Western Roman Atlantic Façade: A Study of the Economy and Trade in the Mar Exterior from the Republic to the Principate. Oxford, 67–80. Blänsdorf, J. and H. Horst. 1988. ‘CODLIA – eine semitische Bezeichnung für garum’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 138, 24–38. Botte, E. 2008. ‘Les salaisons de poissons de Cumes (Italie) au Ier siècle de notre ére: une nouvelle inscription peinte sur amphore Dressel 21/22’, in J. Napoli (ed.), Resources et activités maritimes des peuples de l’Antiquité. Actes du Colloque International de Boulogne-sur-Mer, 12, 13 et 14 Mai 2005 (Cahiers du littoral 2.6). Boulogne, 443–6. Botte, E. 2009. Salaisons et sauces de poissons en Italie du sud et en Sicile durant l’Antiquité (Centre Jean Bérard Collection 31; Archéologie de l’artisanat antique 1). Naples. Bruschi, T. and B. Wilkens 1996. ‘Conserves de poisson à partir de quatre amphores romaines’, Archaeofauna 5, 165–9. Buccini, A. F. 2011. ‘Continuity in culinary aesthetics in the western Mediterranean: Roman garum and liquamen in the light of the local survival of fermented fish seasonings in Japan and the western Mediterranean’, in H. Saberi (ed.), Cured, Fermented and Smoked Foods. Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. Totnes, 66–75. Carannante, A., C. Giardino and U. Savarese 2011. ‘In search of garum. The “Colatura d’alici” from the amalfitan coast (Campania, Italy): an heir of the ancient Mediterranean fish sauces’, in F. Lugli, A. A. Stoppiello and S. Biagetti (eds), Atti del 4o Convegno Nazionale di Etnoarcheologia, Roma, 17–19 maggio 2006 (BAR International Series 2235). Oxford, 69–79. Carre, M.-B., S. Pesavento Mattioli and C. Belotti 2009. ‘Le anfore da pesce Adriatiche’, in S. Pe-

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savento Mattioli and M.-B. Carre (eds), Olio e pesce in epoca romana. Produzione e commercio nelle regioni dell’Alto Adriatico. Rome, 215–38. Cerri, L. 2007. ‘Salsamenta dalla Tingitana’, in E. Papi (ed.), Supplying Rome and the Empire (Journal of Roman Studies Supplement 69). Portsmouth RI, 33–42. Cerri, L. 2009. ‘I tituli picti sulle anfore per salsamenta della Mauretania Tingitana (I secolo d. C.)’, in S. Pesavento Mattioli and M.-B. Carre (eds), Olio e pesce in epoca romana. Produzione e commercio nelle regioni dell’Alto Adriatico. Rome, 329–37. Cheftel, H. 1965. ‘The processing of the anchovy: engraulis encrasicholus Linnaeus’, in G. Borgström (ed.), Fish as Food 1–4. New York, vol. 3, 219–25. Corcoran, T. H. 1958. ‘Pliny’s garum castimoniarum’, Classical Bulletin 34, 69. Costantino, C. 2011. ‘Scaurus habet ad mare paternum hospitium: Pompei, Domus VII 16, 15–16 (Casa di Aulo Umbricio Scauro)’, Vesuviana 3, 103–91. Cotton, H., O. Lernau and Y. Goren 1996. ‘Fish sauces from Herodian Masada’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 9, 223–38. Curtis, R. 1978. Production and Commerce of Fish Sauce in the Western Roman Empire: A Social and Economic Study. PhD thesis. University of Maryland. Curtis, R. 1979. ‘The Garum Shop of Pompeii (I.12.8)’, Cronache Pompeiane 5, 5–23. Curtis, R. 1983. ‘In defense of garum’, Classical Journal 78, 232–40. Curtis, R. 1984a. ‘Negotiatores allecarii and the herring’, Phoenix 38, 147–58. Curtis, R. 1984b. ‘A personalized floor mosaic from Pompeii’, American Journal of Archaeology 88, 557–66. Curtis, R. 1984–86. ‘Product Identification and Advertising on Roman Commercial Amphorae’, Ancient Society 15–17, 209–28. Curtis, R. 1988a. ‘Spanish trade in salted fish products in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD’, IJNA 17, 205–10. Curtis, R. 1988b. ‘A. Umbricius Scaurus of Pompeii’, in R. Curtis (ed.), Studia Pompeiana & Classica in Honor of Wilhelmina F. Jashemski, New Rochelle NY, 19–50. Curtis, R. 1991. Garum and Salsamenta: Production and Commerce in Materia Medica (Studies in Ancient Medicine 3). Leiden. Curtis, R. 2001. Ancient Food Technology. Leiden. Curtis, R. 2005. ‘Sources for production and trade of Greek and Roman processed fish’ in Bekker-Nielsen (ed.) 31–46. Curtis, R. 2009. ‘Umami and the foods of classical antiquity’, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 90 (supplement), 712S-18S. Cutting, C. L. 1962. ‘The influence of drying, salting and smoking on the nutritive value of fish’, in E. Heen and R. Kreuzer (eds), Fish in Nutrition. London, 161–79. Dalby, A. 2011. Geoponika. Farm Work. Totnes. Dannell, G. B. 2006. ‘Samian cups and their uses’, in R. J. A. Wilson (ed.), Romanitas: Essays on Roman Archaeology in Honour of Sheppard Frere on the Occasion of His Ninetieth Birthday. Oxford, 147–76. Daveau, I., E. Delaval and E. Pellerino et al. (eds) 2007. Garum et pissalat: De la pêche à la table mémoires d’une tradition. Antibes. Delussu, F. and B. Wilkens 2000. ‘Le conserve di pesce: Alcuni dati da contesti Italiani’, MEFRA 112, 53–65. Desse-Berset, N. and J. Desse 2000. ‘Salsamenta, garum et autres preparations de poissons. Ce qu’en disent les os’, MEFRA 112, 73–97. Dissaraphong, S., S. Benjakul, W. Visessanguan and H. Kishimura 2006. ‘The influence of storage conditions of tuna viscera before fermentation on the chemical, physical and microbiological changes in fish sauce during fermentation’, Bioresource Technology 97, 2032–40. Drexhage, H.-J. 1993. ‘Garum und Garumhandel im römischen und spätantiken Ägypten’, Münstersche Beiträge zur antiken Handelsgeschichte 12, 27–55. Dumitrache, I. 2011. ‘Documents officiels concernant les prix et les taxes des produits Romains à base de poisson’, Studia Antiqua et Archaeologica 17, 49–64.

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Eberl, G. 1892. Die Fischkonserven der Alten. Stadtamhof. Edelstein, L. 1967. ‘The dietetics of antiquity’, in O. Temkin and C. L. Temkin (eds), Ancient Medicine: Selected Papers of Ludwig Edelstein. Baltimore, 303–16. Ejstrud, B. 2005. ‘Size matters: estimating trade of wine, oil and fish sauce from amphorae in the first century AD’, in Bekker-Nielsen (ed.) 171–82. Ervynck, A., W. Van Neer, H. Hüster-Plogmann et al. 2003. ‘Beyond affluence: the zooarchaeology of luxury’, World Archaeology 34, 428–41. Étienne, R. 1970. ‘À propos du “garum sociorum”’ Latomus 29, 297–313. Étienne, R. and F. Mayet 2002. Salaisons et sauces de poisson Hispaniques (Trois clés pour l’économie de l’Hispanie romaine 2). Paris. García del Toro, J. R. 1979. ‘Garum Sociorum. La industria de salazones de pescado en la Edad Antigua en Cartagena’, Anales de la Universidad de Murcia 36, 27–57. García Vargas, E. and M. L. L. Florido 1996. ‘Definición de dos nuevos ánforas Gaditanas: Las Puerto Real 1 y 2’, SPAL: Revista de Prehistoria y Arqueología de la Universidad de Sevilla 5, 197–207. Georgacas, D. J. 1978. Ichthyological Term for the Sturgeon and Etymology of the International Terms Botargo, Caviar and Congeners: A Linguistic, Philological, and Culture-Historical Study. Athens. Grainger, S. 2007. ‘A new approach to Roman fish sauce’, Petits Propos Culinaires 83, 92–111. Grainger, S. 2010. Roman Fish Sauce: An Experiment in Archaeology. MA thesis, University of Reading. Grainger, S. 2011. ‘Roman fish sauce: an experiment in archaeology’, in H. Saberi (ed.), Cured, Fermented and Smoked Foods: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2010. Totnes, 121–31. Grainger, S. 2014. ‘Garum, Liquamen and Muria: A New Approach to the Problem of Definition’, in E. Botte and V. Leitch (eds) 2014. Fish & Ships: Production and Commerce of Salsamenta during Antiquity. Actes de l’atelier doctoral, Rome 18–22 Juin 2012. (Bibliothèque d’Archéologie Méditerrannée et Africaine 17). Arles, 37–45. Grimal, P. and T. Monod. 1952. ‘Sur la véritable nature du “garum”’, Revue des études anciennes 54, 27–38. Grocock, C. and S. Grainger (eds) 2006. Apicius. Totnes. Hesnard, A. 1998. ‘Le sel des plages (Cotta et Tahadart, Maroc)’, MEFRA 110, 167–92. Hudson, N. F. 2010. ‘Changing places: the archaeology of the Roman convivium’, American Journal of Archaeology 114, 663–95. Ikram, S. 2000. ‘Meat processing’, in P. T. Nicholson and I. Shaw (eds), Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology. Cambridge, 656–71. Immerzeel, M. 1990. ‘Profession: negotiator allecarius: Fabrication et commerce de sauce de poisons dans le nord-ouest de l’Empire Romain’, Oudheidkundige Mededeelingen uit het Rijksmuseum van Oudheden te Leiden 70, 183–92. Jardin, C. 1961. ‘Garum et sauces de poisson de l’antiquité’, Rivista di studi liguri 27, 70–96. Kilinc, B., S. Cakli and S. Tolasa 2006. ‘Chemical, microbiological and sensory changes associated with fish sauce processing’, European Food Research and Technology 222, 604–13. Knochel, S. 1993. ‘Processing and properties of north European pickled fish products’, in C.-H. Lee, K. H. Steinkraus and P. J. A. Reilly (eds), Fish Fermentation Technology. Tokyo, 213–29. Köhler, H. K. E. 1832. ‘Τάριχος, ou recherches sur l’histoire et les antiquités des pêcheries de la Russie méridionale’, Mémoires de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences de Saint-Pétersbourg 6th s., 1, 347–490. Lagóstena-Barrios, L. 2004. ‘Las ánforas salsarias de Baetica: Consideraciones sobre sus elementos epigráficos’ in J. Remesal Rodríguez (ed.), Epigrafía Anfórica (Col.lecció Instrumenta 17). Barcelona, 197–219. Laubenheimer, F., J. Martínex-Maganto and J.-L. Hillairet 1993. ‘Inscription sur une amphore à thon de Bétique, Saintes, Charente-Maritime’, Aquitania 11, 243–54. Lee, C., K. H. Steinkraus and P. J. A. Reilly (eds) 1993. Fish Fermentation Technology. Tokyo. Liou, B. 1987. ‘Inscriptions peintes sur amphores: Fos (suite), Marseille, Toulon, Port-La-Nautique, Arles, Saint-Blaise, Saint-Martin-de-Crau, Mâcon, Calvi’, Archaeonautica 7, 55–139.

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Liou, B. and E. R. Almeida 2000. ‘Les inscriptions peintes des amphores du Pecio Gandolfo (Almería)’, MEFRA 112, 7–25. Lopetcharat, K., Y. J. Choi and J. W. Park et al. 2001. ‘Fish sauce products and manufacturing: a review’, Food Reviews International 17, 65–88. Maas-van Berkel, B., B. van den Boogaard and C. Heijnen 2004. Preservation of Fish and Meat (Agrodok 12). Wageningen. McCabe, C. and E. T. Rolls 2007. ‘Umami: a delicious flavor formed by convergence of taste and olfactory pathways in the human brain’, European Journal of Neuroscience 25, 1855–64. Mackie, I., R. Hardy and G. Hobbs (eds) 1971. Fermented Fish Products (FAO Fisheries Reports 100). Rome. Marzano, Annalisa 2013. Harvesting the Sea. The Exploitation of Marine Resources in the Roman Mediterranean. Oxford Ninomiya, K. 2002. ‘Umami: a universal taste’, Food Reviews International 18, 23–38. Orejana, F. M. and J. Liston 1982. ‘Agents of proteolysis and its inhibition in patis (fish sauce) fermentation’, Journal of Food Science 47, 198–209. Owens, J. D. and L. S. Mendoza 1985. ‘Enzymically hydrolysed and bacterially fermented fishery products’, Journal of Food Technology 20, 273–93. Park, J.-N., T. Watanabe, K.-I. Endoh et al. 2002. ‘Taste-active components in a Vietnamese fish sauce’, Fisheries Science 68, 913–20. Parker, A. J. 1992. Ancient Shipwrecks of the Mediterranean and the Roman Provinces (BAR International Series 580). Oxford. Peacock, D. P. S. and D. F. Williams 1986. Amphorae and the Roman Economy: An Introductory Guide. London. Pedrosa-Menabrito, A. and J. M. Regenstein 1988. ‘Shelf-life extension of fresh fish – a review. Part I – spoilage of fish’, Journal of Food Quality 11, 117–27. Ponsich, M. 1988. Aceite de olive y salazones de pescado. Factores geo-economicos de Betica y Tingitania. Madrid. Ponsich, M. and M. Tarradell 1965. Garum et industries antiques de salaison dans la Méditerranée occidentale. Paris. Ribechini, E., M. P. Colombini, G. Giachi et al. 2009. ‘A multi-analytical approach for the characterization of commodities in a ceramic jar from Antinoe (Egypt)’, Archaeometry 51, 480–94. Rovere, P., A. Brutti and P. Pittia et al. 2008. ‘Rivalutazione di tecnologie tradizionali per la trasformazione dei sottoprodotti della pesca: confronto tra tecnologie di produzione del garum romano’, Industria Conserve 83, 165–72. Ruddle, K. 1993. ‘The availability and supply of fish for fermentation in Southeast Asia’, in Lee, Steinkraus and Reilly (eds) 45–84. Ruddle, K. 2007. ‘Fermented marine food products in Vietnam: ecological basis and production’, in S. C. H. Cheung and T. Chee-Beng (eds), Food and Foodways in Asia. Resource, Tradition and Cooking. London, 13–22. Saisithi, P. 1994. ‘Traditional fermented fish: fish sauce production’, in M. Martin (ed.), Fisheries Processing. Biotechnological Applications. London, 111–31. Shanks, H. 2010. ‘The destruction of Pompeii – god’s revenge’, Biblical Archaeology Review 36, 60–7, 77. Shewan, J. 1951. ‘Common salt: its varieties and their suitability for fish salting’, World Fisheries Yearbook and Directory. London, 79–88. Smriga, M., T. Mizukoshi, D. Iwahata et al 2010. ‘Amino acids and minerals in ancient remnants of fish sauce (garum) sampled in the “Garum Shop” of Pompeii, Italy’, Journal of Food Composition and Analysis 23, 442–6. Steinkraus, K. H., R. E. Culler, C. S. Pederson, L. F. Nellis and B. K. Gavitt (eds) 1983. Handbook of Indigenous Fermented Foods. New York. Sternberg, M. 2000. ‘Données sur les produits fabriqués dans une officine de Neapolis (Nabeul, Tunisie)’, MEFRA 112, 135–53.

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Stute, R., K. Petridis and H. Steinhart et al. 2002. ‘Biogenic amines in fish and soy sauces’, European Food Research and Technology 215, 101–07. Teichner, F. and L. Pons Pujol 2008. ‘Roman amphora trade across the Straits of Gibraltar: an ancient “anti-economic practice”’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology 27, 303–14. Thompson, D. W. 1932. ‘“Byzantios olent lacertos” (Stat. S. 4, 9, 13)’, Classical Review 46, 246–8. Thompson, D. W. 1947. A Glossary of Greek Fishes. London. Thongthai, C. and A. Gildberg 2005. ‘Asian fish sauce as a source of nutrition’, in J. Shi, C.-T. Ho and F. Shahidi (eds), Asian Functional Foods. Boca Raton, 215–65. Van Neer, W. and A. Ervynck 2004. ‘Remains of traded fish in archaeological sites: indicators of status, or bulk food?’, in S. J. O’Day, W. Van Neer and A. Ervynck (eds), Behaviour Behind Bones: The Zooarchaeology of Ritual, Religion, Status and Identity. Oxford, 203–14. Van Neer, W., A. Ervynck and P. Monsieur 2010. ‘Fish bones and amphorae: evidence for the production and consumption of salted fish products outside the Mediterranean region’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 23, 161–95. Van Neer, W., S. Hamilton-Dyer, R. Cappers et al. 2006. ‘The Roman trade in salted Nilotic fish products: some examples from Egypt’, Documenta Archaeobiologie 4, 173–88. Van Neer, W. and A. Lentacker 1994. ‘New archaeozoological evidence for the consumption of locally-produced fish sauce in the northern provinces of the Roman Empire’, Archaeofauna 3, 53–62. Van Neer, W. and S. T. Parker 2007. ‘First archaeological evidence for haimation, the “invisible” garum’, Journal of Archaeological Science 20, 1–7. Voskresensky, N. A. 1965. ‘Salting of herring’, in G. Borgström (ed.). Fish as Food 1–4. New York, vol. 3, 107–31. Wang, H. L. and C. W. Hesseltine 1986. ‘Glossary of indigenous fermented foods’, in C. W. Hesseltine and H. L. Wang (eds), Indigenous Fermented Food of Non-Western Origin. Berlin, 317–44. Williams, C. K. 1979. ‘Corinth, 1978: Forum Southwest’, Hesperia 48, 105–44. Wongkhalaung, C. 2004. ‘Industrialization of Thai fish sauce (nam pla)’, in K. H. Steinkraus (ed.), Industrialization of Indigenous Fermented Foods (2nd edition, revised and expanded). New York, 647–705. Yamaguchi, S. 1998. ‘Basic properties of umami and its effects on food flavor’, Food Reviews International 14, 139–76 Zahn, R. 1912. ‘Garum’, RE 7, 841–9.

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Garum in context: new times, same topics in the post-Ponsichian era

1. In a literary mangrove When discussing the fish-processing industry of the ancient world, one constantly turns to the studies of Michel Ponsich, whose research essentially defined the protocols for studies of ancient fisheries through archaeological, iconographic and ethnographic evidence;1 such interdisciplinary investigation still today constitutes the only way to understand the complex aspects of the ancient maritime economy. Many papers which have substantially widened the range of the topic have followed, extending the study of salteries and interpreting the complex facets of these halieutic industries at an Atlantic-Mediterranean level,2 in Hispania,3 in southern Italy and Sicily,4 and in the Black Sea region.5 As is the case for many other elements of the humanities, the body of specialised literature provided by the most recent generation of archaeologists and historians, which has resulted from an abundance of rescue excavations, is prodigious, scattered and difficult to summarize.6 As in many other spheres of research, hyper-specialisation and excessive wealth of information have combined to create a series of paradigms that, in the case of the ancient fish industry, provoke both excessive generalisations – the extrapolation of facts from one region to another without any archaeological filter – and great confusion, as facts published by one scholar are used by others without a direct knowledge of the deposits or about the current issues because of a lack of direct contact with the excavations; thus interpretative mistakes or statements that do not chime with reality have been made.7 Other recurrent problems are those deriving from the multifocal aspect of the studies, which are necessarily interdisciplinary and cover diverse areas of knowledge (ancient history, epigraphy, numismatics, ceramics, zooarchaeology, etc.), inducing an extensive dispersal of the results which are published in specialised fora and, thus, are difficult for 1 2 3 4 5 6

7

Ponsich and Tarradell 1965; Ponsich 1988. Curtis 1991. Lagóstena-Barrios 2001; Étienne and Mayet 2002; Bernal-Casasola (ed.) 2009; (ed.) 2011. Botte 2009. Bekker-Nielsen (ed.) 2005. An excellent example of this are the more than 150 references for Roman fish industries and garum production that can be found on the website of the Roman Economy Project of Oxford University (http://oxrep.classics.ox.ac.uk/bibliographies/fish_industries_garum_production_bibliography/). Cf., as an example, Curtis 1991; Étienne and Mayet 2002; Trakadas 2005; 2009 and notice the differences between them when referring to the inventory of Spanish fish-salting plants.

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specialists from other disciplines to access for some years – or even decades – after their publication.8 Combine this with the linguistic variety of the publications, and dissemination becomes even slower.9 Despite the historical and economic transcendence of these topics, neither a stable nor a permanent focus of international discussion has been generated that can be compared to, for example, the dedicated meetings of ICAZ for archaeo-ichthyologists and malacologists. Nevertheless, in the last decade notable efforts have been made by researchers from a diverse range of countries and institutions, as demonstrated by the organisation of Homenagem a Françoise Mayet in Setúbal in May 2004,10 the international conference Historia de la Pesca en el ámbito del Estrecho in El Puerto de Santa María in June 2004,11 the Colloque International de Boulogne-sur-Mer in May 2005,12 the CETARIAE Congress in Cádiz in May 2005,13 the Olio e Pesce in época romana conference in Padova in February 2007,14 the international workshop Ancient Nets and Fishing Gear held in Cádiz in November 2007,15 Sal, pesca y salazones fenicios en Occidente on Ibiza in November 201116 and, the most recent example, Fish and Ships organised in June 2012 at the École française de Rome.17 All of these events, and others which limited space prevents me from detailing here, have prompted considerable advances in halieutic investigation. They have also shown, and this really is a new departure, that the best approach to take towards a better understanding of these subjects is an academically collaborative one (i. e. group work rather than individual work). This paper’s objective is twofold. On the one hand, it aims to present some methodological reflections about the current orientation of historical-archaeological studies on ancient fishing and fish processing. On the other, it will present and synthesise some of the advances made in recent years on the basis of experience with archaeological research projects in the region of the Strait of Gibraltar and its Atlantic approaches.18 The purpose is to illustrate the complexity of the topics and the need to undertake studies in an inductive and analytical manner, using specific examples from recent archaeological activities. Contrary to what has 8

9

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11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

As is the case, for example, with the excellent essay by Gallimore (2010) about the production and commercialisation of amphorae through an analysis of papyri, which may possibly take some years to be appreciated fully by the scientific community. This phenomenon has a particular impact on Spanish research, as texts in Spanish are rarely used by international investigators for anything other than generic quotes, except for a few works such as the brilliant synthesis by Lowe (2009); a similar dynamic affects those papers published in modern Greek about the eastern Mediterranean and in Russian addressing the Black Sea. Published as volume 13 of Setúbal Arqueológica (2006): Simpósio Internacional Produção e Comércio de Preparados Piscícolas durante a Proto-história e a Época Romana no Ocidente da Península Ibérica. Ruiz Mata (ed.) 2006. Napoli (ed.) 2008. Lagóstena et al. (eds) 2007. Pesavento Mattioli and Carre (eds) 2009. Bekker-Nielsen and Bernal-Casasola (eds) 2010. Costa and Fernández (eds) 2012. Botte and Leitch (ed.) 2014. The Proyecto de Excelencia titled Artes de Pesca en Andalucía en la Antigüedad Clásica de la Junta de Andalucía (HUM-03015; 2009–12), La producción de púrpura en el Fretum Gaditanum en la Antigüedad Clásica (HAR2010–15733; 2011–2013) and Pesquerías y artesanado haliéutico (HAR2013– 43599P; 2014–2016).

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previously been proposed, the fish-preservation centres, or cetariae, were not exclusively dedicated to the production of garum and salsamenta.19

2. Towards the ‘integral cycle of garum’ One of the most common tendencies of research in the ancient fish-preservation industry is the absence of a holistic approach focusing on connections; rather, studies concentrate instead on two separate aspects, the marine resources on the one hand (the realm of the zooarchaeologist), and on the other hand the packaging and transportation (the realm of the archaeologist). In the scientific literature of recent decades there are many examples of this practice, as exemplified by the study of the Punic-Gaditanian factories of Cádiz, where we understand the production structures but not which fish were actually fish processed there.20 Similarly, protohistorical coastal deposits of great halieutic interest may have their biotic resources comprehensively classified, as is the case for the sequence of the Punic-Phoenician settlement at Castillo de Doña Blanca in Cadiz,21 yet the processing and manufacturing areas which certainly must have existed, as evidenced by the fish and shellfish remains, are unknown. This problem persists into the study of material from the Roman period, as illustrated by the exceptionally complex fisheries at Lixus (mod. Larache) in Mauretania Tingitana and Baelo Claudia in Baetica; the floor plans are models of the presentation of activities undertaken in preserved urban neighbourhoods, yet, regarding the associated marine fauna we have just limited datasets from the last years of excavation, and these are represented neither in sequence nor for the most important phases.22 This is not an expression of the ‘Ponsich spirit’, as evidenced in his magnificent monographs, but of the current trend towards the compartmentalisation of archaeology as a discipline, and the extreme specialisation and fragmentation of both the humanities and the ‘hard’ sciences. It is almost a banality to recall the seven basic elements that contribute to the reconstruction of halieutic landscapes: documentary sources, inscriptions, iconographies (including coins), fishing equipment, zooarchaeological remains, production structures (i. e., factories) and transport containers. Less trivial is to recall their roles in the process of reconstruction, and their feedback/support mechanisms. Epistemologically the process should include at least the following steps, illustrated in fig. 6.1, all of them complemented by documentary information where available. The first 19 20 21 22

Bernal-Casasola 2007. A synthesis of this complex dialectic has recently been published: Sáez Romero 2011. Roselló-Izquierdo and Morales (eds) 1994. At Lixus, the excavation data that may correspond to the remains of consumption are not fully representative of the industrial fishing which occurred at the site; plus, recent studies that come, paradoxically, from Phoenician-Punic or Mauretanian levels, or Mauretanian and medieval levels do not provide data from the Roman sequence of the cetariae: Rodrigo García and Rodríguez Santana 2001; Rodríguez Santana and Rodrigo García 2005. At Baelo Claudia the dynamic is similar: the archaeological ichthyofauna data deriving from the levels of the Republican period situated under the current preservation district date from the second century BC and do not therefore correspond to the phase of the preservation floruit of the settlement (a problem discussed throughout Arévalo and Bernal-Casasola (eds) 2007).

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Fig. 6.1: The various stages of fish processing and their associated archaeological evidence. (Phase I) is the study of the marine resources with the help of zooarchaeological analysis of the faunal remains, as much ichthyology as malacology. Obviously, it would be ideal to perform palaeo-ecological studies on the environment under study, as has been done on a number of occasions,23 although such studies are rare for the historic period, being more frequent for the prehistoric eras.

23

E. g., see Sternberg 1998.

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Fig. 6.2: Obverse of a coin from the mint of Gadir/Gades (series II, late third century BC) showing a tuna, typical of the mints of some cities along the Strait of Gibraltar. (Museo Arqueológico Nacional, illustration courtesy of A. Arévalo). Also of great use here is iconographical analysis, although such data are most often absent from the archaeological record24 except in exceptional cases, such as the region around Vesuvius, northern Tunisia and Egypt, in which pictorial representations are found in reliefs and mosaics. Coins merit particular investigation; despite the complexities of their interpretation – they sometimes have religious meanings25 – they may, in my opinion, be taken to illustrate the importance of fishing in the cities where they were minted (fig. 6.2). However, these representations show neither a direct nor an unequivocal association with harvested or consumed marine resources, as on occasion we may detect exogenous factors determining the motifs presented.26 Additionally, iconographic representations in other forms of material culture – ceramics, lamps, metalwork – present many interpretative problems; they may, for example, be portable objects that were manufactured far from the place where they were found, and thus any attempt at spatial interpretation is very uncertain. Phase II integrates fishing in a broader sense and makes particular use of the evidence of fishing equipment. Such evidence used to be very limited and was usually reduced to two categories only: hooks and fishing weights. This is still an emerging field of study.27 Recent studies confirm traditional assumptions which, from the remains of fishing equipment, made the complex leap to understanding the manner in which they were used (= fishing techniques) by the polyvalence of several types of tackle (for example, weights of the same typology used to weight edge ropes of varying shape and size). Regional studies, e. g., in Hispania and Egypt, have highlighted these difficulties.28 The iconographical evidence might 24 25 26

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Practically limiting us, in the case of the Black Sea, to fish emblems from local mints: BekkerNielsen 2009: 296–7. Ripoll López 1988. A illustrative example of this is the well-known ‘octopus attacking lobster’ allegorical motifs, as found in the famous mosaic from the Faun’s House in Pompeii, which refer symbolically to stoicism, see Little 1935. A first international attempt at reflecting on fishing tackle is Bekker-Nielsen and BernalCasasola (eds) 2010. For instance, the PhD theses of J. M. Vargas Girón (Técnicas de pesca en la Hispania romana. Una

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potentially be of great help with this issue, but it is very sparse29 and its interpretation is, as mentioned above, highly difficult. Phase III, a phase with a clearer archaeological visibility, is the consideration of the relationship of fishing to food production, which integrates a huge number of indicators in a complex structure. The epicentre comprises the production structures, commonly known as ‘salting factories’ – cetariae – where the catch was processed into salt-fish or fish sauce. The local marine environments normally supply the natural resources (fish and salt) considered in Phase I; although we should not overlook the significance of on-site species composition as a possible indicator of exogenous origins.30 Looking at the processing facilities (salting areas, storage facilities, cutting rooms, ovens, etc.) at the production sites it is possible to identify archaeologically three key elements in the production chain: the salting vats, the manufactured product and the transport containers, usually amphorae. These are almost the only artefacts which do not present interpretative difficulties (as opposed to demonstrating the use of glass and other containers – except for the famous Pompeian urcei vessels of the Umbricii). Phases IV (commerce) and V (consumption) represent the post-production elements of the process. These phases are complex, and of the many aspects that can be treated in each phase, I would highlight firstly the amphorae – particularly from shipwrecks – used to transport the finished products. Their study involves consideration of a multiplicity of factors that, if they are found filled with the original content (as was the case for the amphorae from the well-known wreck of Grado),31 feed back into Phase III. Secondly, I would highlight the study of the destination markets. The contexts of finds of zooarchaeological remains and containers, which, being usually imported elements, do not contribute any data regarding fish production or fish products at the location where they were found, since their contents will normally have been imported from other regions along the Mediterranean or Atlantic coasts.32 In theory, all this is simple and even a little trite. In practice, things are different. In diachronic studies of the ancient fishing and fish-processing industry, whether of a region or a single site, this type of combined analysis is not as yet widespread; hence the call for heuristic techniques to be applied. In the research project ‘Pesca y Garum en Pompeya y Herculano’, currently in its final stages (field seasons 2008–2012) and co-hosted by the University of Cádiz and the University Ca’ Foscari in Venice, such a working philosophy is being applied by an interdisciplinary team and is producing very interesting results that are still in

29

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aproximación arqueológica a través del instrumental pesquero y la iconografía) and M. T. Soria Trastoy (El instrumental pesquero en el Antiguo Egipto: Estudio histórico-arqueológico en clave diacrónica), both University of Cádiz, 2016. In Hispania, for example, we know of at least a dozen mosaics illustrating fishing techniques, which largely come from inland locations, far from the coast (such as the Villa of Vega Baja of Toledo or the villa at Noheda in the province of Cuenca): López Monteagudo 2010. As illustrated, for example, by the fact that in Pompeii the Italic amphorae with fish contents in the ‘Garum Shop’ (house I.12.8) contained salted fish from Calabria, western Sicily and, to a lesser degree, the Tyrrhenian coast, which would have been subject to reprocessing or direct sale in this Neapolitan enclave in the first century AD, as is inferred by the recent study of the so called ‘Pila d’anfore’: Bernal-Casasola et al. 2014a. Auriemma 2000. Unfortunately, with the widespread absence of DNA and isotope analyses for determining the origins of this evidence, it is normally difficult in the contexts of consumption to discriminate between local and imported fauna.

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the process of being studied and published.33 In Hispania, which is the area with which I am most familiar, to date no cetaria have been published in a full and detailed manner integrating archaeology and archaeometry (a synthesisation of the so-called Phases I to III) – a fact that constitutes an interesting opportunity for self-criticism and reflection. Let us now move to some brief reflections on some of these aspects, focusing on both methodological and interpretative problems, and also on research innovations, and trying, as mentioned earlier, to illustrate the complexity of these problems.

3. Interpreting the variety of marine resources on fishing and fish-processing sites Clearly, the primary goal and basic objective of a large section of historical-archaeological research has been to determine which species were processed and which products were made in the salting factories. Such studies are usually biased by what has been called the ‘garum effect’: the investigators systematically search for salted scombrid meat and fish sauces, and try to adjust the record to the tetralogy of allec, garum, liquamen and muria. Detailed studies of the record confirm that the reality is much more complex34 and that the ingredients used in the preparation of seafood in Roman times were varied, as was the range of manufactured products; some of them still present enigmas to the historian, such as the laccatum or lymphatum mentioned in tituli picti.35 Several methodological problems render investigation difficult. The first problem is the scant reliability of the archaeo-ichthyological register from the Atlantic-Mediterranean cetariae, as the recovery and sampling techniques are, even in the 21st century, utterly deficient.36 Zooarchaeologists have repeatedly drawn attention to this crucial taphonomic problem (as evidenced, for instance, by the proceedings of the ICAZ Fish Remains Working Group, which has met regularly since 1981). It has been demonstrated with very precise data how a cubic metre of soil from which only two fish bones were retrieved by hand can yield over a thousand fish remains when the sediment is sieved by a mesh of 3 mm, a number that increases exponentially – up to 25,000 – in inverse proportion to the mesh size.37 The sad reality is that on archaeological sites – at least the ones of the historical period – the practise of sieving is still the exception rather than the rule, being limited to very specific contexts or to investigations centred around the study of the zooarchaeological record. Where rescue archaeology is concerned, the problem is even more severe. The results of the recent Sagena project (2010–12) have confirmed that for 95 % of the main salting factories excavated between 1980 and 2012 (Las Redes or Plaza de Asdrúbal for the Punic period; Baelo Claudia or Gades for the Imperial Roman era) the biotic remains have been neither conserved nor studied; no precise archaeo-ichthyological analysis has been conducted; nor has any sediment suitable for analysis been preserved.38 33 34 35 36 37 38

Bernal-Casasola et al. 2009; 2010. Bernal-Casasola 2007. Étienne and Mayet 2002: 52–3. Cf. Morales and Roselló-Izquierdo, this volume; also Mylona, this volume. Enghoff 2005. With the exception of some recent examples as Plaza de Asdrúbal (Bernal-Casasola et al. 2014b) or Teatro Andalucía (Bernal-Casasola et al. 2014c) in ancient Gadir/Gades (Cádiz).

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Fig. 6.3: Sites on the Strait of Gibraltar mentioned in text. (Richard Szydlak). Unfortunately, a celebrated article by Arturo Morales-Muñiz (1993) titled ‘Where are the tunas?’ maintains its relevance over twenty years after publication; the question can now be extended to: ‘where are the fish in our fish-salting plants?’ Secondly, a mea culpa is required on behalf of archaeological investigations, as currently there is no final excavation report that systematically integrates the archaeological and archaeometric analyses for any of the excavated salting factories in the Atlantic-Mediterranean area. As for the Punic era, factory P-19 in Puerto de Santa María (Cádiz) is currently being studied as part of a PhD project at the University of Cádiz;39 for other sites there is only a limited and completely anecdotal record, restricted to the plans and ceramic contexts used to identify the phases of activity.40 39

40

A. M. Sáez Romero’s doctoral thesis titled Alfares y saladeros de Gadir. Una aproximación arqueológica a la economía conservera en la bahía de Cádiz en época púnica y tardopúnica (ss. VI a I a. C.) was defended at the University of Cádiz in 2014 and is currently awaiting publication. An example of this kind of documentation is available in García Vargas and Ferrer Albelda 2006.

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Fig. 6.4: Tingitanian cetaria from Metrouna (Tetuán, Morocco), with murex middens situated nearby. For the Roman era, Cotta or Lixus, the best Tingitanian examples, lack detailed publications, a situation similar to some of the most important sites of Baetica, such as the Sexi factories of Almuñécar (the factories from El Majuelo) where nearly 100 vats have been excavated but just a few general texts published. For some sites the situation has improved only recently, as for Baelo Claudia, where the first archaeo-ichthyological datasets and analyses date from 2001,41 or Malaca (modern Málaga), where in recent years the first archaeometric analyses have been undertaken.42 However, as previously mentioned, the situation is frankly deficient and the need for proper investigation and publication is undeniable: of the approximately 100 Hispano-Roman fish-salting plants inventoried from Guétary on the Atlantic coast at 41 42

Cf. the contributions to Arévalo and Bernal-Casasola (eds) 2007. Corrales Aguilar 2013.

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the French-Spanish border to Rosas in the province of Girona, less than 10 % have provided even partially recorded archaeo-ichthyological data. Besides these complications, there are other aspects that increase the difficulty of characterising the products manufactured in the Roman salting factories. On the one hand, there is the exclusively organic nature of the salted-fish meat and fish sauces, and thus their chances of survival are very poor.43 When dealing with salsamenta – salted-fish meat – the possibility of finding fish remains in the vats themselves is virtually nil: the tuna would have been cut up and their bones removed, and all that remained was the meat and the salt, the archaeological traces of which are nearly invisible to the naked eye. This has resulted in an over-representation in the archaeological record of clupeids (sardine and anchovy) used for making fish paste, since, these fish being processed whole, their bones can be found in the vats. We do not know of any salting tanks containing positive evidence for the production of salsamenta. Only the scales from large tuna leave some clues to large pieces of meat – ventral or flank – with salted skin, as found at Baelo Claudia.44 This leaves a paradox: though we tend to think of salted tuna as being the main product of the Spanish provinces, and exported to markets in other provinces, we find hardly any evidence of it from excavations. The production structures also turn out to be complex when analysed in detail, focusing on the relationship between production methods and the structures employed in the factories. Where and how was the garum filtered if the salting tanks had no outlets? Should we consider the very few examples of tanks connected by lead fistulae as technological innovations for the leaching process? Why are these only observed in specific cases as in Tingitana (Alcazarseguer) or in Africa Proconsularis (Nabeul) – maybe because they only occur on sites of mid-Imperial or later date? Where were the fish sauces stored? We know from the tituli picti that up to four years of aging were required.45 Were they aged in the vats or already packed in the transport amphorae? If they were in fact held in the vats for the aging process, is the volumetric calculation that we use with regard to quantifying plant productivity still valid? To investigate all these questions, experimental archaeology is highly important, and the precise knowledge of the production process of fish sauces and salting in the hands of chemists and food technologists will allow us to establish trustworthy, realistic and useful parameters of the methods used in ancient fish processing. One emerging investigation, still under development, is the interdisciplinary project Flor de Garum, which brings together archaeologists and chemists from the universities of Cádiz and Seville in an attempt to reproduce allec and other sauces recorded in the ‘Garum Shop’ of Pompeii.46 With regard to the ingredients used in Roman fisheries and preservation facilities, scombrids, like tuna and mackerel, were clearly the most popular. However, one has the impression that all kinds of fish were processed in the factories, as illustrated by the North African vats from Septem, in which at least twenty species are attested,47 demonstrating the 43 44 45 46 47

Bernal-Casasola 2009: 15–8. Bernal-Casasola 2009: 16–7, fig. 9. Such as, for example, CIL 15.4724 and CIL 4.2596 = 5621, amongst others. For a catalogue of painted inscriptions on Baetican sauce amphorae, see Ehmig 2003: 61–9. Facebook.com/Flor-de-Garum; [email protected]; García Vargas et al. 2014. Found in three archaeological excavations of Roman preservation centres (Conjuntos Industriales 2 and 3, Parador de Turismo and Paseo de las Palmeras), dated between the first and fifth centuries

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Fig. 6.5: Murex midden at Metrouna under excavation. (Author’s photo). variety of fished resources and the complexity of fish preparation.48 Some were salted, others were probably smoked (though his process has not been demonstrated yet) or dried and partly used to flavour fish sauces alongside tuna, sparids, serranids, clupeids and other fish species that assuredly played an important role in Roman gastronomy. But the Romans did not just use fish. In the factory at Iulia Traducta (Algeciras), thousands of shucked oysters were found thrown into refuse pits, the number of which evidently exceeds by the potential consumption of workers and fishermen. On at least two other Roman fishing sites, Baelo Claudia and the factories under the Comedy Theatre in Cádiz, thousands of limpets (Patellidae) were

48

AD: Argyrosomus regius (meagre), Auxis rochei (bullet tuna), Dentex dentex (dentex), Dentex gibbosus (pink dentex), Diplodus sargus (white sea bream), Epinephelus alexandrinus (black tip grouper), Epinephelus marginatus (dusky grouper), Galeorhinus galeus (tope), Pagellus erythrinus (pandora), Pagrus pagrus (red porgy), Polypron americanus (wreckfish), Pomatomus saltatrix (bluefish), Sarda sarda (bonito), Scomber japonicus (Spanish mackerel), Seriola dumerili (amberjack), Spondyliosoma cantharus (black sea bream), Thunnus alalunga (albacore), Thunnus thynnus (bluefin tuna), Trachurus trachurus (horse mackerel) and Zeus faber (John Dory). Bernal-Casasola et al. 2013: 2529, table I.

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found in the residue in the salting vats, confirming the use of shellfish resources in fishsauce preparation, as has been proposed recently.49 This is a dynamic that seems extendable to many other salting factories, at which oysters and various bivalves (carpet shells, cockles and razorshells) are very frequent finds. Marine gastropods, whose main representatives are the muricids (Hexaplex trunculus and, to a lesser degree, Murex brandaris), should also be considered: what was done with the meat of the thousands of these molluscs that were needed to obtain one gram of precious Tyrian purple dye? Evidently they were not thrown away, as has been suggested for the late Roman shell mounds located and excavated at Villa Victoria/Carteia (San Roque, Cádiz province) or the early Imperial period ones in Metrouna (Tetouan, Morocco), where thousands of crushed shells were found in the vicinity of the preserved vats (fig. 6.5), from which it is logical to infer that the meat was preserved as food after the dye had been extracted.50 It is more difficult to be precise about the type of foods produced, and whether they were produced exclusively from molluscs (e. g., pickled mussels), which were abundant in Roman cuisine;51 or if the meat of these marine animals was just one among many other ingredients used in preserved products with a fish base. The tiny fragments of polished mollusc shell sometimes found in preserved Roman fish sauces have been interpreted as intrusive, part of the stomach contents of a fish whose viscera ended up in the garum or other sauce.52 It is possible that such fragments derive instead from an insufficient cleaning of molluscs deliberately used in the sauce-production process. Unfortunately, as far as we know, the analysis of organic residues does not yet allow us to distinguish between these kinds of ingredients among the numerous markers identified in the residues of the garum amphorae. A very fruitful line of investigation could be explored if such a distinguishing technique were developed. A further question for consideration is the range of meats used in the preparation of salsamenta, apart from the aforementioned tuna, which was in great demand. In the first place, there is the potential use of cetacean meat (baleen and sperm whales). Recent research has shown that these were not just an object of occasional exploitation (from natural beachings), but that they were also the object of targeted hunting in the Punic-Phoenician and Roman periods, as can be deduced from the diverse iconographic, zooarchaeological and documentary evidence.53 The presence of bones from these enormous marine mammals in association with salting factories dating to between at least the second century BC and the fifth to sixth century AD, with examples from A Lanzada, Baelo Claudia, Guétary, Septem Fratres and Traducta (fig. 6.6) – some even showing traces of burning or evidence of having been heated or boiled – has recently led some researchers to propose that their meat was 49 50 51 52

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Bernal-Casasola 2011a. Bernal-Casasola et al. 2008. Carannante 2012: 83–120. A good example is the second-century BC amphora from Baelo Claudia, in which an unidentified and highly polished fragment of marine bivalve shell was found, and interpreted as unintentional pollution or originating from the stomach contents of some durophagous fish species (such as sparidae); the erosion of this shell could indicate a physio-chemical process of attack in the digestive tract of the fish, which was ultimately used in the preparation of the fish sauce: Bernal-Casasola et al. 2007: 372. Bernal-Casasola and Monclova Bohórquez 2011.

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Fig. 6.6: Cetacean remains in archaeological sites from proto-historical and Roman times. (After Bernal and Monclova 2011; map by Richard Szydlak). also processed in the salting vats, some of which have a capacity of between ten and nearly twenty cubic metres, and sufficient to receive such creatures.54 It is, however, very difficult to find archaeological evidence of these processes. One line of investigation is to develop, in the near future, an archaeometrical study of the so-called ‘caramelised deposits’. These are extremely hard, with a strong fishy odour, a translucent brown colour and an almost vitreous texture. They have been recorded recently in the Atlantic factories of Lanévry and Kerlaz by C. Driard, both at the bottom of the basins and on the walls, and could relate to different stages of the preservation process.55 A basin with residues of this type has been found recently in Baelo Claudia (fig. 6.7), and one of the conical vats from the late Roman period with a large capacity (tank P-8 from Industrial Complex VI) has been associated with the processing of whale meat.56 It will be necessary to determine 54

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For further details regarding these questions, including a table with seventeen find contexts in the central and western Mediterranean, see Bernal-Casasola and Monclova Bohórquez 2011: 108, fig. 7. A recent paper on this topic by D. Bernal-Casasola, A. Gardeisen, P. Morgenstern, G. Piqués, T. Theodoropoulou, B. Wilkens and L. Kolska Horwitz titled ‘Whale Exploitation in the Mediterranean: the Evidence from Archaeology’ has been accepted for Antiquity, awaiting publication in 2016. Driard 2014: 52–3. Samples of which are currently in the process of being archaeometrically analysed by N. Garnier.

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Fig. 6.7: Detail from the process of sampling of the ‘caramelised’ adhesions from a wall of one of the salting tanks in Industrial Complex VI, Baelo Claudia. (Author’s photo).

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the chemical composition of these substances in order to discover their potential link with oils or cetaceous meat. It has also been proposed that meat of land-based animals could have been salted in fish-preservation factories. This hypothesis derives from the discovery, in the late antique (fifth century AD) levels of the salting factories at Traducta (Algeciras), of hundreds of bones with traces of use that suggest sacrificial activities: perforations (on skulls of sheep or goats), cut marks (on non-edible parts such as the horns or hooves) and processing (such as traces of butchery and temperature change in many bones). From the ten identified taxons in a sample of nearly 2,000 classified bones, only four species are represented with an MNI (minimum number of individuals) high enough to suggest such a use: sheep/goat (81 individuals), cow (30), deer (25) and possibly pig (12). 57 Some of these bones also had accretions which are possible indicators of their contact with brine.58 Perhaps this helps us to understand some of the observations made by Columella, who describes the salting of pork and then states that fish was treated in the same way.59 Lastly, we must note that for some of these production processes, oils or fats may have constituted an additional ingredient (for preparations in oil, the manufacture of pickles, etc.). We should not forget the high presence of imported amphorae in the fish-processing factories, many of them used for holding oil (especially from Baetica and Africa Proconsularis), and the recent discovery in many of the preservation factories of mills that – according to archaeometrical analyses of the mill parts, where remains of crushed fish bone were detected – were used to produce fish meal and fish oil.60

4. Fishing implements: still building the corpus Until recently, no monographs addressed the subject of Roman fishing equipment;61 publications were normally confined to illustrating the existence of fishing activities at the site of the finds, hooks being the most commonly represented artefact. During the 1990s substantial progress in this area was made, although in different chronological contexts – such as European prehistory62 – and geographical contexts – such as Egypt.63 Nowadays this topic being revised and updated, as illustrated by works such as the PhD thesis of K. Ayodeji64 and the proceedings of the 2007 Cádiz workshop on Ancient Nets and Fishing Gear65 among others. For decades, much of the equipment was not recognised archaeologically: for instance, net weights made from rolled sheet lead, one of the most frequent items on the archaeological register (fig. 6.11), were often noted as items of indeterminate function. Now we are in the process of developing corpora, without which it is not possible to make an accurate 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

Zooarchaeological and taphonomic study performed by I. Cáceres. Bernal-Casasola 2007: 99–100. Columella 12.55.4. Domínguez-Bella and Bernal-Casasola 2011. There are a few honourable exceptions to this general rule, such as the study of fishing equipment from Hispania by F. Gracia (1981–2). Cleyet-Merle 1990. Sahrhage 1998. Ayodeji 2004. Bekker-Nielsen and Bernal-Casasola (eds) 2010.

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Fig. 6.8: Detail of the long-line (lines and hooks) found in Herculaneum.

Fig. 6.9: Graffiti from Stabiae, showing long-lining from an anchored boat.

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interpretation of the changes in fishing equipment over time, of regional variations or of the direct association of one type with a specific form of fishing tackle – a situation exacerbated by published examples often lacking any reference to the archaeological context of the finds. Despite this, we do already have some typo-chronological proposals for the Roman period,66 although we should still consider them as works in progress – their structure must be completed and revised in the years to come. For the time being there remains the difficulty of associating the archaeological finds of the major fishing equipment components found during excavation (hooks and net weights) with specific fishing techniques; nets in particular present an especially complex picture.67 Exceptions to this rule are tackle used to target one particular species, such as cadufos (pots for capturing octopus), rods, corrales (stone traps) and baskets.68 In the modern published literature, links between the ancient equipment and traditional local fishing techniques are made – usually associating weights with specific types of nets – but such assumptions and proposals are impossible to confirm with the current state of knowledge. There are a few exceptions to this lack of certainty, such as the lead weights of the type PLIX1/PLIX2 – ‘rolled plate lead weights’– that were hammered at the end and used to weight the edge of casting-nets of the amphiblestron type, as illustrated by a set of ten weights from the macellum of Baelo Claudia.69 The absence of organic remains of the fibres used to make nets prevents us from making precise inferences, and this is a problem that is unlikely to be solved in the near future as far as the Atlantic-Mediterranean region is concerned.70 There are some exceptions, however, such as the buried towns of Vesuvius with their special preservation conditions: for instance, the use of multiple-hook fishing tackle is attested by the discovery, in Herculaneum, of an intact carbonised example of a long-line lying in a basket (fig. 6.8) and the presence of graffiti in the Villa San Marco at Stabiae record its use from boats (fig. 6.9). Another problem confronting the study of ancient fishing equipment is the difficulty in associating different tackles with specific target species, even at the family level, as most types of fish can be captured in several ways: a problem known as equifinality.71 The most obvious example is that of hooks of medium or large size (> 4 cm) which could be used to catch a number of species. Furthermore, within the period from the ninth century BC to the end of late antiquity, an Atlantic-Mediterranean morphological koiné can be observed for some equipment types – such as hooks – which defies our attempts to identify regional and/or chronological differences, although at a global scale these types do serve as technological indicators. For example, on the Iberian peninsula it seems that the classical bronze hooks introduced by the Phoenicians were a considerable technological advance, with a grooved shaft to improve the adhesion of the line, as illustrated by examples from the eighth and seventh centuries

66 67 68 69 70 71

Galili et al. 2002; Bernal-Casasola 2010. Bekker-Nielsen 2010: 199–203. Bernal-Casasola 2010: 122–32. Bernal-Casasola et al. 2011. In contrast, in areas such as Graeco-Roman Egypt (see Thomas 2010) or the north of Europe, especially in prehistory, this line of inquiry could be very fruitful. Morales 2010: 46–8 and this volume, 24–5.

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Fig. 6.10: Hooks and a bronze rod with hooks in the process of production, prior to separation, from the Phoenician deposits in La Fonteta (González Prats, 2010, 37, fig. 6, no. 42286).

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BC found at Morro de Mezquitilla just east of Málaga;72 this design was gradually replaced by one in which the distal end of the shaft was hammered.73 We know that hooks were produced in early Phoenician contexts, as evidenced by finds of hooks from La Fonteta (Guardamar del Segura, Alicante province), dated to the eighth or seventh century BC (Phase II) associated with metallurgical furnaces,74 and a bronze rod of circular section in which two hooks had been prepared prior to their separation (fig. 6.10). This would be a simple method of production that any metalworker could master, hence the homogeneity of those artefacts and their poor performance as indicators – at least for the moment. Another interesting point to note is the virtual absence of bronze hooks from medieval deposits; perhaps, in the Middle Ages, hooks were made from organic materials which would not leave a trace in the archaeological record. This would represent a technological change in the Iberian peninsula similar to the one that took place in the Late Bronze Age. In the study of net weights, one of the most surprising advances – apart from establishing a chronological typology – has been the determination that Roman nets were much smaller than those of other historical periods, and smaller than their modern counterparts from the Strait of Gibraltar (fig. 6.11–12). It is at least possible to infer their size from the internal diameters of the holes of the net weights recovered; these constitute one of the few objective pieces of evidence one can use to address this issue.75 The larger of the Roman net weights76 have interior diameters of 2.5–3 cm and weigh 200–250 g; many of the weights from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries recently recovered in La Chanca at Conil de la Frontera exceed 1 kg in weight (types II, III and VIII), some more than 2 kg (types IV and IX), and have holes for ropes more than 5 cm in diameter.77 That is to say, the fishing nets from the Duchy of Medina Sidonia78 could have twice the capacity (in terms of internal diameter) or hold eight times as much fish (by weight) as the Roman nets. These are, of course, complex issues, like all parameters that aspire to quantify aspects of ancient economies. Nonetheless, it appears that in the future we will be able to retroproject quantitative data from modern fisheries – in terms of numbers of catches – to Roman times, downscaling them in relation to the size of the nets employed. This is a research route that was not previously apparent. Archaeological studies of Roman equipment have also revealed a considerable technical complexity: from the ‘grapnel hooks’ – multiple hooks – that may have been used to target cephalopods (fig. 6.13) to the off-centred sinkers (type PL VI) from Yassi Ada, designed to minimise tangles in the line, or the clamp-rod weights (PL V), intended for use on sandy seabeds, amongst other examples.79 There was a craft specialisation that indicates a more precise and intense knowledge of fishing techniques than one might imagine at first sight, and this conclusion fits well, for example, with the potential use of colouring materials with fungicide properties to harden linen, hemp or esparto grass nets, as has been proposed recently.80 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

Mansel 2000, fig. 5, 1–7. For several well-dated (stratigraphically dated) examples, see Bernal-Casasola (ed.) 2011. González Prats 2010: 35. Bernal-Casasola 2010. Such as the ones found in Traducta and in Baelo: Bernal-Casasola (ed.) 2011: 446, 448. Gómez Fernández 2011. On the dukes of Medina Sidonia, see García Vargas, this volume p. 256. Bernal-Casasola 2010: 94, fig. 5C-F and 110–1, figs 14–5. Bernal-Casasola and Domínguez-Bella 2012.

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Fig. 6.11: Roman net weight of the largest size found at Traducta; compare fig. 12. (After Bernal 2010). For the moment, the comparative study of deposits from the zooarchaeological record (ichthyofauna and malacofauna) and of the remains of fishing equipment represent complementary research strategies; if we rely on only one of these indicators, a skewed picture, which is not consistent with ancient reality, will result. As an example, at Baelo Claudia the use of large-meshed nets is indicated by the tuna bones which appear in excavations, with sizes corresponding to the average for the Republican era, 160–170 cm in length (although there are examples of immense individuals nearly 4 m in length).81 In the excavations, however, no weights of a sufficient size for such a tuna net have turned up. Further, it must be stressed that, for the moment, no differences have been detected between the fishing equipment used for river and marine fishing, although this is a line of investigation to pursue in the future.

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Fig. 6.12: For comparison, a modern net weight from Chanca de Conil. (After Gómez 2011).

5. Towards a promising future As has been briefly assessed above through concrete examples, the archaeological record from halieutic deposits still presents multiple gaps; this is the result of (1) the early excavation date of some of the sites – with consequent variation in terms of methodology – and (2) the absence, even today, of a universal application of zooarchaeological and archaeometrical studies as part of a broad spectrum of research. The latter should be, in my view, the main line of inquiry for the future reaserch in Phoenician-Punic and Roman cetariae, where a detailed study and exhaustive publication of Atlantic and Mediterranean fishing deposits, both ancient and modern, will permit substantial advances. A diverse range of on-going doctoral theses show promise for the future, as does the emergence from many countries of a new generation of researchers interested in the topics of fishing and fish processing: the 2012 meeting in Rome, Fish and Ships,82 was an encouraging preview of things to come. Greater interaction between zooarchaeologists and historians will also be important, as these parallel roads of inquiry are currently straitjacketed by academic tradition. There is already a range of forums for the presentation of scientific results, and these should be developed to encourage greater interaction and interdisciplinary collaboration. Furthermore, it is important to test, within each specific fishing area, aspects that have traditionally been generalised about without any reservations and to present solid empirical evidence to support any proposals presented. The value of such an approach can be seen in the recent redefinition of fish and oyster farming; this has traditionally been considered an exclu82

Botte and Leitch (eds) 2014.

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Fig. 6.13: An example of the complexity of ancient fishing gear: a ‘potera’ for catching squid. (Bernal 2010; Museo Arqueológico, Alicante, CS 5800).

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sively Italic activity – or at least a phenomenon linked to the mos italicus – but we now know, as a result of recent investigations, that it was practised in other provincial areas such as Baetica, thanks to the recent discovery of piscinae and zooarchaeological evidence.83 An interesting topic to approach in the future, when we have a complete archaeo-ichthyological and malacological chronological sequence that will allow us to verify the progressive reduction of fish size, is the suggestion of overexploitation of fish stock in Roman times.84 This is, for now, not possible. It is not possible, either, to make generalisations about practices of intensive exploitation from fish remains, as sometimes the skeletons, skin, entrails and other remains were used to make garum, sauces and other products85 and at others they were thrown away or buried, as seen in the large pits of tuna bones at Punta Camarinal86 or Septem Fratres.87 Thus, specific activities are neither ‘always’ nor ‘never’: they vary from context to context. It is necessary, in the near future, to create a pan-Mediterranean catalogue of tituli picti and the palaeo-contents associated with amphorae, in order to deepen our understanding of manufactured products and the complexity of Roman gastronomy. Experimental archaeology has a lot to offer on these technological processes; it is still at an embryonic stage but will certainly help in the near future to develop answers to a lot of the questions that we historians have long been asking ourselves. Another aspect to investigate in the future, that demonstrates the complexity of the preservation industry and has traditionally been over-simplified, is trade, on a regional scale, in the resources required for fishing and fish processing. For example, our knowledge of salt is limited. Despite the numerous geoarchaeological attempts that have been made88 it is very difficult to document ancient salt-pans archaeologically. Since salt production requires topographical conditions (flat ground in the intertidal area, in regions with specific climatic conditions) that are only found in a few areas, the pans have been exploited in later periods, destroying the fragile evidence for ancient salt produc tion. Paradoxically, the only well-preserved archaeological salt-works site is located in the northwest of the Iberian peninsula, preserved thanks to the use of stone-built tanks and evaporation pans.89 Some coastal areas did not possess adequate facilities to provide the prodigious amounts of ‘white gold’ necessary for tuna salting, thus it needed to be imported. Moreover, it should be remembered that amphorae were not always manufactured at the same location as their contents. Their manufacture was a complex process, and it was frequently more economical to bring these items from major kiln areas located some distance away.90 Egyptian papyri of the mid-imperial period attest to this practice in antiquity.91

83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

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Bernal-Casasola 2011b. Trakadas 2006. As in Jordan: Van Neer and Parker 2008 Bernal-Casasola et al. 2007. Bernal-Casasola et al. 2013. E. g., Alonso et al. 2004. Castro 2007. I have made this suggestion on a number of occasions, as an alternative model to those already known – e. g., salting factories or villae with pottery kilns – to explain the discrepancy between figlinae and cetariae at a regional scale (for a recent synthesis, see Bernal-Casasola 2006: 1373– 84); it is not accepted by all investigators: e. g., Teichner and Pons 2008. Gallimore 2010.

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Roman fishing and fish-processing activities were remarkably complex and varied, and the simplifications and excessive generalisations by means of which we sometimes attempt to explain the historical processes in the maritime sphere lead us to a deficient understanding of the archaeological record. Hence the importance for the future of an interdisciplinary and detailed characterisation of all ancient fishing and fish-preservation deposits, from the Black Sea to the Pillars of Hercules. This article forms part of the development framework of the Garum project (HAR2013–435998) and of the RAMPPA network (HAR2015–71511-REDT) of the Plan Nacional I+D+i del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación/Feder del Gobierno de España. I am grateful to Mónica Ruz Manzano for translating the text from Spanish. Darío Bernal-Casasola Departamento de Historia, Geografia y Filosofia, Universidad de Cádiz Avenida Dr. Gomez Ulla, E-11003 Cádiz [email protected]

6. References 6.1 Primary sources Columella, On Agriculture 3: Books 10–12, On Trees, with an English translation by H. B. Ash, E. S. Forster and E. H. Heffner (LCL 408). Cambridge, MA 1955.

6.2 Secondary literature Alonso, C., F. J. Domínguez-Bella and J. Benavente 2004. ‘Las marismas, alfares y salinas como indicadores para la restitución paleotopográfica de la bahía de Cádiz durante la Antigüedad’ in XVI Encuentros de Historia y Arqueología: Las industrias alfareras y conserveras fenicio-púnicas de la bahía de Cádiz. Córdoba, 263–87. Arévalo, A. and D. Bernal-Casasola (eds) 2007. Las cetariae de Baelo Claudia. Avance de las investigaciones arqueológicas en el barrio meridional (2000–2004). Seville. Auriemma, R. 2000. ‘Le anfore del relitto di Grado e il loro contenuto’, Melanges d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’École française de Rome 112, 27–51. Ayodeji, K. 2004. Fishing Equipment and Methods in the Roman World. PhD thesis. University of London. Bekker-Nielsen, T. 2009. ‘La industria pesquera en la región del Mar Negro en la Antigüedad’ in D. Bernal-Casasola (ed.), Arqueología de la pesca en el Estrecho de Gibraltar: De la Prehistoria al fin del mundo Antiguo (Monographs of the Sagena Project 1). Cádiz, 271–95. Bekker-Nielsen, T. 2010. ‘Fishing in the Roman world’ in T. Bekker-Nielsen and D. Bernal-Casasola (eds) 187–204. Bekker-Nielsen, T. (ed.) 2005. Ancient Fishing and Fish Processing in the Black Sea Region (Black Sea Studies 2). Aarhus. Bekker-Nielsen, T. and D. Bernal-Casasola (eds) 2010. Ancient Nets and Fishing Gear. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Nets and Fishing Gear in Classical Antiquity: A First Approach (Monographs of the Sagena Project 2). Cádiz. Bernal-Casasola, D. 2006. ‘La industria conservera romana en el Círculo del Estrecho. Consideraciones sobre la geografía de la producción’ in A. Akerraz, P. Ruggeri, A. Siraj et al. (eds), L’Africa

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Romana: mobilità delle persone e dei popoli, dinamiche migratorie, emigrazioni ed immigrazioni nelle province occidentali dell’Impero romano. Atti del XVI Convegno di studio, Rabat, 15–19 dicembre 2004 (L’ Africa Romana 16). Rome, 1351–94. Bernal-Casasola, D. 2007. ‘Algo más que garum: Nuevas perspectivas sobre la producción de las cetariae hispanas al hilo de las excavaciones en c/ San Nicolás (Algeciras, Cádiz)’, in L. Lagóstena-Barrios, D. Bernal-Casasola and A. Arévalo (eds), Cetariae 2005: Salsas y salazones de pescado en Occidente durante la Antigüedad: Cádiz, 7–9 noviembre de 2005 (BAR International Series 1686). Oxford, 93–107. Bernal-Casasola, D. 2009. ‘Ánforas, pesquerías y conservas entre la Baetica y el Adriático: Pinceladas para futuras investigaciones arqueológicas’ in S. Pesavento Mattioli and M.-B. Carre (eds) 3–24. Bernal-Casasola, D. 2010. ‘Fishing tackle in Hispania: reflections, proposals and first results’ in Bekker-Nielsen and Bernal-Casasola (eds) 83–137. Bernal-Casasola, D. 2011a. ‘Rastreando a los mariscadores romanos en las playas del Círculo del Estrecho: Patélidos, burgaillos, mejillones y concheros poligénicos’ in Bernal-Casasola (ed.) 37–54. Bernal-Casasola, D. 2011b. ‘Piscicultura y ostricultura en Baetica: Nuevos tiempos, nuevas costumbres’ in Bernal-Casasola (ed.) 137–60. Bernal-Casasola, D. (ed.) 2009. Arqueología de la pesca en el Estrecho de Gibraltar: De la Prehistoria al fin del mundo Antiguo (Monographs of the Sagena Project 1). Cádiz. Bernal-Casasola, D. (ed.) 2011. Pescar con Arte: Fenicios y romanos en el origen de los aparejos andaluces. Catálogo de la exposición ‘Baelo Claudia’, diciembre 2011-julio 2012 (Monographs of the Sagena Project 3). Cádiz. Bernal-Casasola, D. and A. Monclova Bohórquez 2011. ‘Captura y aprovechamiento haliéutico de cetáceos en la Antigüedad: De Iulia Traducta a Atenas’ in Bernal-Casasola (ed.) 95–118. Bernal-Casasola, D., A. Arévalo, A. Morales et al. 2007. ‘Un ejemplo de conservas de pescado baelonenses en el siglo II a. C.’, in Arévalo and Bernal-Casasola (eds) 355–74. Bernal-Casasola, D., L. Roldán, J. Blánquez et al. 2008. ‘Un taller de púrpura tardorromano en Carteia. Avance de las excavaciones preventivas en Villa Victoria (2005)’ , in C. Alfaro and L. Karali (eds) 2008. Vestidos, textiles y tintes: Estudios sobre la producción de bienes de consumo en la Antigüedad. Actas del II Symposium Internacional sobre Textiles y Tintes del Mediterráneo en el mundo romano (Atenas, 24 al 26 de noviembre, 2005) (Purpureae Vestes 2).Valencia, 209–26. Bernal-Casasola, D., D. Cottica and A. Zaccaria 2009. ‘El garum de Pompeya y Herculano (2008– 2012): Síntesis de la primera campaña del proyecto hispano-italiano’, Informes y Trabajos: Excavaciones en el exterior 3, 125–38. Bernal-Casasola, D., D. Cottica and A. Zaccaria 2010. ‘Pesca y Garum en Pompeya y Herculano: Síntesis de la segunda campaña del proyecto de investigación (2009)’, Informes y Trabajos: Excavaciones en el exterior 5, 138–49. Bernal-Casasola, D., J. M. Vargas and M. Lara 2011. ‘Pesas de red de plomo, de una posible atarraya’ in Bernal-Casasola (ed.) 452–3. Bernal-Casasola, D. and S. Domínguez-Bella 2012. ‘Colorantes y pigmentos en las pesquerías hispanorromanas’, Cuadernos de Prehistoria y Arqueología de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid 37–8, 671–85. Bernal-Casasola, D., R. Marlasca, C. G. Rodríguez Santana et al. 2013. ‘Los atunes de la Tingitana: Un contexto excepcional de las factorías salazoneras de Septem Fratres’ in M. Cocco, A. Gavini and A. Ibba (eds), L’Africa Romana: trasformazione dei paesaggi del potere nell’Africa settentrionale fino alla fine del mondo antico: Atti del XIX Convegno di studio, Sassari, 16–19 dicembre 2010 (L’ Africa Romana 19). Sassari, 2507–33. Bernal-Casasola, D., D. Cottica, E. García Vargas et al. 2014a. ‘Un contexto excepcional en Pompeya: la Pila de Ánforas de la Bottega del Garum (I, 12, 8). Avance de un estudio interdisciplinar’ in S. Biegert (ed.), 28th Congress of the Rei Cretariae Romanae Fautores: From Broken Pottery to Lost

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Identity in Roman Times. International Conference (Catania, Italia, 23–30 September 2012) (Rei Cretariae Romanae Fautorum Acta). Bonn, 219–31. Bernal-Casasola, D., A. Muñoz, R. Marlasca et al. 2014b. ‘Atunes ronqueados y conchas de la Plaza de Asdrúbal: Novedades haliéuticas en los saladeros gadiritas’, in J. J. Cantillo, D. Bernal and J. Ramos (eds), Moluscos y púrpura en contextos arqueológicos atlántico-mediterráneos: Nuevos datos y reflexiones en clave de proceso histórico (Actas Historia y Arte). Cádiz, 205–28. Bernal-Casasola, D., L. Cobos, R. Marlasca et al. 2014c. ‘De las fogatas profilácticas púnicas a las chancas romanas: Moluscos y escómbridos en el antiguo Teatro Andalucía de Cádiz’ in J. J. Cantillo, D. Bernal and J. Ramos (eds), Moluscos y púrpura en contextos arqueológicos atlántico-mediterráneos: Nuevos datos y reflexiones en clave de proceso histórico (Actas Historia y Arte). Cádiz, 179–204. Botte, E. 2009. Salaisons et sauces de poissons en Italie du sud et en Sicile durant l’Antiquité (Centre Jean Bérard Collection 31; Archéologie de l’artisanat antique 1). Naples. Botte, E. and V. Leitch (eds) 2014. Fish & ships: production et commerce des ‘salsamenta’ durant l’Antiquité. Actes de l’atelier doctoral, Rome, 18–22 juin 2012 (Bibliothèque d’archéologie méditerranéenne et africaine 17). Paris. Carannante, A. 2012. A tavola tra mari e vulcani: La gastronomía flegrea da 3500 anni, tra bioarcheologia, storia ed ecologia. Naples. Castro, J. C. 2007. ‘La salina romana del yacimiento de “O Areal”, Vigo (Galicia)’ in L. Lagóstena-Barrios, D. Bernal-Casasola and A. Arévalo (eds) 355–65. Cleyet-Merle, J.-J. 1990. La Prehistoire de la peche. Paris. Corrales Aguilar, P. 2013. ‘Salsamentum sur-hispano. Apuntes para su estudio’, Onoba: Revista de Arqueología y Antigüedad 1, 205–18. Costa, B. and J. H. Fernández (eds) 2012. Sal, pesca y salazones fenicios en Occidente: XXVI Jornadas de Arqueología Fenicio-Púnica, Eivissa 2011 (Treballs del Museu de arqueológic d’Eivissa i Formentera 67). Ibiza. Curtis, R. I. 1991. Garum and Salsamenta: Production and Commerce in Materia Medica (Studies in Ancient Medicine 3). Leiden. Domínguez-Bella, S. and D. Bernal-Casasola 2011. ‘Fish-based subproducts in late antiquity: Archaeometric and archaeological evidence from the fish factories at Traducta (Algeciras, Cádiz, Spain)’ in I. Turbanti-Memmi (ed.), Proceedings of the 37th International Symposium on Archaeometry 12th-16th May 2008, Siena, Italy. Berlin, 453–8. Driard, C. 2014. ‘Les sauces de poisson dans l’ouest de la province romaine de Lyonnaise: réflexions sur l’élaboration et la nature des produits’ in Botte and Leitch (eds) 47–60. Ehmig, U. 2003. Die Römischen Amphoren aus Mainz 1 (Frankfurter Archäologische Schriften 4). Möhnesee. Enghoff, I. B. 2005. ‘Viking age fishing in Denmark, with particular focus on the freshwater site Viborg, methods of excavation, and smelt fishing’ in H. Hüster-Plogmann (ed.), The Role of Fish in Ancient Time: Proceedings of the 13th Meeting of the ICAZ Fish Remains Working Group on October 4th-9th, Basel/Augst 2005. Rahden, 69–76. Étienne, R. and F. Mayet 2002. Salaisons et sauces de poisson Hispaniques (Trois clés pour l’économie de l’Hispanie romaine 2). Paris. Galili, E., B. Rosen and J. Sharvit 2002. ‘Fishing-gear sinkers recovered from an underwater wreckage site off the Carmel coast, Israel’, IJNA 31, 182–201. Gallimore, S. 2010. ‘Amphora production in the Roman world: A view from the papyri’, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 47, 155–84. García Vargas, E. and E. Ferrer Albelda 2006. ‘Producción y comercio de salazones y salsas saladas de pescado del litoral andaluz en época fenicio-púnica: Temas y problemas’, Setúbal Arqueológica 13, 19–38. García Vargas, E., D. Bernal-Casasola, V. Palacios et al. 2014. ‘Confectio Gari Pompeiani: Procedimiento experimental para la elaboración de salsas de pescado romanas’, SPAL: Revista de prehistoria y arqueología de la Universidad de Sevilla 23, 65–82.

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Gómez Fernández, V. 2011. ‘Pesas de redes de cerámica: Edad Moderna’, in Bernal-Casasola (ed.) 442–3. González Prats, A. 2010. ‘Anzuelos, fíbulas, pendientes y cuchillos: una muestra de la producción de los talleres matalúrgicos de La Fonteta’, Lucentum 29, 33–56. Gracia, F. 1981–2. ‘Ordenación tipológica del instrumental de pesca en bronce ibero-romano’, Pyrenae 17–8, 315–28. Lagóstena-Barrios, L. 2001. La producción de salsas y conservas de pescado en la Hispania Romana (II a. C–IV d. C.) (Col.lecció Instrumenta 11). Barcelona. Lagóstena-Barrios, L., D. Bernal-Casasola and A. Arévalo (eds) 2007. Cetariae 2005: Salsas y salazones de pescado en Occidente durante la Antigüedad. Cádiz, 7–9 noviembre de 2005 (BAR International Series 1686). Oxford. Little, A. 1935. ‘The decoration of the Hellenistic Peristyle House in south Italy’, American Journal of Archaeology 39, 360–71. López Monteagudo, G. 2010. ‘Nets and fishing gear in Roman mosaics from Spain’ in Bekker-Nielsen and Bernal-Casasola (eds) 161–85. Lowe, B. J. 2009. Roman Iberia: Economy, Society and Culture. London. Mansel, K. 2000. ‘Los hallazgos de metal procedentes del horizonte fenicio más antiguo B1 del Morro de Mezquitilla (Algarrobo, Málaga)’ in M. Barthélemy and M. E. Aubet Semmler (ed.), Actas del IV Congreso Internacional de Estudios Fenicios y Púnicos IV. Madrid, 1601–14. Morales, A. 1993. ‘Where are the tunas? Ancient Iberian fishing industries from an archaeozoological perspective’ in A. Clason, S. Payne and H. P. Uerpmann et al. (eds), Skeletons in her Cupboard: Festschrift for Juliet Clutton-Brock (Oxbow Monograph 34). Oxford, 135–41. Morales, A. 2010. ‘Inferences about prehistoric fishing gear based on archaeological assemblages’ in Bekker-Nielsen and Bernal-Casasola (eds) 25–53. Morales, A. and E. Roselló-Izquierdo 2007. ‘Los atunes de Baelo Claudia y Punta Camarinal (s. II a. C.). Apuntes preliminares’ in A. Arévalo and D. Bernal-Casasola (eds) 489–98. Napoli, J. (ed.) 2008. Resources et activités maritimes des peuples de l’Antiquité: Actes du Colloque International de Boulogne-sur-Mer, 12, 13 et 14 Mai 2005 (Cahiers du littoral 2.6). Boulogne. Pesavento Mattioli, S. and M.-B. Carre (eds) 2009. Olio e Pesce in época romana: Produzione e comercio nelle regioni dell’alto Adriatico. Atti del convegno Padova 16 feb. 2007 (Antenor Quaderni 15). Rome. Ponsich, M. 1988. Aceite de oliva y salazones de pescado: Factores geo-económicos de Betica y Tingitania, Madrid. Ponsich, M. and M. Tarradell 1965. Garum et industries antiques de salaison dans la Méditerranée occidentale (Bibliothèque de L’École des Hautes Etudes Hispaniques 36). Paris. Ripoll López, S. 1988. ‘El atún en las monedas antiguas del Estrecho y su simbolismo económico y religioso’ in E. Ripoll Perelló (ed.), Actas del II Congreso Internacional ‘El Estrecho de Gibraltar’ Ceuta, Noviembre 1987, I. Madrid, 481–6. Rodrigo García, M. J. and C. G. Rodríguez Santana 2001. ‘La ictiofauna arqueológica’ in C. Aranegui (ed.), Lixus: Colonia fenicia y ciudad-mauritana. Anotaciones sobre su ocupación medieval. Valencia, 204–20. Rodríguez Santana C. G. and M. J. Rodrigo García 2005. ‘Las ictiofaunas arqueológicas’ in C. Aranegui (ed.), Saguntum: Papeles del Laboratorio de Arqueología de Valencia, extra 6: Lixus-2. Ladera Sur. Excavaciones arqueológicas marroco-españolas en la colonia fenicia. Campañas 2000–2003, 241–52. Roselló-Izquierdo, E. and A. Morales (eds) 1994. Castillo de Doña Blanca: Archaeo-environmental Investigations in the Bay of Cadiz, Spain (750–500 BC) (BAR International Series 593). Oxford. Ruiz Mata, D. (ed.) 2006. Historia de la Pesca en el Ámbito del Estrecho 1–2. Seville. Sáez Romero, A. M. 2011. ‘Balance y novedades sobre la pesca y la industria conservera en las ciudades fenicias del “área del estrecho”’ in Bernal-Casasola (ed.) 255–97. Sahrhage, D. 1998. Fischfang und Fischkult im Alten Ägypten. Mainz.

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Sternberg, M. 1998. ‘Les produits de la pêche et la modification des structures halieutiques en Gaule Narbonnaise du IIIe siècle av. J.-C. au Ier siècle ap. J.-C.: les données de Lattes (Hérault), Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône) et Olbia-de-Provence (Var)’, MEFRA 110, 81–109. Teichner, F. and L. Pons 2008. ‘Roman amphora trade across the Strait of Gibraltar. An ancient “anti-economic practice?”, Oxford Journal of Archaeology 27, 303–14. Thomas, R. 2010. ‘Fishing equipment from Myos Hormos and fishing techniques on the Red Sea in the Roman period’ in Bekker-Nielsen and Bernal-Casasola (eds) 139–59. Trakadas, A. 2005. ‘The archaeological evidence for fish processing in the western Mediterranean’ in Bekker-Nielsen (ed.) 47–82. Trakadas, A. 2006. ‘Exhausted by fishermen’s nets. Roman sea fisheries and their management’, Journal of Mediterranean Studies 16, 259–72. Trakadas, A. 2009. Piscationes in Mauretania Tingitana: Marine Resource Exploitation in a Roman North African Province. PhD thesis. University of Southampton. Van Neer, W. and S. Thomas Parker 2008. ‘First archaeozoological evidence for haimation, the ‘invisible’ garum’, Journal of Archaeological Science 35, 1821–7.

Benedict J. Lowe

The trade in fish sauce and related products in the western Mediterranean

1. Introduction Central to any discussion of the ancient economy is the question of scale – to what extent did economic integration subsume the requirements of self-sufficiency? This debate can be categorised into three areas: (1) the quantity and range of items exchanged; (2) the social, political and economic structures within which this exchange took place; and (3) the objectives of this exchange.1 This discussion will be based on the distribution of ceramic storage vessels or amphorae. The typology of Roman amphorae has traditionally been employed to establish the chronology, contents and origins of these vessels. Essential to this discussion is the evidence offered by maritime archaeology, and the dramatic increase in the number of known shipwrecks dating between the second century BC and the first century AD is often cited as evidence for economic growth.2 Whilst A. J. Parker’s survey3 amply testifies that there was considerable seaborne trade, the mere number of wrecks tells us little about the scale and purpose of this exchange. P. Arnaud suggests that direct trade in increasingly large ships was predominant during the Classical period with coastal shipping probably restricted to ports in the immediate vicinity of the ports of departure and destination.4 D. Gibbins, on the other hand, suggests that small-scale coastal tramping was the backbone of ancient trade.5 Although the Mediterranean Sea is generally blessed with a clement environment that facilitates sea travel, local geography produced regional variations in climate and nautical conditions, rendering voyages from one region to another hazardous. Knowledge of a pre-defined route with access to secure anchorages will have helped to mitigate these hazards, encouraging ships to hug the coastline with the promise of supplies and protection from the elements and unforeseen delays. Coastal navigation, however, opened vessels to the dangers of off-shore currents, inlets and headlands. Although suitable for small ships that could easily be beached, larger vessels will have been better off in the open sea. Throughout antiquity, sailing was restricted to periods of good weather, with July and August having prime sailing weather, although the period from the middle of March to the 1 2 3 4 5

Davies 1998: 241. E. g., Hopkins 1980: 105–6. Parker 1992. Arnaud 2011: 75. Gibbins 2001: 294–5.

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beginning of November was acceptable. Outside of these months, navigation was hazardous due to winter storms and poor visibility.6 The northern coastline of the Mediterranean is dotted with bays and inlets that provide protection from the weather, as well as harbours and markets. The North African shore, on the other hand, was less inviting in antiquity, with sparse coastal populations and shallow reefs and islands presenting dangers to ships following the coast to the west from Cap Bon to the Strait of Gibraltar.7 The apparent absence of ancient shipwrecks along the North African coast is striking and may be due to either the difficulties of traversing the southern shore of the Mediterranean in antiquity, or the comparative lack of submarine archaeology in the twentieth century. Westbound traffic would have found it easier to follow the Italian coast along Liguria to Provence. For vessels returning to the east it would have been easier to follow the Spanish coast as far as Cabo de la Nao before heading east to the Balearics and then through the Strait of Bonifacio towards Ostia and Puteoli. Shipwrecks are concentrated in these locations – or ‘key sample areas’ – such as the coast of Provence, the Strait of Bonifacio, the waters of the Balearics and the Aeolian islands.8

2. Portus and stationes As well as the evidence of shipwrecks, the extent of the infrastructure is an indication of the volume and direction of trade.9 Ancient sources distinguish between various types of harbour facility.10 The most elaborate was the portus. Ideally, a portus would be protected from the open sea by capes or promontories to create a natural harbour. Added to this should be the facilities needed for shipping and the exchange of goods.11 The portus provided access to markets either by its position on a trade route or within its own hinterland. Particular use appears to have been made of estuaries that provided a natural harbour as well as access to markets inland.12 According to Isidore of Seville, a statio signifies a harbour that is suitable for ships to remain there for a period of time but lacks the necessary facilities for ships to winter.13 In the absence of a natural harbour, a statio could be enhanced by the addition of a man-made breakwater to provide protection.14 The difference between the portus and statio is based on the scale of amenities: stationes could vary in scale from elaborate facilities to little more than an anchorage or roadstead where a ship could ride at anchor, whereas a portus provided a protected harbour with facilities for a range of commercial activities. 6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13 14

Tammuz 2005: 155–6. Rauh 2003: 21–2. Gibbins 2001: 279. The bias in the discovery of shipwrecks in favour of the Spanish and French coasts, where scuba diving is more widespread, may prove to be less of a problem as these were key nodal points in ancient shipping routes. Wilson 2009: 234–5. De Juan 2011: 130. Vitruvius, De Architectura 5.12.1. On river traffic, cf. Casson 1965. Isidore of Seville, Etymologies , 14.8.39–40. Vitruvius, De Architectura 5.12.2. Oleson (1988: 147–8) suggests that the overriding importance of a secure harbour meant that many would at least have some amenities and protection.

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Fig. 7.1: Pier 2, Cosa. (Author’s photo) The earliest example of the construction of harbour facilities in hydraulic concrete is at Cosa on the coast of Etruria, dating from the end of the second century BC or beginning of the first century BC. The harbour at Cosa was protected from the prevailing winds by a c. 110 m-long breakwater. Further protection was provided by six rock mounds that extended the breakwater towards the east, enclosing an area of 25,000 m2. Off-loading was facilitated by the construction of six concrete piers.15 At Portezuelo de los Baños (province of Almeria) the facilities were enhanced in the early first century AD with the construction of a manmade breakwater 350 m long and 30–40 m wide.16 The evidence for stationes takes the form of scatters of amphorae, anchors and other ship-borne debris at, for example, Torre la Sal (Cabanes) and Ben-Afelí (Almazora) on the coast of Castellón, San Pedro del Pinatar in Murcía and Playazo de Rodalquilar (Níjar) on the coast of Almería.17 Small stationes can be difficult to distinguish from multiple wrecks but are characterised by the wide range of goods found and their extended chronology.18 In favourable weather conditions it would also have been possible for ships to be offloaded into smaller boats or lighters while at anchor offshore or for small vessels to have been beached. Evidence for the offloading of cargoes in this fashion may come from the frequent finds of individual amphorae along the coast.

15 16 17

18

Gazda 1987: 75–8; Oleson 1988: 149. Blánquez et al. 1998: 44. On Torre la Sal, see Wagner 1978: 306–27; Fernández Izquierdo 1980: 158–65. On Ben-Afelí, see Fernández Izquierdo 1980: 173–84; Ramos et al. 1984: 123–33. On San Pedro del Pinatar, see Mas García 1985a: 167. On Playazo de Rodalquilar, see Blánquez et al. 1998: 105–7. Finds of bones with signs of burning in the Bay of Albufereta suggest that the debris could even include the remains of meals thrown overboard by the crews of ships: de Juan 2011: 132–3.

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Fig. 7.2: Remains of the harbour wall at Empúries, second to first century BC. (Author’s photo). Recent scholarship on the scale of trade and the distribution of markets has focused on the movement of goods between portus and stationes – whether indirect coastal shipping or direct trade between specific ports was the norm. Direct trade travelled between specific locations, at times over considerable distances. Characterised by homogenous cargoes either drawn from a single geographical area or a single commodity, vessels engaged in the bulk movement of commodities between important markets. These vessels required capital investment and feature often in the loosely administered trade that characterises the growth of the Roman Empire. Shipping on this scale would require investment in the harbour facilities provided by a portus. Direct trade could in turn foster other forms of trade, either through the carrying of secondary cargoes or in the redistribution of goods from primary harbours to secondary stationes. Portus and stationes could provide not only anchorages but also local markets for goods. This we might term indirect trade or coastal tramping.19 Whilst larger vessels plied direct routes between primary harbours, coastal routes were frequented by smaller vessels carrying cargoes between secondary harbours or redistributing goods from primary harbours. These ships are characterised by heterogeneous cargoes composed of a variety of commodities drawn from different locations and exchanged en route. Katia Schörle’s recent study of harbours along the central Tyrrhenian coast has shown the wide range of sizes of harbours; their frequency suggests that coastal shipping was common and in need of such facilities.20 19 20

Wilson 2011: 53–4. On the problems with the English use of the term ‘cabotage’ to describe coastal trade, cf. Arnaud 2011: 62. Schörle 2011: 96–7.

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The opposition of these two models is often equated with the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, with late antiquity seeing a return to small-scale coastal tramping that had predominated before the expansion of larger-scale direct trade made possible through the demands and opportunities of the Roman Empire.21 By the end of the Republic, the size of the population of the city of Rome necessitated the provision of a public supply of grain – the annona – to feed the city. The State offered inducements such as subsidies and payments to encourage merchants to supply the city with grain; as the merchants were not, however, limited to transporting grain, these subsidies could in turn encourage the shipment of other commodities.22

3. Amphorae and cargoes The evidence for ancient wrecks typically comes from the cargo itself – principally amphorae, but also stone and metals, at the expense of perishable cargoes such as grain, textiles or slaves, or alternative types of container such as barrels or sacks.23 The timbers of the ship itself rarely survive in situ.24 The distribution of known wrecks is perhaps more representative of particular commodities than the incidence of trade more generally. Four types of amphorae are typically associated with fish sauce: Dressel 7–11 or Beltrán I, Dressel 38–9 or Beltrán II, Dressel 12–3 or Beltrán III and Dressel 14 or Beltrán IV.25 The most important were the Dressel 7–11 amphorae that were produced over much of the western Mediterranean between the late first century BC and the first century AD. They are ovoid in shape with a pronounced lip and ridged handles. The tituli picti, ‘labels’ painted on the outside of the amphorae, record their contents as being salted-fish products.26 Robert I. Curtis notes that 48 of the 62 fish-sauce amphorae (78 %) from the Castro Pretorio in Rome are Dressel 7–13 vessels.27 A Dressel 7–11 from the vicus of the fort at Vindolanda carries a titulus that records its contents as G(ari) F(los) S(combri).28 Two tituli from Augst record the contents as G(arum) Hispa(num) and M(uria) Hisp(anum).29 Dressel 7–11 amphorae were produced at several locations in Baetica as well as in Catalonia and Provence.30 Dressel 38–9 amphorae are descended from Dressel 7–8 amphorae, with a similar ovoid body that tapers into a long point. The form carried fish sauce: an example from the Castro Pretorio in Rome reads: g(ari) f(los) | AA Atinis | Dom.31 Production of the form in the Bay

21 22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Arnaud 2011: 61. Morley 2007: 71–2; Garrote Sayó 2003: 229. The possible remains of a leather sack were recovered from the Saint-Gervais 3 wreck together with three leather pots: Liou et al. 1990: 163, 216–8. Remains of a barrel containing glass have been recovered from the Grado wreck: Parker 1992: 197. Iron barrel-hoops are amongst the materials found in the Port-Vendres C wreck: Parker 1992: 332. Wilson 2011: 37. Lowe 2009: 110–1. Zevi 1966: 242–7. Curtis 1991: 40. Wilson et al. 1974: 467. Bohn 1926: 202–3. Laubenheimer 1985: 318–9; Lowe 2009: 111–4. CIL 15.469b.

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of Cádiz may have begun as early as the reign of Claudius.32 Dressel 12 amphorae are characterised by a short rim and long, slender neck with a long cylindrical body tapering into a solid point. Tituli Picti from Pompeii record their contents as garum and liquamen.33 On two examples from the Castro Pretorio in Rome, the contents are identified as Gari Puteolani.34 Examples of this form from the wreck of San Ferreol were found to contain tunny bones and gastropods preserved in salt.35 Dressel 14 amphorae have a pear-shaped body ending in a hollow point; the rim is thick with long, ovoid handles. The earliest vessels were produced in Baetica during the early first century AD before being adopted elsewhere, most notably in Lusitania in the middle of the century.36 An example from Saint-Gervais carries the following titulus: Liq(uamen) | exc(ellens) | Sabini et Aviti.37 A largely illegible titulus from the Pecio Gandolfo wreck may be related to an example from the Castro Pretorio that reads: liq(uaminis) fl(os) | excel(lens) | L Purelli (or Aurelii) Ctemeli.38 Several other types of amphora may also have contained fish sauce. Dressel 15 amphorae were produced in Baetica during the first two centuries AD. They are characterised by a bag-shaped body ending in a hollow point; a narrow, convex neck; straight handles; and a prominent lip.39 A poorly-preserved titulus from the Castro Pretorio reads […] excellens – an appellation frequently applied to garum.40 Dressel 21–2 forms have a wide mouth and neck with a cylindrical body that tapers to a small point. They are possibly descended from Republican Dressel 18 / Mañá C amphorae and have features in common with later Almagro 53 vessels.41 Originally they were ascribed to Latium and Campania, although they may also have been produced in Catalonia.42 An example from the Castro Pretorio in Rome carries a titulus recording its contents as allec.43 Dressel 33 vessels are related to Mauretanian Dressel 30 oil amphorae. Although generally associated with olive oil, the form may also have carried fish sauce: an example from Rome bears the name Barbarus Probianus c(larissimus) v(ir) and records its contents as being liquamen. The Barbarus Probianus named in the titulus may be the same individual as the Barbarus Probianus who served as consul and praefectus urbi in the fourth century AD.44 In the period of the late Empire (third to fifth centuries AD), five types of amphora are particularly associated with the trade of fish sauce in the western Mediterranean: spatheia forms, Almagro 50, Almagro 51, Beltrán 72 and Keay XXV / Beltrán 64 vessels. The term 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44

Peacock 1974: 236. Manacorda 1977: 128–9. CIL 15.4687–8. Mas García 1985b: 205. Edmondson 1987: 162. Edmondson 1987: 162. Pascual Guash 1960: 206–7. Zevi 1966: 220. CIL 15.4746; González Serrano 1988: 297–8. González Serrano 1988: 294. Zevi 1966: 222. An example from Zaragoza has the stamp IVLI THEOPHIL that is found on Pascual 1 wine amphorae from the Cap de Vol wreck dating to 20–15 BC: Foerster Laures 1980: 245; Beltrán Lloris 1987: 57–61; Liou 1987: 272; Miró i Canals 1988: 218. CIL 15.4730; González Serrano 1988: 302–3. Zevi 1966: 226–7.

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Fig. 7.3: The principal types of fish sauce amphorae (after Bruno 2005; Keay 1984). Upper row, left to right: (1) Dressel 7–8, (2) Dressel 9, (3) Beltrán IIA, (4) Beltrán IIB, (5) Dressel 14A, (6) Dressel 14B. Lower row, left to right: (7) Almagro 50, (8) Almagro 51A/B, (9) Almagro 51C, (10) Beltrán 72, (11) Dressel 12, (12) Keay XXV.

spatheion refers to amphorae with a long, narrow cylindrical body, tapering to a long base. The form was produced in North Africa, and in Spain around Aguilas and Mazarrón (Murcía) from the middle of the fourth century AD.45 Although it has been suggested that these vessels carried wine, and examples from the Dramont E wreck contained olive pips, they also carried fish sauce.46 Examples have been found in the fish factory on the Avenida Dr Gadea 45 46

Ramalló Asensio 1984: 113; Ramalló Asensio and Arana Castillo 1985: 436; Peacock and Williams 1986: 202–3. Parker 1992a: 168.

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in Benalúa (Alicante) and within salting vats at Mazarrón (Murcía).47 Almagro 50 vessels are characterised by a thick rim, rounded handles and long cylindrical body. The form was widely produced in the Iberian provinces from the beginning of the third century AD to the fourth century AD.48 Almagro 51 amphorae have a pear-shaped body, a short narrow neck, elliptical handles and the body tapers to a narrow foot with a cylindrical point.49 The form is widely distributed and may have been produced in the Iberian provinces, although production in Byzacena is also possible.50 Beltrán 72 amphorae were derived from Beltrán IIB with which they have several features in common. They are short (70–80 cm high) with a pearshaped body and short neck. They carried garum and liquamen and were produced in Baetica and Lusitania from the third century AD to the end of the fourth century or beginning of the fifth century AD.51 Keay XXV / Beltrán 64 amphorae are a cylindrical form produced in Byzacena, where a kiln has been identified at Ariana. Examples of this form containing traces of fish and crustaceans have been found in the Pointe de la Luque B wreck.52 Several wrecks have been discovered along the coasts of northeastern Spain and southern France. In 1961 a wreck was reported at Columbretes off the coast of Castellón. Only three amphorae were recovered, all belonging to Dressel types 7–11.53 From the south coast of France, goods could then travel north along the river Rhône to reach the Rhine. Alternatively, ships could have continued east along the Ligurian coast towards Ostia and Rome. The wreck of Chiessi was discovered off the island of Elba. The size of the cargo is impressive: between 5,000 and 7,000 Spanish amphorae: principally Beltrán IIA vessels, although Beltrán IIB, Dressel 20 and Haltern 70 amphorae are also present.54 The initial impetus for this exchange came from the export of Italian wine to Gaul during the first century BC. One hundred and thirty amphorae have been recovered from the wreck of Secca dei Mettoni (Ponza) consisting of Dressel 1 amphorae (from the Tyrrhenian), Lamboglia 2 amphorae (from the Adriatic) and Brindisian amphorae. A stamp reading A. Saufei has also been found. Aulus Saufeius is named on an inscription from Delos dated between 125 and 75 BC. An Aulus Saufeius is also known from Minturnae in the first half of the first century BC.55

47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55

Reynolds 1993: 54; Ramalló Asensio 1984: 118–9; Ramalló Asensio and Arana Castillo 1985: 441. Keay 1984: 149–55, 169–72; Peacock and Williams 1986: 130–1; Bruno 2005: 383. Keay 1984: 156–68, 172–8; Peacock and Williams 1986: 132–3. Bruno 2005: 383. Bruno 2005: 383. Other forms of amphora may also have carried fish sauce on occasion. Africana I amphorae were produced in the Sahel region of central Tunisia from the second half of the second century AD until the end of the fourth century AD and were widely distributed throughout the western Mediterranean. They have a thick everted rim, a short neck and a long cylindrical body: Peacock and Williams 1986: 153–4; Bruno 2005: 389. Although generally associated with the shipment of olive oil, several examples were found associated with salting vats at Salakta (ancient Sullecthum) and bearing the stamp A SYLL: Zevi 1969, 185–7; Foucher 1970: 17–21; though cf. Keay 1984: 108. Liou 1973: 579–85; Keay 1984: 184–212. Pascual Guash 1975: 185–9; Fernández Izquierdo 1980: 153. Parker 1992: 140. Galli and La Russa 2011: 2–4, Ritondale 2014: 28.

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Fig. 7.4: The excavation of the Secca dei Mettoni wreck. (Photo courtesy of ASSO, Archeologia Subacquea Speleologia Organizzazione o. n. l. u. s.). One of the most important wrecks for the study of trade in the western Mediterranean is Port-Vendres B. The wreck was discovered in 1972 in the entrance of the harbour at Port-Vendres near Cap de Creus (Pyrenées-Orientales).56 The wreck has been precisely dated on the basis of lead ingots giving the name of a freedman of Valeria Messalina, the wife of the emperor Claudius – giving a date between her accession as empress in AD 41 and her execution in AD 48.57 The cargo consists principally of Dressel 20 amphorae carrying olive oil from the Guadalquivir valley, as well as fifteen Haltern 70 vessels, at least a dozen Beltrán IIB and some Dressel 28 amphorae. In addition to the olive oil, on several of the Haltern 70 vessels the tituli picti record their contents as defr(utum) excel(lens); defrutum was a beverage made from boiled-down must or grape juice.58 Two of the Beltrán IIB vessels contained bones of mackerel (Scomber colias).59 The cargo originated in southern Spain before travelling north along the eastern coast, perhaps picking up a bronze coin from Ilerda en route.60 Dressel 8/9 fish sauce amphorae have been found along with Baetican Dressel 20 olive oil amphorae from the wreck of Cala Rossano off the island of Ventotene.61 Several tituli picti identify the 56 57

58 59 60 61

Colls et al. 1977: 8. The ingots read: L. Val(erius) Aug(ustae) L(ibertus) a com(mentariis). L. Valerius may have been the a commentariis of the procurator of Lusitania based in Mérida: Colls et al. 1975: 63–79; 1977: 13–6. Colls et al. 1977: 86–9. Colls et al. 1977: 40–2. Colls et al. 1977: 123; Parker and Price 1981: 224; contra Parker 1992a: 331. Arata 1994: 477–9; Parker 1992a: 90–1; Ritondale 2014: 28.

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contents of the Dressel 8 amphorae as the ‘flower of garum’ made from mackerel: g(ari) f(los) or g(ari) sc(ombri) f(los).62 Several of the Dressel 9 amphorae carry tituli stating that they contained lymphatum – perhaps a type of fish sauce.63 As well as amongst Baetican products, fish-sauce amphorae can also be found in cargoes originating from elsewhere in the western Mediterranean. In August 1982, a well-preserved wreck, Cap-Béar 3, was discovered near Port-Vendres. Subsequent excavations revealed a cargo of Italian Dressel 1B wine amphorae, as well as lesser quantities of Pascual 1 and Tarraconense 1 wine amphorae produced in Catalonia.64 The cargo also included sixteen Dressel 12 amphorae containing bones of Spanish mackerel.65 The eventual destination of the vessel may have been Narbonne, having stopped in Catalonia en route. In 1974, the wreck of La Chrétienne H was discovered to the east of Saint-Raphaël. The cargo consisted primarily of Dressel 2–4 wine amphorae from Catalonia; stamps from Can Pedrerol and Can Tintorer were found.66 The vessel also carried three Dressel 9–10 amphorae, perhaps from Tarraconensis, and a Dressel 7 as well as a Dressel 20, a Rhodian Dressel 43 and a Punic amphora.67 As an alternative, vessels followed the Spanish coast as far north as Cabo de la Nao and from there made the short crossing to the Balearic Islands. Vessels would then have followed the route eastward through the Strait of Bonifacio and thence to Rome. A similar cargo to that of the Port-Vendres B ship was found in the wreck of Lavezzi 1 in the Strait of Bonifacio. The cargo mostly originated in southern Spain and consisted of Dressel 20, Haltern 70 and Dressel 28 vessels as well as Dressel 2–4 wine amphorae from Tarraconensis. Numerous Dressel 38, Dressel 14 and Dressel 7–11 fish-sauce amphorae were also present.68 A similar cargo has been found on the nearby wreck of Sud-Lavezzi B, dating to AD 10–30. Although the site had been looted prior to the commencement of excavations in 1978, several types of amphorae were found. The cargo consisted of 26 Dressel 20, three Dressel 28, 30 Haltern 70 amphorae – one of which still contained olives – and several forms of fish-sauce amphorae: 17 Dressel 8, 23 Dressel 9 and 112 Dressel 7–11 and Beltrán IIA vessels; together with 95 lead ingots and 237 copper ingots.69 In 1967, the wreck of Tour-SainteMarie A was discovered off the coast of Corsica. A total of 565 amphorae were recovered from the site, of types Dressel 7–11, Dressel 12, Beltrán IIA and Haltern 70.70 Similar Dressel 7–8 amphorae have been recovered off the island of Ventotene together with Baetican Dressel 7–11 and Beltrán IIA – the ship was presumably blown off course en route to Rome.71 62 63 64

65 66 67 68 69 70 71

Arata 1994: 485. Arata 1994: 488, 492 Liou and Pomey 1985: 547–51; Colls 1986: 203–6; Parker 1992: 97–8. The P. Mevius named on stamps from the wreck may be connected with Q. Mevius who appears on five stamps from Badalona: Comas i Solà 1997: 17–8. The same gentilicium has also been found on a Pascual 1 amphora from Badalona and a possible Dressel 2–4 amphora from Valencia: Pena 1998: 306. Parker 1992a: 97; Desse-Berset and Desse 2000: 79–80. Corsi-Sciallano and Liou 1985: 79–85. Corsi-Sciallano and Liou 1985: 91–2; Parker 1992a: 143. Liou 1990: 127–40; Parker 1992a: 239. The cargo also contained lead and copper ingots: Liou 1990: 144–54. Liou 1982: 444–6; Liou and Domergue 1990: 21–90; Parker 1992: 414–5. Tchernia 1969b: 496–9; Parker 1992a: 432. Timmy Gambin, pers. comm.

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A wreck of Spanish amphorae has been recovered from Sud-Perduto B. The wreck dates to the end of the reign of Augustus and carried Dressel 7 and Dressel 9 vessels, several flat-bottomed amphorae, several Dressel 12 vessels and a single Oberaden 83 olive-oil amphora. Along with the amphorae, 48 lead ingots were also found.72 Analysis of residues from the Dressel 7 and Dressel 9 vessels revealed their contents to be Spanish mackerel (Scomber japonicus).73 Sixteen Dressel 7–11 amphorae were recovered together with 23 lead ingots from the wreck of Cabrera 5 discovered at a depth of 42 m to the west of the entrance of the Puerto de Cabrera (Mallorca).74 In 1993, deep-water excavations uncovered the Arles 4 wreck at a depth of 662 m, 74 km to the south of the present-day mouth of the river Rhône. The cargo had originated in Baetica and was lost between AD 25 and AD 40. A total of 950 out of a cargo of between 1,000 and 2,000 amphorae was recovered, representing a variety of forms: principally Dressel 7–11 fish-sauce amphorae as well as Dressel 12, Dressel 20 and Dressel 28 amphorae. The cargo also included copper ingots and pottery as well as PE 25 amphorae from Ibiza – perhaps indicating that the ship had called at the Balearics before proceeding north to the Golfe de Lion.75 Fish-sauce amphorae could also constitute a primary cargo in their own right. A cargo of fish-sauce containers has been recovered from the wreck of Gandolfo (Punta Entinas, El Ejido, Dalías) dating to the end of the first century AD. The cargo consisted of 113 Dressel 14 and Dressel 38 amphorae as well as a single Dressel 17.76 Twenty six painted tituli picti identify the contents of the amphorae as fish sauces (garum, liquamen, hallex) and co(r)d[yla] – a sauce made from young tunny.77 The wreck of Bou-Ferrer was discovered off the beach of Vila Joiosa with a cargo of fish-sauce amphorae. A total of 274 Dressel 7–11 amphorae was recovered from the wreck, and all those studied were found to contain a resin lining. One of the amphorae was still sealed and contained fish bones of anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus), mackerel (Scomber sp.) and horse mackerel (Trachurus sp.).78 A number of wrecks dated to the late Empire show the continued trade in salted fish products from Baetica and Lusitania, as well as the growth of North African exports. The wreck of Escolletes 1 (near Isla Grosa, Murcía) carried a cargo of Almagro 51C amphorae as well as fineware pottery and glass.79 In 1974 the wreck of Sud-Lavezzi A was discovered in the Strait of Bonifacio. The cargo consisted of some 450 amphorae – principally 194 Almagro 51A and C vessels, together with Almagro 50, Beltrán 72 and Dressel 23 amphorae. At least one of the Almagro 50 vessels contained fish bones, possibly mackerel.80 About 50 amphorae were recovered from a small vessel in the Bay of Pampelonne. The majority were a cylindrical shape; almost all were lined with resin and contained a type of langoustine. Also 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

Parker 1992a: 415–6. Desse-Berset and Desse 2000: 75–9. Parker (1992: 416) reports that some of the Dressel 9 vessels contained grape pips. Guerrero Ayuso and Colls 1982: 10–4. Long and Volpe 1995: 10; Long 1998: 347; 2001: 155. Pascual Guash 1968: 143–53; Blánquez et al. 1998: 198–9. Pliny, NH 9.18.1; Blánquez et al. 1998: 288–302. The titulus cod[] arg[] excel[] is found on a Beltrán IIB vessel from Alesia: Lequément 1980: 256–7. de Juan et al. 2011: 185–90. Three lead ingots were also recovered. Mas García 1985a: 164. Liou 1982: 437–44; Parker 1992: 414.

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Fig. 7.5: Principal wreck sites referred to in the text. (Richard Szydlak). present were one small pear-shaped amphora, one conical amphora similar to Dressel 30, one small round-bodied form and an Almagro 51C.81 A small cargo of amphorae has been recovered from the wreck of Planier 7. The wreck lies near the NW point of the island of Planier (Marseille) and dates between 300 and 350 AD. The bulk of this cargo consisted of Africana 2C amphorae, although Almagro 50 and 51C vessels were also present. Some of the Almagro 50 amphorae contained shells of dogcockle, Glycymeris pilosa.82 A cargo of Almagro 51A, Dressel 23 and Beltrán 72 amphorae has been recovered from a wreck lying to the west of Les Catalans to the south of Marseille. One of the Almagro 51A examples contained the bones of Spanish mackerel.83 A small cargo of Almagro 50 vessels containing sardines has been recovered from the Randello wreck off the southern coast of Sicily.84 A cargo of Tunisian Keay XXV amphorae dating to the fourth century AD has been recovered off the island of Ventotene.85

81 82 83 84 85

Lequément 1976: 179–87. Benoit 1962: 157–9; Tchernia 1969a: 197–9; Parker 1992: 317–8. Liou 1973: 585–6; Parker 1992: 132. Wheeler and Locker 1985: 97–100; Parker 1992: 364. Ritondale 2014, 32; Timmy Gambin, pers. comm.

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4. Fish-sauce merchants As well as remains of infrastructure, amphorae and shipwrecks, evidence for the development of trade in fish products comes also from the merchants themselves. A number of fish-sauce merchants are known by name.86 It is not surprising that several are known from Baetica: an inscription from Fuengirola records a dedication to Neptune Augustus by the sevir Augustalis L. Iunius Puteolanus.87 Puteolanus seems to have been a merchant trading in fish sauce: in a titulus on a Dressel 12 amphora from the Castro Pretorio the contents are described as g(arum) f(los) Puteolani.88 An inscription from Ostia records a Corpus Negotiantium Malacitanorum whose quinquennalis was a fish-sauce merchant, P. Clodius Athenio.89 Athenio is also named in an inscription from Malaga recording a dedication by the decuriones of the town to L. Valerius Proculus, the Prefect of Egypt and Prefect of the annona between AD 142 and 144.90 Three merchants appear on Beltrán IIB amphorae from the Port-Vendres B wreck: C. Iulius Apollonius, L. Pompeius Eros and Q. Vibius Charito.91 L. Pompeius Eros may be connected with the L. Pompeius Urbanus named on Dressel 20 amphorae from the same wreck.92 He seems also to have been engaged in the olive oil trade, being named on a Dressel 20 amphora from Rome.93 Amongst the mercatores represented among the cargo of the Port-Vendres B wreck is Q. Vrittius Revocatus who is named on both Dressel 20 and Haltern 70 amphorae and may have been from Gaul where the name is found several times.94 A member of the family was also engaged in the trading of fish sauce: the name Vritti(us) has been found on the stopper of a Dressel 9 amphora found in the river Saône at Lyon.95 Several merchants are named on Dr 8 amphorae from Cala Rossano: L. Iunius Festus is named on several tituli picti from the wreck.96 A L. Iunius Festus is named on a funerary inscription from Rome dating to the middle of the first century AD.97 C. Annius Senecio is named on three tituli, two of which identify the contents as gari flos.98 He is perhaps 86 87 88 89 90 91

92 93 94 95 96

97 98

Étienne and Mayet (1998: 153–5) list 66 merchants named in tituli picti. CIL 2.1944. On Puteolanus, see Haley 1990: 72–8. CIL 14.4687–8. CIL 6.9677. CIL 2.1971; García Vargas 2009: 134. Colls et al. 1977: 78–9. C() F() AV() named in stamps on Dressel 20 amphorae from Port-Vendres B may be the same individual as the C. Fuf(ius) Avitus found on Haltern 70 amphorae in Seville: Colls et al. 1977: 141–3; Garrote Sayó 1996: 194. Several Vibii are recorded as merchants on Dressel 20 amphorae: L. Vibius Hermes is named on a vessel from Castro Pretorio (CIL 15.3668) and L. Vibius Polyanthus is found on a vessel from Monte Testaccio (CIL 15.4045). Q. Vibius Charito may be connected with the C. Visius or Vibius Cr[ispi]nus found on a Beltrán IIB vessel carrying fish sauce from the wreck of Saint-Gervais 3: Liou et al. 1990: 209–10. Colls et al. 1977: 53–8. CIL 15.3639. Colls et al. 1977: 74; Christol 1999: 120 n. 23. Desbat 1991: 320–1. Arata 1994: 480–2. Iunius Festus erected a dedication to Q. Granius Clemens from Denía in the middle of the second century AD, CIL 2.5962; Abascal Palazón and Rabanal Alsonso 1985: 207. CIL 6.17902. Arata 1994: 484–5.

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connected with the C. Annius Senecio named on a tombstone from San Roque (Cortijo del Rocadillo, Cádiz).99 M. Valerius Felix is named in a titulus pictus on a Beltrán IIB amphora found at Saint-Gervais.100 The same individual is named on three amphorae from Pompeii and one from Herculaneum.101 Felix may be connected with the freedman M. Valerius Euphemus named on a Baetican amphora from the Castro Pretorio, and M. Valerius Euphiletus appears on a Dressel 20 from Pompeii.102 Also in Pompeii, M. Valerius Abinnericus is named on Mau 7 fish-sauce amphorae.103 A further freedman, M. Valerius Heliadis, is named on a Dressel 7–11 vessel from Pompeii containing lymphatum.104 M. Valerius Suavis may have been named on amphorae carrying fish sauces from the wreck of Gandolfo as well as on an amphora from Rome.105 Cl. Valerius Caldonius or Caledonius appears on a Dressel 8 vessel from Mainz.106 T. Valerius Iulius is named as a merchant on a Dressel 9 vessel from Port-laNautique (Aude).107 The inclusion of fish-sauce products with other goods from the same region is borne out by the fact that several merchants seem to have been involved in trading a variety of products from the same point of origin. Ti. Claudius Docimus was a negotians salsamentarius et vinariarius from Africa who died in Rome.108 The societas of the Quinti Caecilii is named on Dressel 8 amphorae from Port-la-Nautique and Saint-Romain-en-Gal with tituli picti identifying the contents of the amphorae as g(ari) f(los).109 The family may also be named in a titulus from the Gandolfo wreck that reads […] Caec[i]li.110 The societas may be connected with D. Caecilius Hospitalis and D. Caecilius Maternus who are recorded on seventeen olive-oil amphorae from Monte Testaccio.111 D. Caecilius Hospitalis, curator of the negotiatores olearii ex Baetica, dedicated a statue to M. Petronius Honoratus, the Prefect of Egypt in AD 147 or 148 and Prefect of the annona.112 Hospitalis is also named in an inscription from Écija recording the dedication of a statue of Pietas by Caecilia Trophime.113 A titulus on a Dressel 20 amphora from Fos-surMer records the societas of the AAATI[nii].114 The Auli Atinii are attested on several Bae-

99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111

112 113 114

IRPCádiz 93 = AE 1981, 518. Liou and Marichal 1978: 137. Liou and Marichal 1978: 139. Zevi 1966: 230. CIL 4.5611–5621; 5630; 5764–5. Zevi 1966: 232–3. CIL 15.4757; Blánquez et al. 1998: 292–4. Lagóstena-Barrios 2004: 208. Lagóstena-Barrios 2004: 209. CIL 6.9767. Desbat et al. 1987: 156; Lowe 2009: 161. Blánquez et al. 1998: 296. Blázquez Martínez et al. 1994: 77–8; Blázquez Martínez and Remesal Rodríguez 2003: 45; contra Beltrán Lloris 1970: 227. On the involvement of the Caecilii in the Baetican oil trade, see Lowe 2009: 131–2. CIL 6.1625b; Étienne and Mayet 1998: 159. CIL 2.1474. Liou and Marichal 1978: 112.

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tican Dressel 20 vessels found at the Castro Pretorio in Rome.115 They may also have been engaged in the trading of wine, being named in a titulus on a Dressel 28 amphora from the Castro Pretorio.116 The tituli on two fish-sauce amphorae from the Castro Pretorio read C. C. Atinii and A. Atinius Crescens is named on a fish-sauce vessel from Pompeii.117 There may have been some direct involvement by the Roman state apparatus. A titulus pictus on a Dressel 7–11 vessel from Saint-Gervais carrying mackerel reads: scomb(ri) / flos / aa / [.] Iuni Cilons / [e]x of Augg. Nothing is known of the merchant Iunius Cilo although the sauce derived ex officina Augustorum – presumably from an imperial estate in Baetica.118 He is perhaps the same individual as the procurator of Pontus et Bithynia whom Tacitus records being awarded the consular insignia by Claudius for bringing the former ruler of the Bosphoran Kingdom, Mithridates VIII, to Rome in AD 49.119 The connections between fish-sauce merchants and the trade in olive oil, together with their dedications to prefects of the annona and the diversity of cargoes – with fish sauces often accompanying olive-oil amphorae from Baetica and Tunisia – suggest that fish-sauce merchants were able to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the demand of the city of Rome through the mechanisms of the annona. The Roman government encouraged the supply of goods to the annona by making cargoes exempt from customs or harbour dues. On many occasions, multiple individuals are named on tituli picti from the same wreck: inviting questions about the relationship between mercatores and negotiatores and the navicularii responsible for the vessel.120 The number of merchants named in tituli is reflected in the diversity of the cargoes. One of the characteristics of ships carrying produce from Baetica was the diversity of their cargoes: the Sud-Lavezzi B wreck contained wine, olives and olive oil, and garum amphorae together with lead and copper ingots; Lavezzi 1 carried wine, olive oil, garum, copper and lead ingots; Arles 4 carried fish sauce, olive oil and copper ingots; the Sud-Lavezzi A wreck carried a cargo of fish sauce and olive oil. The vessels do not, however, seem to have picked up cargoes en route, suggesting that although following coastal routes they did not engage in coastal tramping.

5. Conclusions In general, fish-sauce products seem to have formed a component of a larger cargo of olive oil or wine. This diversity continues in the Late Empire with fish sauce amphorae continuing to form a component of larger cargoes, for example, at Sud-Lavezzi A, Planier 7 and Les Catalans. There were exceptions: the wreck of Sud-Lavezzi B is notable for the relative number of fish-sauce amphorae, accounting for 152 of the 211 amphorae recovered.121 The majority of the wrecks are small in size, with a carrying capacity less than 75 tonnes or 1,500 ampho-

115 116 117 118 119 120 121

CIL 15.3639–41. On the Atinii generally, Beltrán Lloris 1970: 223–5. CIL 15.4700. CIL 15.4701–2; CIL 4.5650. Liou and Marichal 1978: 135. Tacitus, Annals 12.21. Martínez Maganto 2007: 397–8. Liou and Domergue 1990: 22.

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rae.122 The Albufereta 1 wreck was 13–14 m long and carried a cargo of between 19 and 34 tonnes.123 The wreck of La Chrétienne C was only 15 m in length with a beam of 5 m.124 The hull of the Port-Vendres A wreck is well preserved and measured 18–20 m in length with a maximum width of 8 m and was capable of carrying a cargo of 70–75 tonnes.125 Only rarely are the cargoes of fish-sauce amphorae larger than this; for example, the 1,000–2,000 amphorae in the Arles 4 wreck. The Bou-Ferrer wreck was between 27 m and 30 m in length and carried a cargo of between 2,500 and 3,500 amphorae.126 Generally, however, the cargoes of fish-sauce amphorae are small in comparison to the cargoes of other commodities: the wreck of Madrague de Giens carried a cargo of 6,000–7,000 Dressel 1B wine amphorae .127 The Albenga wreck, dating to the beginning of the first century BC, carried a cargo of between 11,000 and 13,500 amphorae at a weight of between 500 and 600 tons.128 Future research must make increased use of content and fabric analyses together with the creation of a database of fabric types at both the local and regional levels in order to enable the precise attribution of different vessels.129 Amphorae varied considerably in size and future research needs to discuss the capacity of amphorae rather than the number of vessels in order to gain a more reliable view of the size of the cargo. Further distortion of possible origins and routes is offered by the reuse of amphorae (Botte, this volume; Bekker-Nielsen, this volume). The known wreck sites represent only a small sample of the actual number of wrecks with an imbalance in favour of coastal areas where scuba diving is popular. The discovery of the Arles 4 wreck raises the possibility of more deep-water wrecks and the need to reconsider the role of routes across the open sea. It is the conclusion of this paper that by looking at the interrelationship of amphorae, shipping routes and wreck sites, together with the infrastructure of portus and stationes to support exchange, we gain a picture of a vibrant and significant pattern of both direct and indirect trade. This picture may complement the analyses now being done on the number and capacity of fish-sauce factories around the western Mediterranean to gain a fuller understanding of the role of fish sauce and related products in the Roman economy.130

122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129

130

Casson 1971: 171–2; Parker 1992b: 89; Wilson 2011: 39. De Juan 2011: 131. Liou 1973: 600–1; Parker 1992a: 141–2. Liou 1974: 417–21; Parker 1992a: 330. De Juan et al. 2011: 193–4, 196. Pomey and Tchernia 1978: 234; Pomey 1982: 146. Pomey and Tchernia 1978: 235. Whilst the associations of Dressel 1 with wine and Dressel 20 with olive oil seem beyond debate, other forms are less clear. A Dressel 9 from Rome, for example, may have carried wine with the titulus ‘Ti. Caesare v cos / Gaditanum’ – the date of a vintage, in this case AD 31, would not apply if the vessel was carrying fish sauce: Zevi 1966: 244; see also Beltrán Lloris 1987: 60–1. A Dressel 2–4 from Pickford’s Wharf in Southwark, London carries a titulus that identifies its contents as liquamen from Antipolis (Antibes): liquam / Antipol / exc / l tetti afri/cani. The vessel also contained fish bones, probably mackerel: Frere et al. 1984: 344. E. g., Wilson 2006: 535–7.

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The author would like to thank the following for their generosity and support in providing access to their research and excavations: Giuliana Galli and Mario Mazzoli of the Archeologia Subacquea Speleologia Organizzazione; Luc Long, Marie Lakermance and Hélène Bernard of the Département des recherches archéologiques subaquatiques et sous-marines; and Timmy Gambin of the Aurora Trust. Benedict J. Lowe Department of Ancient Classics, Maynooth University Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland [email protected]

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Wilson, A. 2011. ‘Developments in Mediterranean shipping and maritime trade from the Hellenistic period to AD 1000’ in Robinson and Wilson (eds) 33–59. Wilson, D. R., R. P. Wright and M. W. C. Hassall et al. 1974. ‘Roman Britain in 1973’, Britannia 5, 396–480. Zevi, F. 1966. ‘Appunti sulle anfore Romane I: La tavola tipologica del Dressel’, Archeologia Classica 18, 208–47. Zevi, F. 1969. ‘Amphores de Byzacène au Bas-Empire I: Due tipi d’anfora africani’, Antiquités Africaines 3, 173–95.

Emmanuel Botte

Fish, craftsmen and trade in ancient Italy and Sicily

1. Introduction The exploitation of the sea is a subject that currently seems fashionable, sometimes even hackneyed, yet the renewal of interest in the field is a testimony to the work that remains to be done to achieve a level of knowledge that can be deemed acceptable. In this paper, I will review the issue of the exploitation of the sea in ancient Italy and Sicily. This will include fishing, the different methods used to conserve fish and, finally, the trade in fish products, often in ceramic containers. I have chosen not to include fish-ponds (vivariae) in this discussion. These structures constitute a research topic in themselves, but, in any case, I do not consider their invention and development to fall purely within the sphere of commercial or economic history, which is the focus of this article. These structures belong to the realm of social rather than economic history, and their use for commercial purposes must have been limited.1

2. From the fifth to the first century BC 2.1 Raw materials The first point to be addressed concerns the raw materials required. These comprise mainly fish and salt, and, to some extent, clay. The latter was used for the production of the ceramic vessels – mainly amphorae – used in the trade of products manufactured in the processing plants.2 For fish, it is unnecessary to list an inventory of the species known from the literary sources. An examination of the fish remains in some Sicilian factories and also the study of fish processing in Sicily from medieval to modern times clearly indicate that bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) was the main species exploited in Italy and Sicily.3

1 2 3

The bibliography on the subject is quite large, and I will focus primarily on the work of X. Lafon and the more recent study of A. Marzano: Lafon 2001: 127–86; Marzano 2007b: 13–81. See below, section 2.3. For sources, see Botte 2009: 53–60. Leftover tuna have been unearthed in a salting workshop at Milazzo: Mangano 2009. For the tuna fishing industry in Sicily from the medieval to the modern era, see Bresc 1985; 1986; Botte 2009: 71–2; Maurici and Vergara 1991; Sara 2003.

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Fig. 8.1: Fish-salting factories mentioned in the text. (Richard Szydlak).

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The fishing techniques used to catch this species include the madrague (the Italian tonnara) and the thonaire.4 The first is a system of nets in the form of a series of chambers which gradually leads the tuna to a final enclosure called the ‘death chamber’. The floor of this chamber is a net that can be raised when the fishermen decide that the chamber contains suficient fish. The thonaire technique (the use of which is attested in antiquity, including the utilisation of watchtowers, thynnoskopeia) employs a large net that is stretched from the shore to a boat out at sea. When the shoals of tuna are sighted from the watchtower, the fish-watcher gives a signal and the boats return to shore in order to encircle the fish with the net. Fishermen who remained on the shore then draw the net onto the beach and kill the fish. The issue of the supply of salt, however, is more difficult to treat due to the dearth of archaeological data; this natural resource, so important in antiquity, leaves little or no trace of its exploitation.5 Here, the investigation has to rely on literary sources and known saltpan sites which can be dated to later periods, but where ancient salt extraction in the same location is attested. One of the most emblematic examples is that of Trapani on the west coast of about which we know nothing from antiquity – neither from the textual sources nor from archaeology – but which was one of the most important salt-production centres in all of Italy from the Middle Ages onwards, and whose salt resources will surely not have gone unexploited in antiquity.6 2.2 Pre-Roman processing sites Turning to sites dedicated to processing and preservation of fish, one realises immediately that Sicily played a major role in the exploitation of fish in the Mediterranean region. Some of the oldest literary sources and workshops in the Mediterranean area confirm the reputation of Sicilian fish salting,7 and Sicily is the only region known so far where Punic workshops (on the western side of the island) operated contemporaneously with Greek workshops (on the eastern side). 2.2.1 Punic Sicily To date, six workshops are known from the western territory of the island, which was under Punic domination and influence (fig. 8.1). These factories8 are characterised by the presence of quadrangular vats, which are not always arranged according to the same pattern but may have been adapted to the site on which they were built. For example, the factory of San Vito lo Capo is built on a system of terraces. The largest known site in the region is the Cala Min-

4 5

6

7 8

For this particular aspect, see Botte 2009: 61–7. However, the exceptional discovery of a Roman salt-pan in Vigo (Spain) and the recent discovery of a possible salt-pan in Ostia should be mentioned. On Vigo, see Castro Carrera 2006; on Ostia, Morelli et al. 2004: 43–8. For salt production in southern Italy and Sicily in antiquity, see Botte 2009: 67–70. The other major production site is at Margherita di Savoia on the Adriatic side of Italy; on salt production on the Adriatic coast of Italy, D’Ercole 2002: 316–20. For sources, see Botte 2009: 45–8. For further information, see Botte 2009: 73–82 and accompanying bibliography.

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Fig. 8.2: Plan of the fish-salting factory of Cala Minnola on the Island of Levanzo, as seen in 2010. (Author). nola on the island of Levanzo, west of Sicily, which has at least twenty-four vats, making it one of the largest fish-processing plants in Italy (fig. 8.2). The chronological evidence from these sites indicates that most were established during the first half of the fourth century BC, and some may be dated to the end of the fifth. Their construction probably owes a debt to influence from the Iberian peninsula, and in particular the Bay of Cádiz, which saw the installation of fish-processing plants in the first half of the fifth century BC. From here, the workshop model with quadrangular basins spread eastward across the Phoenician-Punic world.9 2.2.2 Greek Sicily Sicily is the only Mediterranean area where fish-processing facilities have been found on the territory of Greek cities. To date, two workshops are known: Portopalo and Vendicari, both south of Syracuse (figs 8.3–4).10 What characterises these sites is the presence of circular vats with a conical cross-section, which are in both cases datable to the first phase of operation of these workshops; as with the Punic workshops, this phase dates to the first half of the fourth century BC. Few other sites in the Mediterranean have yielded circular basins. The most famous are located in Baelo Claudia on the northern shore of the Strait of Gibraltar. In the ‘workshop 9

10

The bibliography on the subject is quite extensive, and I refer here to only the most recent publications: Lagóstena-Barrios 2001: 21–9, 203–4; Curtis 2001: 320–1; Sáez Romero and Bernal-Casasola 2007; Sáez Romero 2011; 2014. On these sites, see Botte 2009: 83–8.

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Fig. 8.3: Plan of the fish-salting site of Vendicari. (Basile 1992, fig. 4)

Fig. 8.4: Plan of the fish-salting site of Portopalo. (Basile 1992, fig. 12).

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Fig. 8.5: Plan of the fish-salting factories at Baelo Claudia (Spain). (Sillières 1995, fig. 89). VI’ factory, four large circular vats with conical sections were installed alongside six rectangular basins,11 but these are dated to the Roman period.12 Circular vats have also been found on the Istrian peninsula at Červar, Croatia, but here, too, the basins are not dated earlier than the beginning of the Imperial era; there is doubt concerning the association of these vats with fish-processing activities.13 It is in any case clear that in Sicily the facilities with circular basins are pre-Roman, located in Greek territories and not found outside areas of Greek influence. In other words, the circular basins in pre-Roman fish-processing workshops are characteristic of the Greek techne. 2.2.3 Magna Graecia It seems odd that no fish-processing plant has been discovered in Greek southern Italy, where all known workshops date from the Imperial period, or the late Republican period at the earliest.14 Two literary sources, however, mention salt-fish products produced in Magna Graecia. The first is an excerpt from Archestratus of Gela, the great Sicilian gastronomist, who especially praised the products of his native island; but he also refers to the tuna of Hipponion on the coast of the mainland,15 stating that the very best quality can be found 11 12 13 14 15

Sillières 1995: 178–88; Étienne and Mayet 2002: 64–5, 85–94. This does not explain their role in installations consisting of quadrangular basins. On this subject, see Botte 2009: 100–1; 2016. Tassaux and Carre 2011: 182–6. See below, section 3.1.2. Athenaeus 7.301f (= Wilkins and Hill fragment 34)

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there. The second passage is from Euthydemus of Athens, who lived and wrote in the second century BC (like the preceding passage, this has been preserved for us in The Deipnosophists of Athenaeus) and praises the salted-tuna products from Taranto transported in jars.16 This meagre evidence nonetheless indicates that fish-processing facilities did exist in Magna Graecia.17 2.3 Trade in the pre-Roman period Since the workshops of the pre-Roman period are mainly in Sicily and we can assume their existence in Magna Graecia as well, we must ask ourselves how the products manufactured in Greek or Punic workshops were exported from the region. 2.3.1 Punic exports On the Punic side, research is easier to conduct because the Punic amphora repertoire is relatively well known, or at least more so than the Greek. Thus it is reasonable to compare the data for amphorae that were certainly produced in the Sicilian territory18 with data for those that are known to have been intended for the transport of salted fish.19 It appears that export took place from the beginning of production in the workshops, and can be followed at least until the end of the Republican era, and used a completely new amphora type which is mainly found in the central and eastern Mediterranean. This distribution is explained by their inclusion as secondary cargoes in the growing seaborne traffic between Italy and the East, following the Roman settlement on Delos and its transformation into a free port in the second century BC.20 2.3.2 Greek exports Research on containers of Greek Sicily and Magna Graecia is, however, much more difficult.21 In fact, no ceramic container produced within these territories has been associated clearly with the transport and trade of fish derivatives. To date, we have only identified the amphorae used to transport the wine of these regions. There are few possible explanations for this situation: either production did not exceed the level of self-sufficiency, in which 16

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18 19 20 21

Ap. Athenaeus 3.116c. C.B. Gulick in the old LCL edition of Athenaeus translated the term trigona as ‘hearts’, but this term is also known to designate salted fish of triangular shape, and it is preferable to retain this latter translation. The idea that trigona could describe the hearts of fish is probably due to the fact that Aristotle writes that some species have a triangular-shaped heart: ap. Athenaeus 7.301c; 7.319; 7.327c. D. Olson, in the new LCL translation of Athenaeus, has replaced ‘heart’ with ‘triangular chunks’. Unfortunately, it is not possible to base an argument on data from the site of Marina di Pulsano (where six basins were observed by Annalisa Marzano) because the basins are in a poor state of preservation and no dating material was found: Marzano 2007a: 304–5. For a more detailed presentation of these productions, see Botte 2009: 105–15. E. g., the case of the ‘Punic Amphora Building’ in Corinth: Williams 1979. On these amphorae, see Maniatis et al. 1984. On these amphorae, see Botte 2013. On this subject, see Botte 2016.

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case trade never expanded beyond the local or regional sphere, or – and more likely, in my opinion – production did indeed exceed the limits of local consumption but we have not yet identified the containers used to trade the surplus. With regards to the latter scenario, there are again not many possibilities. We might start by considering whether the trade in these products, essentially salted fish, could have taken place using containers made from perishable materials, such as baskets or bags, which – being made from organic materials – have left no surviving traces in the archaeological record. We might also consider the possibility that Greek potters simply copied the Punic repertoire of amphora types and that, accordingly, Greek containers are hidden amongst those presumed to be Punic. However, all the mineral-petrographic analyses that have been conducted on this type of container to date have confirmed their origin in the western part of the island. Perhaps Greek amphorae were reused? This is indeed a possibility, but, to date, no Greek amphorae containing fish remains have been identified, neither on a site, nor in a wreck. We might also consider the possibility of the reuse of Punic amphorae for Greek products (in which case we would not be able to quantify the volume of exports from Greek Sicily); this would imply that Greek production was not sufficiently important to require its own specific container. Finally, there remains the possibility that producers used common-ware ceramics or pithoi for transporting of their goods, but before we can confirm or reject this proposal, we must await further studies and more precise typologies for the containers produced in the region during the period in question. In any case, considering the size of the factories, it is difficult to believe that production of fish derivatives did not exceed local demand.

3. The Mediterranean explosion under Augustus: the case of Roman Italy Archaeological and economic studies related to fish-processing plants or to transport amphorae converge to show that production and trade in fish products underwent a profound change during the Augustan period and in the first century AD. Across the Mediterranean, we see large factories appearing and the development of a real ‘industry’. The Iberian peninsula is the most remarkable region in this respect, but the process can also be observed in Africa (both in Mauretania Tingitana and Proconsularis), on the Black Sea coast and in Italy as well.22 The bibliographies on each of these regions are extensive, and it will suffice to refer to the other contributions in this volume, especially concerning the Iberian peninsula and the Black Sea.23

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Wilson 2006: 534: ‘The emergence of built vats and factories is linked to the development of empire-wide Roman markets, and the comparable chronological trajectories of the industry in several different areas of the empire, although nuanced by local factors, suggest that the industry may serve as an empire-wide indicator of economic fortunes.’ Here, I limit myself to noting the most important references: Lagóstena-Barrios 2001; Slim et al. 2004; the contributions in Bekker-Nielsen (ed.) 2005; Wilson 2006; Lagóstena-Barripos et al. (eds) 2007; the various works of D. Bernal-Casasola, including Arévalo and Bernal-Casasola (eds) 2007; also Botte 2009: 24–42.

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Fig. 8.6: Plan of the fish-salting factory at Pachino. (Felici 2012, fig. 6) 3.1 Tyrrhenian Italy 3.1.1 Sicily Sicily is no exception to the significant development of fish preservation and processing in the Augustan era and the first century AD, as witnessed, on the one hand, by a continuous expansion of those factories which pre-dated the Roman conquest of the island and, on the other hand, by the creation of new factory sites. For the former scenario, it is at sites in the former Greek territory that we particularly observe this phenomenon: for instance, at Vendicari and Portopalo. At Vendicari, it is clear that the site formerly comprised solely circular vats; now, new ones were installed, this time all of rectangular shape. At Portopalo, the new facilities were also composed of rectangular vats only. Not far away, and certainly dating from this period, lies the great factories at Pachino with at least 30 basins, all rectangular (fig. 8.6).24 Another example of a new factory site is Milazzo in the northeast of the island, which has only been partially investigated.25 Looking at the production capacity of these factories,26 and comparing them against the diagram of Andrew Wilson27 showing the size of the workshops identified on the Mediterranean and the Atlantic coasts (fig. 8.7), we see that the Sicilian workshops are far from negligible, for the most part exceeding 50 m3 of cubic capacity.28 24 25 26 27 28

Felici 2012. See Tigano 2003; Ollà 2009. See Botte 2009: 99 table 1. Wilson 2006: 537, fig. 5. The state of preservation of the Sicilian installations is generally quite critical (on average, remain-

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Fig. 8.7: Vat capacity of the fish-salting factories of the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. (Wilson 2006, fig. 5). 3.1.2 Peninsular Italy It is also during the Augustan period and the first century AD that we see the emergence of new workshops throughout the Italian peninsula, whereas they previously were found only in Magna Graecia (according to the literary sources, but not yet confirmed by archaeology). The textual and archaeological data at our disposal indicate that the workshops were concentrated in two areas: Etruria, especially around Cosa; and Campania, in the area of the Bay of Naples. It should be added that this period was marked by a strong increase in demand for marine foodstuffs – whether fresh or salted or in the form of fish sauces – and their use as a status food by the Roman elites. A notable case is that of the oysters of the Bay of Naples. Sergius Orata is said to have invented oyster beds and to have been the first to introduce intensive ostreaculture at the beginning of the first century BC.29 Strabo (died c. AD 20) writes that in his time the Lucrine parks were still producing30 and, according to Petronius, some Romans were ready to ruin themselves financially to offer oysters to their guests.31

29 30 31

ing to no more than 0.5 m in height). In my survey, I conservatively opted to base my calculation on a vat depth of 1 m, but we know that they were generally deeper. Thus the estimated production capacity should be higher. Indeed, in the Mediterranean region, the basins identified frequently measure 1.5–2 m in depth, and sometimes more. On Sergius Orata, see Tchernia and Brun 1999: 21–3; Botte 2009: 47. Strabo 5.4.6. Petronius, Satyricon 119.33.

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In Etruria, factories were concentrated around Cosa. On the site of Cosa itself, no workshop was discovered – contrary to the restoration of A. M. McCann32 – but Strabo mentions a tuna-sighting tower (thynnoskpeion) located on a promontory.33 Not far away, on the islands of Giglio and Giannutri, two factories have been discovered, both established during the first century AD, like that at the site of Tombolo della Feniglia.34 The most interesting workshop is that of Giannutri, where seven quadrangular basins preserved up to a height of 1.2 m, probably placed around a courtyard, have been found (fig. 8.9).35 A significant lacuna in our knowledge of this region, however, is the type of containers that were used for transporting the products produced at the sites. A specific amphora type has not yet been identified. Although a hypothesis favouring Dressel 1C has been advanced in recent years, we should be cautious in accepting it as the association has not yet been clearly demonstrated.36 In Campania, we know of more workshops from tituli picti than from the archaeological record. Indeed, we know from the former that factories existed at Cumae, Pompeii and Elea,37 and recent work on the Dressel 21–22 type amphorae has shown that some of these had indeed been used to transport salted fish from Campania.38 On these amphorae, the production of which ranges from the late first century BC to the beginning of the second century AD, were found tituli picti mentioning CET CVM, to be expanded as Cet(us) – tuna – from the city of Cumae (fig. 8.9). There can therefore be no doubt that factories for fish processing existed in Campania. The case of Pompeii should also be mentioned briefly. Although a so-called ‘Garum Factory’ or ‘Garum Shop’ has been discovered in the city, this – a small space in which six dolia containing remains of fish were found – is by no means the production site to which Pliny refers.39 We must assume that the important Pompeian workshops were located outside the city, probably near the salinae Herculanae mentioned by Columella.40 3.2 Adriatic Italy The Adriatic coast of Italy is far from having yielded up all the archaeological information it holds. Indeed, despite what the literary sources and the amphora data indicate, no fish-processing factory has yet been discovered.41 However, it has recently been established that a particular type of amphorae, ‘le anforette adriatiche da pesce’, was intended for the transport of locally-produced fish sauces (liquamen mostly).42 Its production is attested from the 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

McCann 1987, figs vii and vii-9–10. On Cosa, see Botte 2009: 43–4. Strabo 5.2.8. A comprehensive publication on Tombolo della Feniglia is not available, but see Cavallo et al. 1992. Rendini 2003; Botte 2009: 42–4. On this hypothesis, see Laubenheimer 2007. Cumae: Strabo 5.4.4; Xenocrates ap. Oribasius 2.58.133–52. Pompeii: Pliny, NH 31.94. Elea: Strabo 6.6.1. This type = Botte 3; see Botte 2009: 146–60. Pliny, NH 31.94. For a detailed description, see Botte 2009: 95–9 as well as the works by Darío Bernal-Casasola and his team. Columella 10.135–6. For a summary of the sources and the archaeological data on this issue, Busana et al. 2009. See Carre et al. 2009.

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Fig. 8.8: Plan of the fish-salting factory on Giannutri island. (After Rendini 2003).

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Fig. 8.9: Fragment of Dressel 21–22 from Cumae with titulus pictus indicating cet(us) Cum(ae). (Author’s drawing and photo). middle of the first to the beginning of the second century AD, providing direct evidence for production along the northern Adriatic coast.

4. Grandeur and decline of a Mediterranean craft There is thus a strong development of the production and trade of preserved fish during the first centuries of the Imperial period, and it remains now to trace this continuing evolution until the end of the Empire. As already demonstrated by Andrew Wilson,43 activity in the western Mediterranean factories continued until the third century AD. From this point onwards, some sites ceased to operate, others, sometimes with a reduced production capacity, continued to operate until the fifth or sixth century. What, then, was the situation in Italy? It must be admitted that the demise of the craft of fish processing in Italy is difficult to establish because few factories have been excavated in sufficient detail, and so we must base our consideration of the issue on the latest ceramics found at these sites in order to determine their final periods of occupation.44 We do have, however, a site for which the date at which the salting vats ceased to produce can be established with some precision. On the site of Portopalo on Sicily, a house was built over the filled-in salting vats, and a hoard found underground included 325 bronze coins dated after the mid-fourth century,45 indicating that the workshop was probably abandoned in the late third century or the early decades of the fourth century AD. With this example, we can fit the Italian workshops into the general pattern of the end of activity in 43 44 45

Wilson 2006: especially 534–7. See Botte 2009: 104, table 2. Bacci 1985: 721, n. 19. The currency type is represented as one which bears the inscription felicium temporum reparatio, followed by coins of Magnentius and Decentius.

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the western Mediterranean. Here, as elsewhere, some workshops ceased to exist in the third century, while others continued to produce until at least the fourth and fifth centuries. Another point to be addressed here concerns the modalities of trade in fish products. Indeed, it is striking that the production of amphorae Dressel 21–2 ceases in the first half of the second century AD; this is particularly surprising since, as we have seen, the production of salted fish continued beyond this period. This means that traders changed the container used for the trade in these products. There are then only two possibilities: either ceramic containers (amphorae or common pottery) that have not yet been identified were used or, more likely, merchants increasingly preferred the barrel, which was widely employed, generally for wine, from the second century AD.46

5. Gaps and opportunities As this short survey has shown, much work still remains to be done on fish processing and trade in ancient Italy and Sicily, and I will try here to summarise the main issues that await exploration. One area of research to be addressed is the marketing of the processed-fish products of Greek Sicily, and, for this subject, only a resumption of investigations on the ground is likely to provide new data and open new paths for research. It is clear that many fish-processing plants remain to be discovered, but it seems especially important to work more closely on those already identified, which are continually subjected to the ravages of time and weather.47 Further analyses of the structures and factories are required, including systematic sieving48 of the residue in the vats to identify the species that were processed and chemical analysis of the coatings, which might identify the nature of the processes that took place at these sites. Finally, there is still important work to be done on containers, whatever their nature may have been: considering that the production in some regions ranged from the fourth century BC to the fourth or fifth century AD, we still know very little about the trade in preserved-fish products. Emmanuel Botte Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, MCC F-18000 Aix-en-Provence [email protected]

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On the use of the barrel, see Botte 2009: 166–8 and references cited therein on the subject; also Bekker-Nielsen, this volume, p. 301. This is particularly the case for the site of Levanzo, where I directed excavations in 2010 and 2014, and which is the subject of a research agreement between the École française de Rome, the Soprintendenza del Mare of Palermo and the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici of Trapani. Cf. Morales, this volume, p. 31–3.

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6. References 6.1 Primary sources Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists 2: Books 3.106 f.-5, with an English translation by C. B. Gulick (LCL 208). Cambridge MA 1928. Columella, On Agriculture, with an English translation by H. B. Ash, E. S. Forster and E. H. Heffner (LCL 361, 407, 408). Cambridge MA 1941–55. Petronius, Satyricon, in Petronius, Seneca: Satyricon, Apocolocyntosis, with an English translation by M. Heseltine and W. H. D. Rouse, revised by E. H. Warmington (LCL 15). Cambridge MA 1913. Xenocrates ap. Oribasius, in Oribasius: Collectionum Medicarum Reliquiae, edited by J. Raeder (Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 6.1). Leipzig 1928.

6.2 Secondary literature Arévalo, A. and D. Bernal-Casasola (eds) 2007. Las cetariae de Baelo Claudia. Avance de las investigaciones arqueológicas en el barrio meridional (2000–2004). Seville. Bacci G. M. 1985. ‘Scavi e ricerche a Avola, Grammichele, Portopalo, Taormina’, Kokalos 30–1, 711–25. Bekker-Nielsen, T. (ed.) 2005. Ancient Fishing and Fish Processing in the Black Sea Region (Black Sea Studies 2). Aarhus. Botte, E. 2009. Salaisons et sauces de poissons en Italie du sud et en Sicile durant l’Antiquité (Centre Jean Bérard Collection 31; Archéologie de l’artisanat antique 1). Naples. Botte, E. 2013. ‘L’exportation du thon sicilien à l’époque tardo-républicaine’, MEFRA 124, 577–612. Botte, E. 2016. ‘The exploitation of tuna in Greek Sicily during the Classical and Hellenistic periods: cultural transfer of Punic origin or technological innovation?’ in R. Nadeau, J. Wilkins and W. Broekaert (eds), Food, Identity and Cross-Cultural Exchanges in Classical Antiquity. Bruxelles. Bresc, H. 1985. ‘La pêche et les madragues dans la Sicile médiévale’ in M. Galley and L. Ladjimi Sebai (eds), L’homme méditerranéen et la mer. Actes du Troisième Congrès international d’étude des cultures de la Méditerranée Occidentale Jerba, avril 1981. Tunis, 166–80. Bresc, H. 1986. Un monde méditerranéen, Economie et société en Sicile, 1300–1450 (Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 262). Rome. Busana, M. S., C. D’Inca, S. Forti et al. 2009. ‘Olio e pesce in epoca romana nell’alto e medio Adriatico’ in Pesavento Mattioli and Carre (eds) 37–81. Carre, M.-B., S. P. Mattioli and C. Belotti 2009. ‘Le anfore da pesce adriatiche’ in Pesavento Mattioli and Carre (eds) 215–38. Castro Carrera, J. C. 2006. ‘La salina romana de “O Arenal”, Vigo (Galice)’ in J.-C. Hocquet and J.-L. Sarrazin (eds), Le sel de la baie: Histoire, archéologie, ethnologie des sels atlantiques. Rennes, 105– 22. Cavallo, D., G. Ciampoltrini and E. Shepherd et al. 1992. ‘La pesca nell’agro di Cosa in età romana: prospettive di ricerca e nuove acquisizioni’ in V Rassegna di Archeologia Subacquea: Giardini Naxos, 19–21 ottobre 1990: Atti. Messina, 103–14. Curtis, R. 2001. Ancient Food Technology. Leiden. D’Ercole, M. C. 2002. Importuosa Italiae litora: La côte adriatique entre le Biferno et l’Ofanto: le paysage et les échanges à l’époque archaïque (Etudes du Centre Jean Bérard 6). Naples. Étienne, R. and F. Mayet 2002. Salaisons et sauces de poisson Hispaniques (Trois clés pour l’économie de l’Hispanie romaine 2). Paris. Felici, E. 2012. ‘Un impianto con Thynnoskopèion per la pesca e la salagione sulla costa meridionale della Sicilia (Pachino, SR). Eliano, Oppiano e la tonnara antica’ in E. Tortorici, Tradizione, tecnologia e territorio I (Topografia antica 2). Catane, 107–42.

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Lafon, X. 2001. Villa Maritima: Recherches sur les villas littorales de l’Italie romaine (Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 307). Rome. Lagóstena-Barrios, L. 2001. La producción de salsas y conservas de pescado en la Hispania Romana (II a. C. – IV d. C.) (Col.lecció Instrumenta 11). Barcelona. Lagóstena-Barrios, L., D. Bernal-Casasola and A. Arévalo (eds) 2007. Cetariae 2005: Salsas y salazones de pescado en Occidente durante la Antigüedad. Cádiz, 7–9 noviembre de 2005 (BAR International Series 1686). Oxford. Laubenheimer, F. 2007. ‘À propos de timbres d’amphores de l’atelier d’Albinia, prov. de Grosseto, Italie: vin et poisson’ in D. Vitali (ed.), Le fornaci e le anfore di Albinia primi dati su produzioni e scambi dalla costa tirrenica al mondo gallico: Atti del seminario internazionale, Ravenna, 6–7 maggio 2006 (Albinia 1). Bologna, 67–80. McCann, A. M. 1987. The Roman Port and Fishery of Cosa: A Center of Ancient Trade. Princeton. Mangano, G. 2009. ‘I resti faunistici del sito di Contrada Vaccarella a Milazzo’ in G. Tigano (ed.), Mylai 2: Scavi e ricerche nell’area urbana, 1996–2005. Messina, 271. Maniatis, Y., R. E. Jones and I. K. Whitbread et al. 1984. ‘Punic amphoras found at Corinth, Greece: an investigation of their origin and technology’, Journal of Field Archaeology 11.2, 205–22. Marzano, A. 2007a. ‘Fish salting versus fish-breeding: the case of Roman Italy’, in Lagóstena-Barrios, Bernal-Casasola and Arévalo (eds) 301–13. Marzano, A. 2007b. Roman Villas in Central Italy: A Social and Economic History (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 30). Leiden. Maurici, F. and F. Vergara 1991. Per una storia delle tonnare siciliane: La tonnara dell’Ursa (Quaderno dei Beni Culturali e Ambientali di Sicilia 12). Palermo. Morelli, C., G. Olcese and F. Zevi 2004. ‘Scoperte recenti nelle saline portuensi (Campus Salinarum romanarum) e un progetto di ricerca sulla ceramica di area ostiense in età repubblicana’ in A. Zevi and R. Turchetti (eds), Méditerranée occidentale antique: Les échanges 3. Soveria Mannelli, 43–55. Ollà, A. 2009. ‘Uno stabilimento per la lavorazione del pesce a Milazzo: Primi dati’ in G. Tigano (ed.), Mylai 2: Scavi e ricerche nell’area urbana, 1996–2005. Messina, 253–70. Pesavento Mattioli, S. and M.-B. Carre (eds) 2009. Olio e Pesce in época romana: Produzione e comercio nelle regioni dell’alto Adriatico Atti del convegno Padova 16 feb. 2007 (Antenor Quaderni 15). Rome. Rendini, P. 2003. ‘Impianti per la lavorazione di pesce conservato al Giglio e a Giannutri’ in A. Benini and M. Giacobelli (eds), Atti del II Convegno Nazionale di Archeologia Subacquea: Castiglioncello, 7–9 set. 2001 (Bibliotheca archaeologica 12). Bari, 175–88. Sáez Romero, A. 2011. ‘Balance y novedades sobre la pesca y la industria conservera en las ciudades fenicias del “area del Estrecho”’ in D. Bernal-Casasola (ed.), Pescar con Arte: Fenicios y romanos en el origen de los aparejos andaluces. Catálogo de la exposición ‘Baelo Claudia’, diciembre 2011-julio 2012 (Monographs of the Sagena Project 3). Cádiz, 255–97. Sáez Romero, A. 2014. Fish processing and salted-fish trade in the Punic West: New archaeological data and historical evolution in E. Botte and V. Leitch, Fish & Ships: Production et commerce des salsamenta durant l’Antiquité, Actes de l’atelier doctoral tenu à Rome (18–22 juin 2012) (Centre Camille Jullian, Bibliothèque d’Archéologie Méditerranéenne et Africaine 17). Arles, 159–74. Sáez Romero, A. and D. Bernal-Casasola 2007. ‘Acerca del origen punico-gaditano de las piletas de salazon en el Mediterraneo occidental: una innovacion de la ciudad de Gadir?’ in Lagóstena-Barrios, Bernal-Casasola and Arévalo (eds) 463–73. Sara, R 2003. ‘Splendore decadenza e spegnimento delle tonnare siciliane. Una breve rivisitazione millenaria’ in G. Doneddu and A. Fiori (eds), La pesca in Italia tra età moderna e contemporanea: produzione, mercato, consume. Sassari, 491–506. Sillières, P. 1995. Baelo Claudia: Une cité romaine de Bétique (Collection de la Casa de Velázquez 51). Madrid. Slim H., P. Trousset, R. Paskoff et al. 2004. Le littoral de la Tunisie: Étude géoarchéologique et historique (Études d’Antiquités Africaines). Paris.

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Tassaux F. and M.-B. Carre 2011. ‘La villa de Červar/Cervera’, in M.-B. Carre, V. Kovačic, F. Tassaux et al. (eds), L’Istrie et la mer: la côte du Parentin dans l’Antiquité (Mémoires 25). Bordeaux, 183–5. Tchernia, A. and J.-P. Brun 1999. Le vin romain antique. Grenoble. Tigano, G. 2003. ‘Milazzo: Per la topografia del centro antico’ in G. M. Bacci and M. C. Martinelli (eds), Studi Classici in onore di Luigi Bernabo Brea (Quaderni del Museo Archeologico Regionale Eoliano ‘Luigi Bernabo Brea’, Supplemento 2). Palermo, 281–94. Williams, C. K. 1979. ‘Corinth, 1978: forum southwest’, Hesperia 48.2, 105–44. Wilson, A. 2006. ‘Fishy business: Roman exploitation of marine resources’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 19.2, 525–37.

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Littoral landscapes and embedded economies: tuna fisheries as biocultural systems

1. The logic of expense: the tuna fishery (almadraba) as a biocultural system Academic publications on tuna fishing and tuna traps, or almadrabas, often stress that historically,1 and in its traditional form, this fishing technique adapted to the biological rhythm of the bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) by maintaining a perfect balance between the needs of fishing communities and the reproductive cycles of the species. Moreover, it has been pointed out that the reproductive behaviour of the tuna continues even inside the net and immediately prior to death.2 The latter observation is undoubtedly true, but has as much explanatory value as the stoically-inspired stories transmitted by the Classical authors (Oppian, Aelian; see below), and probably responds to the ecological ‘mythology’ so typical of our age. In fact, the almadraba does not only belong to the so-called natural order of things, but equally to the sphere of socio-cultural relations.3 The socio-cultural framework of the almadraba is not, however, ‘economic’ in the usual sense of the word: it is defined less by profit than by expense. In other words, the almadraba forms part of what is known as a ‘prestige economy’.4 This was accurately and sincerely expressed by an Andalusian almadraba captain, recently, more than 2,000 years after the invention of the technique and in the context of the profound crisis that has been threatening the sector for decades: ‘this survives only for the sake of prestige’.5 Historically, there is nothing exceptional about the present situation. Setting up an almadraba has always involved a considerable financial effort which not everyone could undertake.6 This becomes even more significant when the unpredictability and irregularity of returns is taken into consideration; indeed, successive years of losses are to be expected. Sometimes ten or more years of continuous investment are required before a profit can be taken. In the world of the almadraba, ‘bad tuna years’ are common, and only seldom do exceptional captures result, providing high returns and compensating for the losses of previous years. These strokes of fortune, these ‘miraculous’ catches, are frequently represented in 1 2 3 4 5 6

Cf. Di Natale 2012. Longo 2010: 430. Florido del Corral 2005. Chic García (ed.) 2006. Florido del Corral 2006: 193. Bresc 1986: 265.

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the literary tradition.7 They are often associated with an act of divine intervention in favour of a certain community or individual. It is precisely the extraordinary, almost supernatural nature of large hauls of tuna, along with the difficult and complex technical knowledge involved, which confers on the captains – and, by extension, on the shipowners – their exception status of social prestige and moral authority.8 The largest shipowners in Spain during the early modern period, the Dukes of Medina Sidonia, were known as the ‘kings of tuna’.9 As early as the second century AD, Aelian10 praises the ‘marvellous wisdom’ of the watchman, or skopiazōn, who sights the tuna shoal from the watchtower on the beach and can determine its size and direction at a single glance; his contemporary Oppian11 also emphasized the heroic character of the fishermen, whom he compares with soldiers defeating an enemy phalanx of fish by a combination of force and skill. The financial effort involved in setting up and directing an almadraba fishery was compensated by social prestige as much as the eventual economic profit. The almadraba was a distinct social context with its own codes which set it apart, even from criminal law; in the Middle Ages and the early modern period, criminals and convicts could escape the law (ferie thonariarum)12 in Sicily and Andalusia by serving in the almadraba. In addition, financiers and technicians generally belonged to a closed social group criss-crossed by long-established internal ties of gratitude, favour and kinship.13 Like any other society driven by favour, prestige and personal ties, the almadraba had a pyramidal structure. The apex was occupied by the owners of the fishing gear or of the fishing rights, such as the crown or the state, which from the Middle Ages onwards leased them in exchange for loyalty, rents and military aid (if the beneficiary was a nobleman) or prayers (if an abbey or a bishopric).14 These beneficiaries, in turn, would entrust the direction of the actual fishing to a man in their full confidence: the rais (Italian) or arráez (Spanish), that is, the captain of the fishery. The control exercised by this man over the ‘riff-raff ’ – chusma (Spanish), ciurma (Italian) – or seamen was strictly hierarchical and, depending on functions and responsibilities, nearly absolute, even extending to the seamen’s private lives. The relationship of dependence and loyalty of the rais with regard to the owner was as vital for the actual fishing as it was for the commercialisation of the fish. In fact, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the local nobles letting out Sicilian tonnare often retained the right to designate at least one of the captains in charge of directing the operations.15 It would be naïve to believe that social prestige was the only return for the beneficiaries of the fishing rights. Indeed, ‘good tuna years’ greatly contributed to filling the coffers of the shipowners. Although the claim that the income from Andalusian almadrabas amounted to one-third of the total revenue enjoyed by the Dukes of Medina Sidonia during the middle decades of the sixteenth century is biased and exaggerated,16 it is true that the fisheries were 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Cf. Lentini 2008: 30–4. Bresc 1985: 172; 1986: 272. Florido del Corral 2005: 32. Aelian, NA 15.5. Oppian, On Fishing 3.638–49. Bresc 1986: 268. Bresc 1985: 175; Lentini 2008: 30–9. Cf. Longo and Clark 2012: 210–1. Lentini 2008: 36. Florido del Corral 2005: 12.

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a significant source of cash for the family even in bad economic years; this cash was used for other businesses, such as giving out loans or investing in other economic ventures in Madrid. Furthermore, no costly money transfers from the distant south were necessary, because payment for the tuna sales were not made in Cádiz, but in Madrid.17 On the other hand, almadrabas were central to the economic organisation of the manorial dominions: salt, wheat, timber, ropes, esparto, flax and so on were acquired by the lords as rent in kind or bought at preferential prices. This reduced the exploitation costs of fishing and integrated the fishing operation into the economy of the manorial territories.18 For example, many years after the abolition of the ancien régime in Sicily, the lessees of the almadraba on the island of Favignana were permitted to rent the entire island in order to place all other economic activities, especially salt extraction, at the service of the fishery and thus ensure the supply of raw materials to the tonnara (see below). Traditionally, therefore, the almadraba was an integrated economic activity (embedded economy). It was based on a specific relationship with the marine ecosystem – involving a profound knowledge of the biology of the migratory species (and especially the bluefin tuna) and of coastal hydrology – highly specialised technical skills and a complex social system, which in preindustrial economies were closely intertwined with a prestige economy (i. e. not founded in a ‘rational’ return-follows-investment basis) and the professional relationships of which were structured by relatively ‘fossilised’ forms of economic dependence and community control rather than by simple labour contracts. I aim to explore all these issues in more detail from a diachronic perspective.

2. Eco-biological factors in almadraba fishing Almadraba fishing rests on two essential factors: the presence of fish shoals and the mobilisation of the necessary technical, socio-economic and human resources for their capture. Tuna fishing can take place, as it still does nowadays, on the high seas. There is very early evidence for this sort of practice, such as that of Pseudo-Aristotle,19 who informs us that the fishermen from Gades (Cádiz) travelled as far as the Saharan shoal to fish tuna on boats with a figurehead representing a horse,20 for which reason they were called hippoi.21 It seems unlikely that this practice yielded a large quantity of fish, but it would have targeted a specific species which Pseudo-Aristotle says was much appreciated by the Carthaginians, the ultimate recipients of the fish. Until the beginning of the European exploitation of the Newfoundland shoals in the sixteenth century,22 large-scale fishing was a coastal activity mostly targeting major and medium scombridae: bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), bonito (Sarda sarda), bullet tuna (Auxis rochei), little tunny (Euthynnus alletteratus) and albacore (Thunnus alalunga). Among these, the bluefin tuna is especially prominent. This species leaves the Atlantic and enters the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar in late spring, forming large shoals that move close 17 18 19 20 21 22

Florido del Corral 2005: 29. Florido del Corral 2005: 23. Ps.-Aristotle, On Marvellous Things Heard 136a. Mederos and Escribano 1999. Luzón Nogué 1988. Cf. Cutting 1955.

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to the surface and skirt the coast. It enters the Mediterranean looking for appropriate spawning areas (so-called gametic migration); these waters must be rich in nutrients for the young fish, with suitable temperature and salinity conditions. In the case of the bluefin tuna, the good spawning areas are concentrated in the central Mediterranean, along the western coast of Sardinia and Sicily, in the Ionian Sea and along the southern Tyrrhenian coast of Italy. The waters around the northwestern tip of Sicily have the maximum concentration of fish. En route to the central Mediterranean, the shoals disperse and reunite several times. Areas of anticyclonic turbulence in the Alboran Sea tend to scatter the large shoals around the line joining Algeciras and Ceuta.23 These shoals normally reform between the Balearic Islands and Sicily, especially in the spawning areas. Following this itinerary, the tuna swims with the aid of marine currents, especially the main branch of the Atlantic current, which penetrates the Strait of Gibraltar on the surface, due to the lower relative salinity and density of the Atlantic waters relative to the waters of the Mediterranean (with the higher salinity typical of enclosed or semi-enclosed seas). When they return to the Atlantic in late summer (so-called trophic migration), the fish swim towards the Strait of Gibraltar following a cluster of secondary surface currents running alongside the coast of the Maghreb. On the return trip, as a consequence, the shoals, now including adults and young specimens, are particularly rich along the southern Mediterranean shore. In this phase the meat of the fish is less fatty, due to the reproductive stress suffered by the adults and the lesser development of the young fish. The proximity of the shoals to the coast is explained by several factors. In the Strait of Gibraltar the so-called ‘funnel effect’, essentially the transit of thousands of individuals through a passage barely more than 20 km wide (fig. 9.1), ensures that they remain close to the coast and also makes the fish more accessible to fishermen. Furthermore, tuna are visual predators, and this incites them to travel near the coast in search of prey – all sorts of pelagic species and small cephalopods – in clear water conditions. They also escape from stalking predators such as the killer whale by moving into shallower waters near the shoreline. Finally, the so-called ‘vientos de atunes’ or ‘tuna winds’, which determine the hydrobiological conditions, drive the shoals towards the coast. With regard to the ‘resident’ populations of bluefin tuna in the Black Sea, these used to descend into the eastern Mediterranean through the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles. As in the Strait of Gibraltar, this geographical disposition created a funnel effect, creating a large concentration of fish in a relatively narrow space and good captures around Byzantium on the Thracian Bosphorus24 and Cyzicus and Parium on the Hellespont.25 The phrase ‘used to descend’ has been chosen with care, for since the mid-twentieth century, and despite some recent signs of recovery, the eastern populations of bluefin tuna seem to have abandoned the Sea of Marmara to remain in the Aegean year round. This phenomenon, which has led to the abandonment of the fisheries on the Bosphorus and which has been confirmed by genetic studies corroborating the biological differences between tuna at either end of the mare nostrum, seems to have been only partially caused by overexploitation; other environmental

23 24 25

Compán Vázquez 1988: 212. Dumont 1976–7; Dagron 1995. Robert 1950.

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Fig. 9.1: Satellite image of the Strait of Gibraltar. causes, such as the significantly greater deterioration of marine environments in the Black Sea compared to the eastern Mediterranean, appear, on the whole, to be more relevant.26

3. Technical aspects of almadraba fishing 3.1 Types of almadraba The term almadraba does not apply to a single form of fishing tackle, but to several categories of fishing gear of different structure and origins. The common denominator is their use for the capture of large migratory pelagic fish (tuna, albacore, bonito, sea bass),27 most particu26 27

Di Natale 2010: 1005, 1009. Lopes 1841: 90.

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Fig. 9.2: Almadraba de vista y tiro at Conil, province of Cádiz. (After Sáñez Reguart 1791–1795). larly bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus). The morphology of these different varieties of fishing implements is so distinct, however, that it is necessary to specify which type of almadraba is under discussion. Historically, three kinds of almadraba can be distinguished: almadraba de vista y tiro, almadraba de buche and almadraba de monteleva. The second and third types are distinguished less in terms of their architecture than in terms of their complexity; both are labyrinths of fixed nets with a very similar structure. If these latter two are considered as variations on a single type, traditional almadrabas can be divided into two groups: mobile encircling almadrabas (beach seines) and fixed or passive almadrabas (tuna traps). Fishing with the mobile almadraba de vista y tiro (fig. 9.2) is a two-stage operation. First, a net enclosure is created in the sea, close to the coast. This arrests the fish in their course and traps them. Afterwards, the net is brought towards the coast by pulling at either end, drawing the fish onto the beach where they are stabbed to death. It is an active fishing technique involving a sighting of the shoal, the encircling manoeuvre, the ‘recovery’ of the net onto the beach and the final slaughter. This technique belongs to the same category of fishing as the use of seine nets from boats, for which reason Greek and Roman sources refer to it by the same name given to all dragnets: sagēnē (Greek) or sagena (Latin). The use of fixed almadrabas (fig. 9.3) is, by contrast, a passive technique, with fixtures planted or anchored in parallel to, and not far from, the shore a few days before the anticipated arrival of the fish. The nets, held vertical by a system of weights and floats, form a rec-

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Fig. 9.3: Almadraba de buche at Ayamonte, province of Huelva. (After Sáñez Reguart 1791–1795). tangle divided into chambers between 15 m and 30 m wide and up to 500 m in length. The rectangle is connected to the shore by a long net (rabera de tierra). A similarly long curtain net projects into the sea (rabera de fuera). The two raberas deflect the fish and drive them into the inner rectangle by a system of corners and angles (fig. 9.4) (see below). 3.2 Almadraba fishing: vista y tiro Before the introduction of fixed traps, either the older buche or the more recent monteleva version, tuna fishing was carried out exclusively by the vista y tiro technique. This system is technically more complex and requires the participation of a large number of fishermen. A seventeenth-century description of the technique, based on original documents and prints (fig. 9.6) from the archive of the Dukes of Medina Sidonia (‘Explicación de la almadraba de tiro’, dated 1727) has been published recently.28 This description of the operation of Andalusian almadrabas in the eighteenth century is far more detailed than the ‘classic’ texts of earlier chorographers and ethnographers (Pedro de Medina, Pérez de Messa, Agustín de Horozco, and others). It describes the ships, the tools and the guilds and professional categories of the fishermen and for the most part, these descriptions agree with the details 28

Álvarez de Toledo 2007.

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Fig. 9.4: Almadraba of Barbate, province of Cádiz, showing the different compartments (after Rodríguez Roda 1979). A–B: rabera de fuera; C–D: rabera de tierra; E: boat. offered in the eighteenth-century work by Sáñez Reguart on the organisation of the most important of the almadrabas owned by the Dukes near the Strait of Gibraltar: the almadraba of Conil. According the cited documents, the almadraba de vista y tiro involved two stages and the formation of two concentric circles inside which the tuna were trapped. In the first stage, several vessels (boliches, calones, barca delantera, barca de segunda) with varying numbers of rowers (from four to ten, depending on the type of boat), were launched to cross the path of the tuna coming from the west (because the almadraba of Conil is de derecho, that is, it captures the tuna on their gametic voyage from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean). After sighting the tuna, the atalayeros signalled to the watchmen on the boats with flags (fig. 9.5). The boats, positioned at either end of the fishing area, the boliche de levante and the boliche de poniente, sailed out and place the sedales.29 The boat at the eastern end would then return to the beach, while the one at the western end would sail on a straight course taking it further out to sea.

29

Sáñez Reguart 1791–1795: 1.50.

Littoral landscapes and embedded economies: tuna fisheries as biocultural systems

Fig. 9.5: Watchtower in Loma del Puerco, Chiclana, province of Cádiz. (After Regueira and Regueira 1993).

Fig. 9.6: Almadraba de vista y tiro of Conil, province of Cádiz, in an image from the 18th century. (After Álvarez de Toledo 2007; see also Santos García forthcoming).

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Fig. 9.7: Slaughter in the tonnara of Bonagia, province of Trapani, Italy. (After Ravazza 2000).

The first vessel’s net, or sedal, stopped the tunas and the second vessel’s net prevented them from escaping. A third boat, the barca segunda, extended the sedal de la barca, equipped with caladores de plomo y panda (floats and weights) between these two nets, progressing towards the west. Once this net converged with the eastern and western sedales, the trap was complete, and the sailors would cease to row. However, there would still remain a gap at the ends of the nets (cabrestreras) through which the tuna could escape. These passages were blocked by the crews of small boats (calones) making a commotion, hitting the boat and the water surface with their oars and throwing stones to keep the tuna away rom the gaps. In the meantime, the ends of the nets would be provisionally stitched together from the boat known as the calón de cabrestrera. These operations created the so-called bolichada encircling the shoal of fish in the net. This initiated the second stage of the process, in which the tuna were encircled with a thicker net which was pulled towards the land in order to draw the fish onto the shore. A boat known as the calón de sirga would set a rope (the sirga) encircling the bolichada, from which the cinta – a thicker net, reinforced on its eastern side – would be set.30 The watchmen of the boat performing this operation would be directed by the atalayeros, in order to follow the arc-shaped course required to catch all the tuna. The ventureros were responsible for pulling in the sirga. The cabeceras would be located on the shoreline, in the water, in order 30

Sáñez Reguart 1791–5: 2.291.

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Fig. 9.8: Hauling the catch on board in the tonnara of Bonagia. (After Ravazza 2000).

to prevent the tuna escaping above the floats of the cinta, whereas the ventureros hauled the sirga in while standing on the beach. According to most sources, the cloqueros or paralelos, who had pushed the boats out to the sea at the start of the operation, would stand by to kill the tuna with hooks as they came ashore. 3.3 Almadraba fishing: buche Fixed almadrabas, conceived as traps anchored to the sea bottom, are formed by a rectangular net precinct divided into several compartments or chambers. The fish shoal is stopped by the rabera de tierra which forces the fish to swim along the net curtain and into the precinct. This may be a single square with a copo (bottom net) or be divided into several chambers through which the fish swim, their escape being prevented by the other rabera (de fuera), until they enter the last one, equipped with a copo, where the slaughter takes place. The fishermen intervene only at the last stage, when the final chamber is closed and the copo is raised to proceed with the slaughter (figs 9.7–8).

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4. Technological evolution of almadrabas on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts In principle there is a chronological progression towards greater complexity in the morphology of almadrabas; thus the almadraba de vista y tiro is the oldest and the de buche and monteleva types the more recent, at least as a general rule. While ancient literary descriptions seem to point towards the use of almadrabas de vista y tiro, nothing in the known classical texts suggests fixed traps similar to the almadraba de buche. The descriptions by Philostratus31 and Aelian32 are very clear in this regard,33 whereas the well-known passage by Oppian, often cited as clear evidence for the use of fixed traps, is not so self-evident if the difficulties involved in its interpretation and the metaphorical nature of the text are taken into consideration.34 In fact, Oppian indicates that the fishermen’s strategy is to encircle the shoal with a net, comparing the tuna with the inhabitants of a besieged city. In this he follows traditional classical imagery comparing the use of a sagena (beach seine) with an assault on a besieged city. This image is present in the works of Manilius and Aelian, who project it as far back as Homer, and by Oppian’s time it had become a literary topos.35 The misinterpretation rests on the verse in which the poet states that the net had ‘gates and doormen’.36 In my opinion, the interpretation of this as evidence for a fixed net ignores an obvious fact: because it was not a single net37 the central sections of a beach seine system would have gaps (cabestreras, cf. above) in which boats were placed and where the rowers – maybe corresponding to Oppian’s ‘doormen’? – would beat the water to prevent the fish from escaping through the gaps. Philostratus, Oppian and Aelian always describe vista y tiro operations, beginning with the sighting of a shoal of fish from high ground; the literary and also the epigraphic texts (see below) often refer to this with a derivative of the verb skopein (to look, to observe or to sight): skopía, thynnoskopeion. According to Aelian,38 the actual fishing would be performed from six boats carrying the nets between them. After the encircling had been achieved, the capture would follow, probably by tying the different net sections together (cf. above). According to Pérez de Mesa39 the almadraba of Conil during the sixteenth century also used six or seven boats, although in this case the boats started off forming a circle. The coincidence in the numbers of boats and the general kinds of manoeuvres performed is interesting, as are the almost identical descriptions of the activities carried out by the fishermen and the land crew in modern Spanish documents and in the almadraba ‘guild’ registers from the city of Parium dated sixteen centuries earlier (see below). The origins of fixed almadrabas, on the other hand, must be the fish traps (corrales) built with timber or reeds on coastal lagoons to capture fish trapped by the tide. In fact the 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

Philostratus, Imagines 1.13.7–10. Aelian, NA 15.5. Cf. García Vargas and Florido del Corral 2011. Oppian, On Fishing 3.620–48: see above. Mastromarco 1998. Oppian, On Fishing 3.642–3. Cf. Lytle 2006: 90 after Aelian. Aelian, NA 15.5; cf. Bekker-Nielsen, this volume, p. 291. Pérez de Mesa 1595.

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Fig. 9.9: Plan of divari or reed enclosure in the lagoon of Missolonghi, Greece. (After Guest-Papamanoli 1995). almadraba of Sancti Petri, Cádiz, still had a system of stone corrales to trap the tuna escaping from the main copo as late as the eighteenth century. Reed or palm-built corrales (bordigues in French; divaris or kheiroboloidai in Greek (fig. 9.9); cherfiya in Arabic) are common throughout the Mediterranean,40 where they coexist with net traps (boloi, Greek; gemma, demmâsa, Arabic) created by laying out several connected trammels in deeper waters, either in lagoons or in the sea. Both systems focus on the same concept: the trapping of fish in a precinct to facilitate capture. The origins of the corrales or bordigues – a very simple device built in shallow waters – can be tracked very far back in time, at least to the beginnings of the first millennium BC41 with continuity throughout the Roman period;42 the true madrague or fixed almadraba, developed by the addition of raberas and extra chambers with trammels set in geometrical patterns (boloi), must, however, be a much more recent development, since the earliest references in the literary and legal sources are considerably later (ninth to tenth century AD).43 In the works of Pliny,44 the mention of fixed fishing nets is limited to the description of trammels mounted on poles, similar to the ones in use until very recently in Tunisia and the 40 41 42 43 44

Guest-Papamanoli 1985; Trousset 1998. New Ferry, Northern Ireland: Alves et al. 1988–9: 223. Espinho, Portugal: Alves et al. 1988–9: 223. This is also the case in the Arabic sources: Ibn Hawqal cited in Trousset 1998: 27. Pliny, NH 19.29.

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Fig. 9.10: Plan of the dalyan of Şira, Istanbul. (After Devedjian 1926). Aegean, where they are called taliani.45 The second- and third-century Roman sources only describe mobile devices,46 despite the frequent interpretations to the contrary. In any case, there is no evidence for the general use of fixed almadrabas (Greek: epochê, Turkish: dalyan; fig. 9.10) before the last centuries of the first millennium AD. The earliest mention of a fixed, trap-like almadraba, expressly referred to as an epoché, occurs the ninth century AD in Theophilus Protospatharius’ medical treatise47 in which the epochai (fixed almadrabas) are referred to in a metaphorical sense. The practical use of these devices appears in legal dispositions for the first time in the Novellae constitutiones or Novels of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI ‘the Wise’ in the early tenth century AD. Leo’s Novel 57 regulates certain aspects of fishing with these devices, also called remorae piscatoriae, including the minimum distance to be kept between them to avoid mutual harm (see below). Leo VI attributes the absence of previous regulations to the fact that this type of fishing technique had been unknown before his own time.48

45 46 47 48

Guest-Papamanoli 1985; Trousset 1998: 27. Cf. García Vargas and Florido del Corral 2011. Theophilus Protospatharius 4.29.13, cited in Dagron 1995: 60. Novels 56–7; 102–4; see also Lytle, this volume.

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5. Ownership and management of almadrabas over time: second to eighteenth century AD As pointed out earlier (above, p. 255–6), the organisation of almadraba fishing is closely related not only to the biological characteristics of the targeted species, but also to the economic, social and ideological spheres of the human communities involved. In fact, the general use of fixed, trap-like nets in all Mediterranean coastal regions, eastern as well as western only occurred after the ‘industrialisation’ of the activity in the course of the nineteenth century, following the re-evaluation of fish stocks as national resources open to maximum exploitation with the implementation of technical improvements and the rationalisation of resources, just like any other exploitable resource. There is, however, no linear relationship between encircling-net techniques and pre-industrial societies, nor between trap-like fixtures and modern almadrabas, since, as already mentioned, the introduction of fixed structures predates the European industrial revolution by many centuries. The technique seems to have emerged around Constantinople in the ninth century,49 and then to have spread into the central Mediterranean, where it seems to have been present by the tenth or eleventh century AD.50 5.1 Roman legal regimes The transition from mobile to fixed techniques in wide regions of the central and eastern Mediterranean seems to have been facilitated by significant changes in the legal ownership of the coastline and its resources. Contrary to common belief, the Classical polis lacked a developed concept of territorial waters and never seems to have entertained the idea of nationalising marine resources or even of including them within the polis’ complex system of concessions.51 Of course, this does not mean that the property of the fishing grounds was not in the hands of the state: it leased them out to private fishermen who, either alone or, more often, forming professional corporations, paid to use public fishing facilities.52 The organisation of almadraba fishing and the lease of publicly-owned watchtowers in the final centuries BC can be explored through three, sadly incomplete, inscriptions from the Propontis. One of them comes from Cyzicus (modern Aydıncık near Bandirma, northwestern Turkey) and dates to the Hellenistic period. The inscription includes a dedication to Poseidon and Aphrodite Pontia offered by a corporation of fishermen, including one Argatarchus, identified as the lessee of a watchtower (archones skopiās).53 The inscription also mentions his metochoi, or companions, probably the other members of the corporation. Metochoi is also the word used by Luke54 to refer to the fishermen summoned by Simon to help with the miraculous draught of fish described in the Gospel. John and James, sons of Zebedee, are called his partners (koinoinoi). 49 50 51 52 53 54

García Vargas 2001; García Vargas and Muñoz Vicente 2003; García Vargas and Florido del Corral 2010; 2011. Lentini 2008. Cf., recently, Lytle 2012 and this volume. García Vargas and Florido del Corral 2011; Lytle 2012: 26. IMT 1539. Luke 5.1–11.

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The second inscription, from Parium (on the Hellespont, modern Kemer, Turkey), is dated to the same period and, although badly deteriorated, it still reveals the existence of an association of fishermen in a place called Phrou[…], the members of which included a skopiazōn or lookout.55 The third, almost completely preserved and dated to the first century BC, was found on the Gallipoli peninsula, but is also likely to have come from nearby Parium.56 It refers to a corporation of fishermen established in a territory belonging to the colony and called Neilaios. Among the members of this corporation, directed by a main lessee (archon), we find five ‘net-chiefs’ (diktyarchai), two of whom also played the role of lookout, and five boat captains (lembarchai). This indicates that the group would have used at least five boats for the operation. The distribution of tasks laid out by the inscription fits the description of Andalusian almadrabas de vista y tiro from the early modern period, including, for example, there being a person in charge of the cork floats for the nets (phelokallaston). The correspondence between the two descriptions is remarkable. The number of boats involved in the Parium case is five, one less than the figure proposed by Aelian57 for the deployment of the nets (see above) and one or two less than Pérez de Messa’s description of the almadraba of Conil in the late sixteenth century. This suggests the use of mobile devices in Parium, similar to the almadrabas de vista y tiro technique. What was available for lease in Cyzicus and Parium, as in many other places,58 were the towers or watchtowers and, assuming the historical parallel, the fishing equipment used from the boats, such as nets and other tackle. From the Hellenistic age and throughout the early Roman period the fishermen in the Propontis formed corporations, not to purchase non-existent fishing rights, but to rent the public watchtowers and other fishing facilities and instruments for a fee or telos, probably payable every five years. The last-mentioned of the three inscriptions also gives some insight into the internal organisation of these corporations. Membership was generally based on kinship, since the koinonía included men (free or otherwise) linked to other members of the corporation by family or dependency ties (sons, freedmen and serfs), although this was not exclusively the case. The archon or ‘president’, Publius Avius Lysimachus, shared the task of governing the nets with his son, Publius Avius Ponticus, and three other men (diktyarchai), including a brother of Lysimachus (Publius Avius Bithys, both freedmen of an otherwise unknown Publius Avius), a free man (Marcus Apicius Quadratus) and the slave (Epagathus) of one Artemidorus who, seemingly, did not belong to the association. One of the five ‘boat-foremen’ (lembarchai) was the slave of the archon; another was a slave of one Bithys; a third was son of one Lucius and the remaining two of one Asclepius, with no presence in the society. The helmsmen (of the major boats?) were a free man (Tubellius Laetus) and a slave of Lysimachus, whereas the person in charge of the floats (Tongillius Cosmus) and the secretary and treasurer of the association (Cassius Damasippus) were free men with no family links to Publius Avius Lysimachus, the manceps. We know little about the finances of fishing collectives in the Propontis, although it is likely that the mancipes, or lessees of fishing instruments and watchtowers, had the backing of the local potentates, including tradesmen, as in medieval Sicily.59 In Rome, local tycoons 55 56 57 58 59

IK 25.5. IK 25.6; see also Lytle, this volume; Bekker-Nielsen, this volume. Aelian, NA 15.5. Fernández Nieto 2006. Bresc 1985.

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often took leases for a variety of municipal assets or activities, including real estate, trading concerns and municipal services (including fisheries, salt mines, fulling workshops, vectigales of public pasture or pascua, taxes, publicly-owned agricultural lands and beehives),60 in order to sublet them to third parties. The latter category embraced a wide variety of clients and other dependents, forming something like the familia in negotiis or familia negotians.61 These clients acted as middlemen and agents for their patrons, keeping all these businesses public and within the realm of the local economy. The structural continuity of Roman salting factories on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of Hispania62 suggests the involvement of public institutions in the construction and maintenance of fish-processing infrastructures. This is further indicated by the absence of major alterations to the internal spatial distribution and to the walls separating different workshops; changes which are generally indicative of the transference of property. From the second century AD, however, the process towards the concentration of landed property and the creation of large coastal estates prompted major rural landowners to replace their preferred activity during the Republican and early Imperial periods, fish farming,63 with the construction of almadrabas, or at least to contemplate fishing as the main economic activity of their estates. This probably involved the development of a new legal structure adapted to the new concept of instrumentum piscatorium. The first steps in this development were already being taken in the third century AD, and the jurist Marcian64 clearly considers that the instrumentum piscatorium not only included the boats used by the slave fishermen but also the fishermen themselves, whom Aristo seems to have excluded two centuries earlier. The relevant passage in the Digest reads as follows: ‘Aristo states that fishing implements are the boats which are used for catching fish; but it is more correct also to include the fishermen’.65 The difference of opinion between Aristo (first century AD) and Marcian (third century AD) seems to correspond to the general legal trend towards including all slaves on a given estate, for example, potters,66 into the instrumentum, along with storage vases, facilities and the vehicles used for marketing the estate’s produce.67 Therefore, the legal category of instrumentum (vocale, semivocale or mutum), which during the Republican and early Imperial periods had only applied to the means of agricultural production, was eventually extended to other economic activities as well.68 This wider consideration of instrumenta seems appropriate for increasingly large estates (single properties or the aggregates of a number of smaller, dispersed ones) ruled from a single centre (the villa) and in which different pieces of equipment, agricultural or otherwise, were unified under the same category to facilitate their rational management. It also seems that the large fundi maritimi, focused on fishing, where the instrumentum piscatorium or piscaturae acquired an economic (and legal) relevance similar to that attributed to agricultural 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Andreau 1974; Rodríguez Neila 1994: 449. Étienne and Mayet 2001: 94. Cf. Arévalo González and Bernal-Casasola 1999. Cf. Higginbotham 1997: 63. Marcian (Institutes 7), quoted at Dig. 33.7.17.1. Instrumento piscatorio contineri Aristo ait naucellas, quae piscium capiendorum causa comparatae sunt: sed et piscatores contineri verius est: Dig. 33.7.17.1. Dig. 33.7.25.1. Ulpian, quoted at Dig. 33.7.12.1. Sáez Fernández 2001: 1180.

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equipment,69 emerged in this transitional period between the second and third centuries AD. It is therefore not surprising that fishing equipment, especially almadrabas, at this time achieved the legal status of goods (essentially agricultural) governed by private and not by public law, contrary to established custom and to the theoretical consideration of the sea and the coastline as belong to no-one, res nullius. The Digest gives an example, attributed to Ulpian, of this incipient process of ‘privatisation’ of the sea and its resources in the vicinity of a coastal fundus; the case establishes the private stipulations set forth by the owners of two coastal estates, one of whom bars the other from setting an almadraba (piscatio thynnaria excercere). The seller of the Geronian estate made it a condition of sale in favor of the Botrian estate, which he retained, that no piscatio thynnaria be exercised across from the latter. Although a servitude cannot be imposed on the sea by private contract, since by nature it is open to all, nevertheless, because the good faith of the contract requires that the conditions of the sale should be observed, the persons in possession or those succeeding to their rights are bound by the terms of the stipulation or the sale.70

The adjacent Geronian and Botrian fundi, originally the property of a single owner, were located on the coast and had access to the sea. When one of them (the Botrian) was sold, the seller imposed on the buyer a prohibition on tuna fishing from the property, to prevent this activity from damaging the fundus remaining in the seller’s hands (the Geronian). Although, as pointed out by the jurist, a private clause like this could not impose an obligation on the sea, considered to be res communis omnium, the good faith of both parties obliged not only the buyer, but his descendants to respect the clause.71 What must be stressed in this particular case is that the sale affected not only the fundus itself, but also the fishing activities offshore, in correspondence with the evolution of the fishing industry as explained above, and according to which the instrumentum piscatorium would, by this date, have included all the elements (human or otherwise) involved in fishing practices. The apparent contradiction between the acquisition of a fundus instructus and the express prohibition against fishing was resolved by the fact that the clause did not bar fishing in general, but only tuna fishing. This prohibition was laid down in order to reserve the tuna fishing and its commercialisation exclusively for the owner of the Geronian fundus. 5.2 From Roman to Byzantine law The case presented by the Geronian and Botrian fundi can be considered paradigmatic of the early stages of a long process, beginning in the late second and early third centuries, of the ‘privatisation’ of the coastline and nearby waters. This was in opposition to the traditional legal consideration of the shoreline and the sea as res nullius. The legislation on tuna fisheries passed by the Byzantine emperor Leo VI in the early tenth century gave final sanction 69 70 71

Paulus, Opinions 3.6.41. Dig. 8.4.13 pr.; translation: Lytle 2012. Several locations have been proposed for these fundi, including Sicily and Africa, the latter on the basis of the name Botrian, which seems to be related to the city of Botria, in current Tunisia and close to Carthage and Hadrumentum. The fact that this fragment is found in Ulpian’s Libri opinionum seems to point to a provincial context, since such libri opinionum were often used for the instruction of provincial governors.

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to these situations by granting landowners full ownership of the shoreline and the offshore waters. This principle, which broke Roman legal tradition, in fact did nothing but officially endorse an already consolidated economic practice. The fishing legislation enacted by Leo VI (AD 886–912) is recorded in his Novellae, a collection of 113 imperial decrees. Novels 56, 57, 102, 103 and 104 aim to clarify and regulate the legal status of passive fishing installations (traps).72 Novel 56 states that ‘the owner will have exclusive ownership over the shoreline, having the right to prohibit unauthorised fishing on the beaches’. Novel 57 establishes that the minimum distance between neighbouring almadrabas should be 365 Greek paces (= 700 m), or 350 m (182½ paces) on either side. Novel 102 obliges owners who do not possess sufficiently long stretches of shore to set a single communal almadraba, dividing the costs and profits in proportion to their share of the shoreline. Finally, Novel 103 eliminates the proportional division of Novel 102 by imposing an equal one, irrespective of the sizes of the estates involved, because ‘fish are not always in the same place waiting for fishermen, and because the bigger part cannot survive without the smaller’. With this, the fishing device is conceptually detached from the shore off which it stands, a move to be expected when the fishing system functions independently of the beach, as is the case with static or semi-static epokhai or remorae pescatoriae, in contrast to the traditional, beach-based vista y tiro technique. Apparently, this late legislation by Leo VI brushed aside the traditional Roman consideration of the sea as res communis73 by creating a property regime which made the coast and coastal waters a sort of ‘antechamber’ to agricultural property or, from the opposite perspective, which extended land rights into coastal waters. In support of this notion – the increasing subjection of tuna fisheries to private law from at least the third century AD74 – Ephraim Lytle75 has recently pointed out that Leo VI’s legislation cannot be considered a quasi-final privatisation of sea rights so much as an attempt to restrict the damages inflicted by powerful men on public property and resources held in common by imposing conditions on their exploitation.76 Leo VI’s fishing legislation (Novel 104) includes churches, monasteries, charitable institutions and the state as owners of almadrabas. Despite some attempts to renationalise fishing rights, for example under Michael VII (AD 1071–78), the private regime of the seafront and the sea was finally sanctioned during the reign of Nicephorus III Botaneiates (AD 1078–81) who, ‘giving back to God what belonged to God’, reintegrated the full property of skalai and epokhai (landing-stages and almadrabas), once more considered a natural prolongation of their landed properties, to Constantinople’s monasteries. This privatisation of fisheries, therefore, was part of a general trend toward the aristocratic and ecclesiastical appropriation of economic activity during the period of the Byzantine Empire. This resulted in the emergence of a non-corporate economic sector which acted 72 73 74 75 76

Lytle 2012: 33. Dagron 1994: 48. E. g., see García Vargas and Florido del Corral 2010: 216–7. Lytle 2012: 34. As an example that this process had begun much earlier, Lytle (2012: 34) mentions a late fifth-century AD inscription (SEG 48.994.1–4) from the Taman peninsula, on the Cimmerian Bosphorus. The inscription is set on a milestone signalling the limits of the fishing grounds of one Savagos, an important character in the region: see also Vinogradov 1999.

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in parallel to the state. The concentration of property around the oikoi, or ecclesiastical, aristocratic and public foundations,77 included fisheries, real estate, workshops, harbours and commercial fleets.78 These foundations enjoyed a total freedom of action in their facilities and tax privileges. 5.3 Feudalisation of fishing rights in the western Mediterranean Most of the information available for the western and central Mediterranean in the Middle Ages and the modern period comes from two areas made particularly active by the etiology of the reproductive cycle of bluefin tuna: Sicily and the Strait of Gibraltar. In Sicily, the Norman conquest seems to have triggered a massive transfer of property into the hands of the crown.79 After their conquest by Count Roger I in 1071 the hunting and fishing rights and the places where these activities took place (woods, lakes and coasts) were all incorporated into the ruler’s personal property. The right to mount tuna traps (tonnare) was thereby reserved for the king, and tuna fishing could not be practised without his permission.80 As in Byzantium, this spelled an end to free fishing regimes, which had persisted in Sicily throughout the Islamic period when free corporations formed by fishermen and merchants could fund and erect almadrabas.81 In practice, however, tuna fishing in Sicily was conducted by private agents through a policy of concessions. The Norman crown, the nominal owner of the almadrabas, leased them out in exchange for rent, or for a proportion of the catch, and a given number of fish as ecclesiastical tithe. The locations at which tuna could be caught were stipulated with precision, as were the numbers of fishermen and boats that were allowed to take part in the operations. A body of royal supervisors, the exercitores, was established to ensure that the conditions of the concession were met, to collect the taxes and to enforce the ban on unauthorised fishing.82 The earliest concession document for a tonnara in southern Italy is dated to 1090. In the document, Roger I (1031–1101) cedes the use of a tonnaria in territorio Tropea, in a place called Bordella, to the monastery of Monte Cassino.83 Some years later, in 1097, Roger ceded the use of the almadraba or tonnara of Scopello, in Castellamare del Golfo, to the monastery of Santa Maria di Boico. In 1132, Roger II of Sicily (1095–1154) conceded the tonnara of Cefalù (Palermo) to the local bishop, while in 1176 the Benedictine monks of Monreale were granted the tonnara of Fimi in the Isola delle Femmine by William II of Sicily (1166–89).84 Despite the relatively abundant life-long fishing concessions granted between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, the Norman kings tried to maintain the royal rights over tonnare, multiplying temporary concessions and leases. Feudal concession did not become common until the Aragonese period, although even these often amounted to the duration of 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84

Magdalino 1984. Dagron 2002: 427–8. Bresc 1985: 170. La Mantia 1901: 7. Costanza 1999: 32; Consolo et al. 2008: 16. Longo and Clark 2012: 210. La Mantia 1901: 7, n. 2. Cf. Longo and Clark 2012: 211; La Mantia 1901: 7–8.

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Fig. 9.11: Sicily, with sites mentioned in text. (Richard Szydlak). a single life only (ad vitam tantum). On some occasions, these were extended until the death of the first heir, as was the case with the concession for the tonnara de Bonagia, in Trapani,85 for example, which was finally revoked (during the life of the second lessee) and given out to a gabelloto for a rent. By the sixteenth century, the subletting of Sicilian tonnare to rich gabelloti by the local nobility and churches was, in fact, the norm. These gabelloti were short-term lessees of public property, mostly agricultural estates. They entered the Sicilian almadraba industry in the thirteenth century86 and were generally bankers or grain and salted-product merchants from outside the island or local nobles specialising in the commercialisation of the products derived from the activity of the almadrabas, whether they were exploiting them directly or not.87 Ultimately, from 1630 and in order to respond to the pressing financial needs posed by its European wars, the Spanish crown started selling not only the use but the full property

85 86 87

Ravazza 2000: 22; Perugini 2007: 5. Bresc 1986: 272; Longo and Clark 2012: 211. Cf. Costanza 1999: 32–3.

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rights of Sicilian and Sardinian tonnare (almadrabas had started operating in Sardinia in the sixteenth century on the suggestion of Philip II).88 The origins of the modern almadrabas in Andalusia date back to the Christian conquest of the Atlantic shores of southern al-Andalus in the thirteenth century. The process that took place on the Strait of Gibraltar was very similar to the one in Sicily: the fisheries and their produce were incorporated into the crown’s property and a policy of concessions was put into place, although in this region the tendency was to concentrate fisheries in very few hands. The process of feudalisation seems to have begun in 1299, when Alfonso Pérez de Guzmán ‘the Good’ received the Guadiconí almadraba, between the capes of Roche and Trafalgar, from King Ferdinand IV, along with authorisation to establish the settlement which later became Conil. The monopolistic strategy of the Pérez de Guzmán family in relation to the almadrabas paid off as their possessions expanded, from Niebla into the Kingdom of Granada, in the following centuries, thanks to their grant as Dukes of Medina Sidonia. They were not, however, the only nobles to create almadrabas. Other villages and cities under aristocratic control likewise established these systems, and these became a recurrent issue for litigation regarding property rights between aristocratic houses and villages or between two aristocratic houses, in a general environment dominated by the monopolistic pretensions of the Pérez de Guzmán-Medina Sidonia clan;89 the text of their concession included a clause endorsing the monopoly of the new Duchy over the entire coastline between Portugal and Granada, which in practice at that time embraced the whole southern Castilian coast. Feudalisation took very different forms with regards to the Andalusian almadrabas and the Sicilian tonnare. While in Andalusia, the royal concession of large estates to the nobility derived from the house of Medina Sidonia’s monopolistic claims on almadraba fishing, in Sicily the crown, and most especially the Aragonese and later the Spanish kings, often granted fishing rights limited to specific locations; rights which later extended to ancillary rights over beaches90 and nearby waters. On other occasions, Sicilian almadrabas were part of larger estates exploited as a whole, but, in any case, the lessees never tried to impose monopoly rights over tuna fishing. The tonnare in the Egadian Islands (Formica and Favignana), for instance, belonged to an island estate granted to different lessees until its final privatisation in favour of the Genoese Camillo Pallavicini in 1637. The descendants of this creditor of the Spanish crown repopulated and fortified the islands, promoting fishing activities, agriculture (introducing vines into the island of Levanzo) and stock breeding. The islands were sold to Ignazio Florio in 1874, when feudal rights had already been abolished. The castle and some economic rights remained in the hands of the Pallavicini, but the financial demands of almadraba fishing were only within the reach of industrial and commercial agents.91 The repopulation efforts carried out by the Pallavicini on the Egadian Islands were the projection of wider efforts undertaken along the Sicilian coast to compensate for the flight of the population to the interior in the twelfth century. The conditions for this policy were established with the creation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies following the annexation 88 89 90 91

Tore 2000; Longo and Clark 2012. Florido del Corral 2005: 9. Molinari 1912: 7. Longo and Clark 2012: 213.

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of Naples by Alfonso V (1416–58). In order to revitalise the coast, the climate of coastal insecurity created by constant warfare and by the activities of Christian and Barbary pirates was confronted by the fortification of the tonnare, which thenceforth became beacons for the settlement of peasants and fishermen. From the fifteenth century onwards, repopulation policies passed from the hands of the crown into those of the nobility, which by that time had started to enjoy fishing rights under feudal regimes. This in effect involved the feudalisation of the almadrabas – mostly fish traps – and other coastal resources necessary for their full exploitation (timber, salt, textile plants, working animals, cork and the services of the local population), reinforcing the repopulation policy. In the kingdom of Castile, the Atlantic almadrabas – vista y tiro in this case – played a similar role after the conquest of the coastal regions of the Strait of Gibraltar. In a social and political frontier zone – reflected in the toponym ‘de la Frontera’ common to several towns in the province of Cádiz – the lords received lands, settlers and resources, including the right to exploit almadrabas and other associated resources (salt, timber). In exchange, these nobles committed themselves to defending the frontier between Castile and the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada. In this case, therefore, the need to resettle the land also resulted in the effective feudalisation of the territory, after a very brief spell during which some almadrabas had been managed by military orders. In conclusion, in both Andalusia and Sicily the ability of certain families to appropriate fisheries led to the creation of permanent settlements which became economic points of attraction in their respective spheres of influence. These population nuclei survived the privatisation of the almadrabas in Sicily and the renationalisation of fishing rights by the Spanish state in the eighteenth century. This renationalisation process went alongside public debates dominated by productivist ideas and the ‘national’ consideration of coasts, seas and fishing resources.92

6. The almadraba as a cultural system: the peculiarities of the social sphere of the almadraba The natural landscape of the tuna migration, transformed by human action, developed into a socio-cultural landscape characteristic of certain Atlantic and Mediterranean coastal regions. As observed by Sáñez Reguart in the late eighteenth century: ‘this is one of the most ingenious and interesting fisheries, never seen before, capable of demonstrating the level which our fishing industry has reached, basing itself on practical experience’.93 Due to its epic characteristics and the prestigious nature of the product it provided, since antiquity almadraba fishing has been regarded in the same admiring terms as those expressed by Sáñez Reguart, although never quite free from moral ambiguity. Ancient sources are rich in references to the ‘marvellous wisdom’ of the watchman,94 or to the strength of the fishermen,95 or to the gory drama of the slaughter.96 As mentioned at the beginning, tuna fishing was often compared to the assault on a besieged city, and metaphors 92 93 94 95 96

Florido del Corral and Menanteau 2006. Sáñez Reguart 1791–1795: 1.11. Aelian, NA 15.5. Oppian, On Fishing 3.620–5. Philostratus, Imagines 1.13.10.

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comparing the trapped fish with a vanquished army or an enslaved population are frequent. The fact that the produce consisted of luxury goods, however, raised doubts among moralists, who compared the fermentation process involved in the production of garum to the physical decadence resulting from a diet based on luxury foodstuffs.97 In general, the ancient mentality saw the sea as a hostile environment for human life.98 Only the most fortunate could enter it, with divine help; according to Aelian,99 the fishermen asked Poseidon to keep at bay the beast that broke the nets and chased away the fish. The ‘beast’100 is a metaphor for the sea as a wild realm, which, alongside the overwhelming solitude of the coast,101 makes the capture of large fish a task for heroes and the fish a delicacy fit only for men of quality.102 Not in vain, during antiquity men with aspirations to glory aimed to be represented imposing their might over the sea.103 Fishermen working specifically with almadrabas and in general with all kind of trap nets have traditionally been, at least from the Hellenistic age, a superior class; a relatively well-off group within fishing communities. This, obviously, only applies to specialists, such as the characters listed in the inscription from Parium. In this inscription, the captain of the almadraba, in modern terms the arraéz, was also the lessee and guarantor of the lease contract. The Hellenistic inscription from Cyzicus subsumes the remaining specialists under the generic term metoikoi. This inscription includes a mysterious category, the epagogoi; perhaps these were the men in charge of hauling the end ropes onto the beach.104 The inscription from Parium indicates, however, that the possessor of the means of production could also be the owner of the fishing rights while participating actively – carrying out specialist tasks – in the fishing operation. The remaining specialists were often related to him by kin or dependency ties. The second of the Letters of fishermen by Alciphron presents one of these subordinate workers called Hermon, a slave who, tired of the abusive conditions imposed by his patron, the captain (despotes) of a fishing boat, decides to escape from Athens to Rhodes, where he survives by working as a labourer for other fishermen.105 The presence of a significant number of fishermen hired for a daily wage can be inferred from Alciphron’s fifth letter in which one Naubates complains to another ‘entrepreneur’ whom he accuses of paying higher wages and thus depriving him of the labour which he needs.106 These miserable day-labourers must have included Theris, the fisherman who, according to the funerary epigram composed by Leonidas of Tarentum (third century BC),107 was a poor sagena fisherman who died in his miserable hut and whose funeral had to be paid by the thiasos (the cult association of which he was member). Although sagēnē is normally used to refer to beach seines, drag nets used from boats – such as the type used in the miraculous fishing in the Sea of Galilee – can be included in the same category. Thus, the Theris described 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

Seneca, Letters 95.25. Cf. Columella, On Agriculture 8.16.1.3. Aelian, NA 15.6. Cf. Pliny, NH 9.92–3. Tacitus, Annals 6.1: saxa et solitudo maris. Macrobius, Saturnalia 3.16.3: paucorum hominum. Suetonius, Caligula 46; Claudius 17. Robert 1950: 94. Alciphron, Letters 1.2. Alciphron, Letters 1.5. Anth. Pal. 4.295.

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in the epigram, whom Leonidas refers to as a ‘fisherman of rich nets’, was not necessarily employed as a day labourer in the almadraba, although these individuals probably shared his miserable conditions. During the Middle Ages and the early modern period the almadraba on the Iberian Peninsula was a social sector in itself – the republica xaveguera referred to by Santibáñez in the sixteenth century108 – reproducing the pyramid of social, political and economic relations typical of the ancien régime. Nonetheless, the almadraba was still capable of capturing the imagination of the most enlightened members of society, such as Cervantes,109 for whom the almadrabas on the southern coast formed first and foremost a territory of ‘freedoms’ where the rigid norms of class society were temporarily suspended – although this is a misconstruction which ignores the quasi-military methods used to organise the labour – and where social interaction was given a free rein: with gambling, joking, fighting, singing and dancing, and all done between equals. This romanticised notion of the almadrabas is reflected in the reports of Santibáñez, according to whom the most unruly sons of the principal families often felt the attraction of this universe with its prostitutes, gambling and brawls. As a result of the recurrent description of almadraba fishermen and their families as nearly naked men and women who lived on the beach, tanned by the sun, the air and the salt, they were stereotypically represented as beings at the limit of civilisation. In fact, during the sixteenth century several missionary expeditions were sent for their religious redemption.110 The fact that during this period criminals were made to work in the Duke’s almadrabas only served to confirm this cliché, which went hand in hand with the heroic nature of the activity, the harsh living conditions and the social subordination. In addition, we must not forget that many of the operations carried out in the almadraba, regardless of its specific type, were highly specialised, so the migration of fishermen along the coast was frequent. Indeed, this was an almost exclusively coastal world, with unique lifestyles, gastronomy and even dialects. The almadraba harbours had more cultural affinity with one another than any of them had with their respective hinterlands.111 For long periods, war and piracy limited almadraba fishing to the most-guarded and better-defended harbours and beaches. This reinforced the concentration of the almadraba population and prevented the spread of fishermen along the coast and, in consequence, the development of autarchic economic practices. Additionally, the need for a commercial outlet kept almadraba regions permanently in contact with business centres which were not only their main markets but also the base of the necessary capitalist partners. As a matter of fact, from an economic point of view almadraba fishing has traditionally presented a strange mix between highly advanced commercial capitalist elements and traditional social customs, in which the economy is not based on the abstract relations of the impersonal market but on networks of personal relationship, the pyramidal distribution of toil and profit and a complex and secular web of obligations, duties and benefits. These networks determined the relationships between fishermen and captains, captains and shipowners, and shipowners and the political power to which, ultimately, fishing rights belonged.

108 109 110 111

Santibáñez, 1635, quoted in Solé 1965: 73–4. Cervantes 1613. Solé 1965. Bresc 1985: 173.

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The internal organisation of the almadraba with regard to its operation and reproduction also rested on a fine balance of personal loyalties and asymmetrical reciprocities.112 To begin with, in the Middle Ages, during the ‘Reconquista’, the concession of rights was considered an act of generosity on the part of the crown, in exchange for the lessee’s commitment to repopulate the territory and defend it from enemy attacks and pirate incursions. The paramilitary organisation of Andalusian almadrabas is reflected in the privilege to recruit personnel in a military fashion (by public announcement and at the beat of the drum) granted to the Dukes of Medina Sidonia, while in Sicily, the sale of the Egadian Islands and the tonnare of Favignana and Formica to Pallavicino in 1637 included the nomination of the buyer as governor, a position which was thereafter to pass to his heirs and habenti ius et causam.113 The legal and judicial peculiarities of almadraba ‘territories’, such as the ‘freedom from justice’ granted to all manner of miscreants and wanted people during the fishing season, have already been mentioned.114 In this regard, we must remember the economic ‘solidarity’ of all possessions within the manorial dominion since, at least in Andalusia, all the supplies required for the fishery (timber for the boats, flax and esparto for the nets, wheat and wine for the fishermen) and the commercialisation of the catch (salt for preserves, barrels for storage, carts and oxen for transport) were obtained through feudal obligations, dues and privileges. The intermediate position of the almadraba between archaic and modern models of economic organisation is once more demonstrated by the possibilities of economic participation and by the means of payment used for the salaries of personnel. The economy of the almadraba has traditionally been strongly monetarised as a consequence of the seasonal character of the activity and by the need to source specialists and non-qualified personnel externally. Indeed, tuna is a motif on the earliest small-denomination coins issued by Phoenician cities in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean in the third century BC. It has been argued that the motif, which could also be symbolically connected with specific divinities, along with the small value of the coins (struck in bronze) suggest that these coins were used for the small payments due to fishermen and workers in preserve factories.115 In medieval Sicily, the value of the elements contributed by each specialist (nets, anchors, boats) was estimated for the calculation of the portion (carati) which each fisherman had to pay of the annual rent (gabella) due to the nominal owner of the fishing rights. The contribution in fish expected from each fisherman was also considered in all calculations. In general, the captain and/or gabellotto (main lessee) bought these portions in advance, assuming – along with the merchants paying him up front for quantities of fish – the losses if the expected catch did not materialise. These sophisticated calculations, including the assumption of financial risk, are characteristic of a developed commercial economy, and explain, along with the variability of the catches from year to year, the need for considerable financial backup in setting up an almadraba; and they coexisted with traditional redistribution mechanisms only found in hierarchical, non-monetised economic systems. These systems were based on the social con112 113 114 115

Florido del Corral 2006: 197. La Mantia 1901: 8. Bresc 1986: 268. Chavez Tristán and García Vargas 1991.

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trol and moral authority exercised by the arráez or fishing captain (rais), rather than on any form of formal prerogative. Indeed, after the industrialisation of the almadraba and the superceeding of these ties of mutual interdependence, the most common complaint of almadraba workers was that access to complementary forms of payment which had traditionally supplemented their precarious income had been barred. These informal means of payment included the distribution of bycatches (‘small fish’), and the (authorised) appropriation of tuna. The category of ‘small fish’ includes several species of good size, but of lesser industrial and commercial value than bluefin tuna, such as bonito (Sarda sarda), bullet tuna (Auxis rochei), albacore (Thunnus alalunga) or mackerel (Scomber scombrus). The distribution of these fish, following a hierarchical allocation system, was the norm. It was also frequent for almadraba captains to authorise fishermen to take a few tuna from the factory or during transportation. Obviously, this did not put the economic viability of the almadraba in jeopardy (the cost would come out of the rais’ personal profit) and was considered a form of compensation – if not strictly legal, at least fair – in exchange for the loyalty and submission of fishermen (and their families). Therefore, it was the arráez himself who personally decided where to draw the line regarding this practice. The introduction of almadrabas de buche on Andalusian coasts from the eighteenth century was equally confrontational, because their reduced labour requirements in comparison with traditional almadrabas de vista y tiro threatened to eliminate a seasonal source of income for hundreds of day-labourers who came to the fisheries from inland settlements during the season. Although some isolated (and unsuccessful) attempts were made to introduce the almadraba de buche to the Strait of Gibraltar in the seventeenth century116 and again in the early decades of the eighteenth,117 the general replacement of active techniques (vista y tiro) with passive ones (buche) did not occur in this region until 1743. In the eastern Mediterranean and Sicily, on the other hand, fixed almadrabas had been the norm since the Middle Ages. The trigger for this drastic transformation was a royal order by Charles III confirming the always controversial fishing monopoly of the house of Medina Sidonia; the order granted the family further fiscal privileges regarding almadraba fishing118 in exchange for improving the efficiency of fishing techniques by substituting old beach seines with new, Sicilian-style fixed structures. In principle, this considerably reduced personnel expenses, because the almadraba de buche can function with one-quarter of the crew needed to operate an almadraba de vista y tiro. The introduction of the new technique caused popular riots in Conil in 1746, because fishermen were concerned for their future. Due to popular pressure, the old system was maintained in Conil until the nineteenth century: in 1807 two almadrabas were assembled in this town, one de vista and the other de buche.119 The effort to increase production in Andalusian almadrabas was also complemented by the creation of new tuna-trap fisheries on the coasts of Huelva and Cádiz from the 1790s. The creation of brand-new facilities for the production of preserves in areas where there had not been any previously involved a considerable financial investment, which more than 116 117 118 119

Florido del Corral 2003. In 1727: García García 2012: 80. Florido del Corral 2005: 52. Florido del Corral 2005: 54.

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absorbed the additional profits derived from the lower labour costs. In fact, at this stage it was common for the dukes to lease out the fishing rights to Catalonian or Valencian ship owners and not to be as closely involved as previously in the actual fishing operation. The dukes even considered giving up their monopolistic rights, which they lost for good after the abolition of manorial rights in 1817.120 In Sicily and Portugal, the lease system imposed a very different approach, associated with a wide and diverse range of economic agents for the exploitation of the almadraba. Specific forms of association changed from season to season. In Portugal, the crown established a centralised system for the management of tuna fishing in almadrabas and for the fish which the lessees had to supply as part of their rent. In 1502 Manuel I (1495–1521) created the Feitoria das Almadravas, directed by a feitor who controlled all aspects of the transport and sale of the king’s tuna.121 In Sicily, merchants, especially the Genoese, participated alongside the local nobility in gabelloti companies, establishing shares (carati) for the payment of the rents due to the crown, the nobles or the church. Their efforts rarely produced a profit, and it is common to see the same few names repeated as main lessees and, even more frequently, the solidary assumption of losses by all actors, including raisis and capolavori, who participated with capital or, more often, with fishing tackle. In contrast to Andalusia, where the long-term financial and ‘entrepreneurial’ involvement of the dukes guaranteed profit – the only way to ensure gain from an almadraba is to maintain the investment for a long period of time – in Sicily, hopes rested on a stroke of luck, because one good year would compensate for the losses and debts incurred by the entrepreneurs bad year after bad year.122 The view expressed by the modern Andalusian arráez – that the almadraba survives thanks to its prestige – can be applied to the economic dimension of the Sicilian almadrabas up to Italian Unification. Of course, economic profit is a main motivating factor for the promoters of the almadrabas, yet this profit cannot be measured in money only, but also to a degree in terms of social, political and symbolic capital.123 This was also the case after the acquisition of the Egadian Islands and the almadrabas of Favignana and Formica by Ignazio Florio in 1874, but the imposition of economistic notions by the nineteenth century liberal-bourgeois state fundamentally altered the traditional relational framework within the microcosm of the fisheries. Populations and fish shoals were now subject to productivist stress that triggered the swan-song of Mediterranan almadrabas, accelerating, if not downright causing, the disappearance of the sector as an economically significant industry, due to the impossibility of adapting its delicate socio-cultural balances to the rational logic of the market. Despite its apparent financial modernity and the dynamism of the entrepreneurs involved, the operation of the almadraba always followed very archaic models and adopted symbolic meanings connected to fame, prestige and gift exchange. Enrique Garcia Vargas Departamento de Prehistoria y Arqueología,Universidad de Sevilla Calle San Fernando, 4, E-41004 Sevilla [email protected] 120 121 122 123

Florido del Corral 2006: 18. Franco 1946: 13. Doneddu 1983: 560. Florido del Corral 2006: 3.

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7. References 7.1 Primary sources Alciphron, Aelian, and Philostratus: The Letters, with an English translation by A. R. Benner and F. H. Fobes (LCL 383). Cambridge MA 1949. Anthologia Palatina, in The Greek Anthology I, with an English translation by W. R. Paton, revised by M. A. Tueller (LCL 57). Cambridge MA 2014. Columella, On Agriculture 2: Books 5–9, with an English translation by E. S. Forster and E. H. Heffner (LCL 407). Cambridge MA 1954. Ibn Hauqal, Kitab Surat al-Ard, Configuration de la Terre, edited by J. H. Kramers and G. Wiet. Beirut 1964. Leo VI, Novels, in Les Novelles de Leon VI le Sage, edited by P. Noailles and A. Dain. Paris 1944. Macrobius, Saturnalia 2: Books 3–5, with an English translation by R. A. Kaster (LCL 511). Cambridge MA 2011. The Opinions of Paulus in The Civil Law 1, translated by S. P. Scott. Cincinnati 1932. Philostratus, Imagines, in Philostratus the Elder, Imagines, Philostratus the Younger, Imagines, Callistratus, Descriptions, with an English translation by A. Fairbanks (LCL 256). Cambridge MA 1931. Ps.-Aristotle, On Marvellous Things Heard, in Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation 2, edited by J. Barnes. Oxford 1984. Seneca, Epistles (Letters) 3: Epistles 93–124, with an English translation by R. M. Gummere (LCL 77). Cambridge MA 1925. Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars 1–2, with an English translation by J. C. Rolfe (LCL 31, 38). Cambridge MA 1914. Tacitus 4: Annals 4–6, 11–12, with an English translation by J. Jackson (LCL 312). Cambridge MA 1937. Theophilus Protospatharius, De corporis humani fabrica libri V, edited by G. A. Greenhill. Oxford 1842.

7.2 Secondary literature Álvarez de Toledo, M. L. (2007): Las almadrabas de los Guzmanes. Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Alves, F. J. S., J. M. Dias and M. J. Almeida et al. 1988–9. ‘A armadilha de pesca da época romana descoberta na Praia de Silvade (Espinho)’, O Arqueólogo Português 4.6/7, 187–226. Andreau, J. 1974. Les affaires de Monsieur Jucundus (Publications de l’École française de Rome 19). Rome. Arévalo González, A. and D. Bernal-Casasola 1999. ‘La factoría de salazones de Belo Claudia (Tarifa, Cádiz). Balance historiográfico y novedades en la investigación’, Cuadernos de Prehistoria y Arqueología de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid 25.2, 75–130. Bresc, H. 1985. ‘La pêche et les madragues dans la Sicile médiévale’ in M. Galley and L. Ladjimi Sebai (eds), L’homme méditerranéen et la mer. Actes du Troisième Congrès international d’étude des cultures de la Méditerranée Occidentale Jerba, avril 1981. Tunis, 166–80. Bresc, H. 1986. Un monde méditerranéen, Economie et société en Sicile, 1300–1450 (2 vols) (Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 262). Rome. Cervantes, M. de 1613. La ilustre fregona. Madrid. Chaves Tristán, F. and E. García Vargas 1991. ‘Reflexiones en torno al área comercial de Gades: estudio numismático y económico’ in J. M. Blázquez and S. Montero (eds), Alimenta: Estudios en Homenaje al Dr. Michel Ponsich (Gerión suppl. 3). Madrid, 139–68. Chic García, G. (ed.) 2006. Economía de prestigio vs economía de mercado. Seville. Compán Vázquez, D. 1988. ‘La pesca marítima en Andalucía’ in G. Cano Garcia (ed.), Geografía de Andalucía. Seville, 201–315.

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Consolo, V., R. Lintini, F. Terranova et al. 2008. La Pesca del Tonno in Sicilia. Palermo. Costanza, S. 1999. ‘Gli Uomini, il lavoro, l’economia’ in N. Ravazza (ed.), La Terra delle tonnare: Atti del Convegno di San Vito Lo Capo. 3/5 settembre 1999. Trapani, 32–40. Cutting, C. L. 1955. Fish Saving. A history of Fish Processing from Ancient to Modern Times. London. Dagron, G. 1994. ‘Lawful society and legitimate power: Ἔννομος πολιτεία, ἔννομος ἀρχή’ in A. E. Laiou and D. Simon (eds), Law and Society in Byzantium: Ninth-Twelfth Centuries. Washington DC, 27–51. Dagron, G. 1995. ‘Poissons, Pêcheurs et poissoniers de Constantinople’ in C. Mango and G. Dagron (eds), Constantinople and its Hinterland. Papers from the 27th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Oxford, April 1993. Aldershot, 57–73. Dagron, G. 2002. ‘The urban economy. Seventh-twelfth centuries’ in A. E. Laiou (ed.), The Economic History of Byzantium: From the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection 39). Washington DC, 393–461. Devedjian, K. 1926. Pêche et pêcheurs en Turquie. Istanbul. Di Natale, A. 2010. ‘The eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna: entangled in a big mess, possibly far from a conservation red alert. Some comments after the proposal to include bluefin tuna in CITES appendix I’, Collective Volume of Scientific Papers ICCAT 65.3, 1004–43. Di Natale, A. 2012. ‘Literature on the eastern Alantic and Mediterranean tuna trap fishery’, Collective Volume of Scientific Papers ICCAT 67.1, 175–220. Doneddu, G. 1983. ‘Le tonnare in Sardegna 1500–1800’, Società e Storia 21, 535–64. Dumont, J. 1976–7. ‘La pêche du thon a Byzance a l’époque hellenistique’, Revue des Études Anciennes 78–9, 96–119. Étienne, R. and F. Mayet 2001. ‘Les élites marchandes de la peninsule Ibérique’ in M. Navarro and S. Demouguin (eds), Élites hispaniques. Bordeaux, 90–9. Fernández Nieto, F. J. 2006. ‘Titularidad y cesión de los derechos de la pesca marítima en la antigua Grecia’ in H.-A. Rupprecht (ed.), Symposion 2003: Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte. Rauischholzhausen, 30. September–3. Oktober 2003 (Akten der Gesellschaft für griechische und hellenistische Rechtsgeschichte 17). Vienna, 207–32. Florido del Corral, D. 2003. ‘Hacia una Patrimonialización de la Pesca en Andalucía’, PH: Boletín del Instituto Andaluz del Patrimonio Histórico 11.44, 30–6. Florido del Corral, D. 2005. Evolución histórica y cultural de las almadrabas en el litoral atlántico meridional, Siglos XVI–XX. Girona. Florido del Corral. D. 2006. ‘Las almadrabas andaluzas, entre el prestigio y el mercado’ in G. Chic García (ed.), Economía de prestigio vs economía de mercado. Seville, 193–214. Florido del Corral, D. and L. Menanteau 2006.. ‘Geohistoria de las Almadrabas del golfo ibero-marrroquí (siglos XVI–XXI)’ in D. Ruiz Mata (ed.), Historia de la Pesca en el Ámbito del Estrecho 2. Seville, 861–925. Franco, M. L. 1946. A pesca do atum na costa do Algarve: achegas para a sua historia. Lisbon. García García, F. 2012. ‘Las almadrabas de la costa andaluza bajo el dominio de la casa ducal de Medina Sidonia. Su tipología, sus producciones y sus problemáticas’, Collective Volume of Scientific Papers ICCAT 67.1, 75–87. García Vargas, E. 2001. ‘Pesca, sal y salazones en las ciudades fenicio-púnicas del sur de Iberia’ in J. Fernández and B. Costa (eds), De la Mar y de la Tierra: Producciones y productos fenicio-púnicos (Treballs del Museu Arqueologic D’Evissa y Formentera 47). Ibiza, 9–66. García Vargas, E. and D. Florido del Corral 2010. ‘The origin and development of tuna fishing nets (almadrabas)’ in T. Bekker-Nielsen and D. Bernal-Casasola (eds), Ancient Nets and Fishing Gear: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Nets and Fishing Gear in Classical Antiquity: A First Approach (Monographs of the Sagena Project 2). Cádiz, 205–27. García Vargas, E. and D. Florido del Corral 2011. ‘Tipos, origen y desarrollo histórico de las almadrabas antiguas: Desde época romana al Imperio Bizantino’ in D. Bernal-Casasola (ed.), Pes-

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car con Arte: Fenicios y romanos en el origen de los aparejos andaluces. Catálogo de la exposición ‘Baelo Claudia’, diciembre 2011 – julio 2012 (Monographs of the Sagena Project 3). Cádiz, 231–51. García Vargas, E. and A. Muñoz Vicente 2003. ‘Reconocer la cultura pesquera de la Antigüedad en Andalucía’, PH. Boletín del Instituto Andaluz del Patrimonio Histórico 44, 43–53. Guest-Papamanoli, A. 1985. ‘Une pêche au guet: Le “Taliani”, origin, évolution et distribution géographique’ in L’explotation de la mer de l’antiquite à nos jours, Vèmes Rencontres Internationales d’Archéologie et d’Histoire, d’antibes, Octobre 1984. Juan-les-Pins, 185–203. Higginbotham, J. 1997. Piscinae: Artifical Fishponds in Roman Italy. Chapel Hill. La Mantia, V. 1901. Le tonnare in Sicilia. Palermo. Lentini, R. 2008. ‘Quando i tonni avevano le bertole’ in V. Consolo (ed.), La pesca del tonno in Sicilia. Palermo, 29–54. Longo, S. B. 2010. ‘Mediterranean rift: socio-ecological transformations in the Sicilian bluefin tuna fishery’, Critical Sociology 38.3, 417–36. Longo, S. B. and Clark, B. 2012. ‘The commodification of bluefin tuna: the historical transformation of the Mediterranean fishery’, Journal of Agrarian Change 12.2–3, 204–26. Lopes, J. B. 1841. Corographia ou memoria economica, estadistica e topografica do reino do Algarve. Lisbon. Luzón Nogué, J. M. 1988. ‘Los hippoi gaditanos’ in I Congreso Internacional sobre el Estrecho de Gibraltar, Ceuta 1987 1. Madrid, 445–58. Lytle, E. 2006. Marine Fisheries and the Ancient Greek Economy. PhD thesis. Duke University. Lytle, E. 2012. Ἡ θάλασσα κοινή: fishermen, the sea and the limits of ancient Greek regulatory reach’, Classical Antiquity 31, 1–55. Magdalino, P. 1984. ‘The Byzantine aristocratic oikos’ in M. Angold (ed.), The Byzantine Aristocracy, IX–XIII Centuries (BAR International Series 221). Oxford, 92–111. Mastromarco, G. 1998. ‘La pesca del tonno nella Grecia antica: dalla realtà quotidiana alla metafora poetica’, Rivista di Cultura Classica e Medioevale 40.1–2, 229–36. Mederos, A. and G. Escribano 1999. ‘Pesquerías gaditanas en el litoral atlántico norteafricano’, Rivista di Studi Fenici 27.1, 93–113. Molinari, C. 1912. Indole e natura giuridica del diritto d’impianto di tonnara specialmente in riguardo alle tonnare di Sicilia. Cità di Castello. Pérez de Mesa, D. 1595. Primera y segunda parte de las cosas memorables de España. Alcalá de Henares. Perugini, V. 2007. ‘Per una storia inedita della tonnara di Bonagia, I’, Valderice 2007, 3–19. Ravazza, N. 2000. L’ultima muciara: storia della tonnara di Bonagia. Trapani. Regueira, J. and E. Regueira 1993. Túnidos y tunantes en las almadrabas de las costas gaditanas (Colección El Castillo de Jimena 5). Algeciras. Robert, L. 1950. ‘Pêcheurs de Parion’, Hellenica 9, 81–97. Rodríguez Neila, J. F. 1994. ‘El epígrafe CIL, II, 2242 – Córdoba – y las locationes de propiedades públicas municipales’ in C. González Román (ed.), La sociedad de la Bética. Contribuciones para su estudio. Granada, 425–60. Rodríguez Roda, J. 1979. ‘La almadraba de Barbate’, Periplo, revista del Instituto de la Caza Fotográfica y Ciencias de la Naturaleza 4.23, 11–23. Sáez Fernández, P. 2001. ‘La Elaboración de los envases anfóricos como instrumentum fundi’ in Congreso Internacional Ex Baeticae Amphorae. Conservas, aceite y vino de la Bética en el Imperio Romano, Écija-Sevilla 17–20 de diciembre de 1998. Écija, 1171–81. Sáñez Reguart, A. 1791–5. Diccionario histórico de las artes de la pesca nacional. Madrid. Santibáñez, J. 1635. Historia de la provincia de Andalucía de la Compañía de Jesús. Granada. Santos García, A. forthcoming. ‘Historia social y conformación de las culturas del trabajo y organización empresarial entre los siglos XVIII y XIX’ in D. Florido del Corral (ed.), Las almadrabas suratlánticas: valores etnológicos y posibilidades de patrimonialización. Seville. Solé, P. A. 1965. Los pícaros de Conil y Zahara: estudio histórico sobre los jesuitas y las almadrabas del Duque de Medina Sidonia en la segunda mitad del siglo XVI. Cádiz.

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Ancient harvesting of marine resources from the Black Sea

1. Introduction The Black Sea extends further east than any of the other inland seas. From the Strait of Gibraltar, the sailing distance to Poti in the Georgian Republic, 42˚ east of the Greenwich meridian, is 2,376 nautical miles (4,400 km). In geographical terms, the Black Sea is an extension of the Mediterranean, to which it is linked by the Thracian Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles, and which provides its only outlet to the world’s oceans. Since most of the present marine species in the Black Sea have arrived via this route, the marine fauna also represents an extension of that found in the Mediterranean. Thus the Black Sea in many ways resembles the Mediterranean, while in other respects it is very different from the Great Sea. From a historian’s point of view, the most striking characteristic of the Black Sea is its short history. The environmental history of the Mediterranean as we know it, i. e. as a contiguous body of salt water, goes back to the end of the Messinian Crisis c. 5,300,000 years before the present,1 whereas the Black Sea as we know it evolved within the last 10,000 years BP. While the controversial theory of a catastrophic irruption of seawater through the Bosphorus – the ‘Noah’s Flood’ hypothesis popularised by the work of Ryan and Pitman in the 1990s2 – has now been abandoned, most scholars agree that at the centre of the present Black Sea basin once lay a smaller sheet of water, a freshwater lake or a brackish body of water with a salinity much lower than the present Black Sea,3 and that water level and salinity increased due to inflow of Mediterranean waters. From a baseline figure between 0 and 0.7 %, surface salinity of the Black Sea gradually increased, 4 reaching 1.4 % by the Roman period and eventually stabilising at c. 1.7 %. Then, as now, there was a marked difference between the salinity of the lower water levels that form the bulk of the Black Sea’s water mass and the upper stratum. Since salinity is an important parameter for faunal composition and adaptation in marine environments, a more precise understanding of the Black Sea’s evolving salinity over time would also help researchers understand changes in species composition of fish stocks and in the marine resources available to coastal populations. Climatic history also promises important future insights into the history of Black Sea fishing. In the historical sources, there are some scattered references to periods of bad weather, drought or poor harvests. In the AD 530s a sequence of unusually cold summers 1 2 3 4

Lofi et al. 2011. Ryan and Pitman 1998. Lericolais et al. 2011: 36, 47. Yanko-Hombach et al. 2014, 111.

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Fig. 10.1: The Black Sea, with sites mentioned in the text. (Richard Szydlak). was registered at Constantinople5 and during the abortive Arab siege of the city in AD 717/8, we are told that many of the attackers froze or starved to death during the exceptionally cold winter.6 This information can be correlated with more systematic data from other regions, the nearest being Egypt, where we are well informed about annual fluctuations thanks to the records from the Nilometers at Alexandria and Cairo.7 These fluctuations in turn appear to be linked to intercontinental climatic variations that would equally affect the Black Sea basin. Cores taken from the Greenland ice cap provide comparable information on an even wider scale,8 but their potential for writing the environmental history of the Black Sea has yet to be fully exploited and some minor differences in the dating sequences resolved. This paper aims to provide an overview of the present state of our knowledge of marine resources and marine harvesting, the sources upon which this is based and the implications for the ecohistory of the Black Sea from the sixth century BC to the ninth century AD. 5 6 7 8

Procopius, History of the Wars 4 (The Vandalic War) 14. Theophanes Confessor, Chronicle for the year 6209 = AD 717/8. Borchardt 1906; Toussoun 1925; Jarvis 1936; Wang 1999. Dahl-Jensen et al. 1998; Vinther et al. 2010.

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Fig. 10.2: The Crimea and the Sea of Azov, with sites mentioned in the text. (Richard Szydlak).

2. The literary sources In the epic tale of Jason’s voyage to Colchis in search of the golden fleece, the Black Sea is represented as a strange, stormy and mysterious region at the margin of the civilised oikoumene. In the seventh and sixth centuries BC, colonists from the Aegean world – primarily from Miletus on the western coast of Asia Minor – established Greek-speaking city communities along the Black Sea, and, with the passage of time, Greek traders, navigators and geographers became familiar with the sea, its coasts and currents. They named it the Pontos Euxeinos (literally, the ‘sea that is kind to strangers’), a euphemistic inversion of its older epithet Axeinos (‘unfriendly to strangers’), probably derived from a Persian word signifying ‘dark’ or ‘foggy’ (as in the modern ‘black’). Presumably the intention was to propitiate the sea by giving it a name with positive connotations (just as, much later, ‘Cabo de Todos los Tormentos’ was renamed the ‘Cape of Good Hope’). From scattered references in Classical Greek literature, it is known that commercial fishing played a part in the Pontic economy from the fifth century BC, if not earlier,9 and that significant quantities of fish products were exported from the region to Athens and other markets in the Aegean. In a fragment of an Attic comedy dated shortly after 440 BC, salt fish

9

Wilkins 2005, with further references.

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(tarichos) and mackerel (skombros) are named among the commodities that come to Athens via the Hellespont.10 A century later, a courtroom speech written by Demosthenes deals with the loss of a ship’s cargo in the northern Black Sea. When it foundered, the ship was allegedly coasting along the southern Crimea to Theodosia (modern Feodosia) on the first leg of its return journey to Athens from the important Black Sea emporium at Panticapaeum (modern Kerč) on the Cimmerian Bosphorus. According to the defendant, Lacritus, the ship’s cargo included ‘salt fish and wine from Cos’ and in the deposition given by a crew member, one Hippias from Halicarnassus, the lost cargo was stated to have included ‘twelve or eleven jars of salt fish’.11 The maritime trade between the Aegean and the Black Sea was important to both regions and encompassed a wide range of commodities that included wine, oil and grain – the staple goods of classical antiquity.12 By the fifth century, the growing city of Athens was no longer able to feed its population from the harvests within its territory and depended on the importation of grain, primarily wheat and barley, by sea to its port at the Piraeus, whence a fortified corridor, the ‘long walls’, led to the city itself. But the Black Sea trade was dangerous: traders might at any moment run into fogs, storms or pirates. In a recently discovered epigram of the third century BC, the poet Posidippus laments the death of his friend who was drowned on a voyage to the Black Sea and warns his readers: ‘do not be eager to sail the Euxine’.13 Grain and fish were exported on a large scale by the Greek colonies on the northern Black Sea coast and in the Crimea. While the Greek colonies on the southern coast could produce wine and oil for their own consumption and for export, the colonies on the northern shore relied on the maritime trade for their supply of olive oil and high-quality wine. Olives would not grow on the northern Black Sea coast and while wine – then as today – was produced in the Crimea, it was not up to the standard of Aegean wine, a point that is clearly made by Demosthenes. The early evidence for fish processing and fish trade in the Black Sea needs to be seen within the context of this flow of commodities between the south and north. Fishing and fish exports were important to the Greek settlements on the northern coast not only in basic economic terms, but because they enabled the local elites to obtain in return those ingredients of civilised Hellenic life that could not be produced locally. Maintaining trade flows was crucial to the social stability and cultural identity of the Pontic cities. A shortage of grain in the market reflected badly on the urban political class in general and specifically on the agoranomos, the official in charge of markets and food supply.14 If he failed to remedy the situation, violence and riots might result. At another level, wine and oil, associated with Greek institutions such as the symposion and the gymnasion, respectively, were cultural markers: they were visible evidence of ‘Greekness’ or ‘acting in a Greek fashion’ (hellenizein), desirable behaviour that distinguished a person from the non-urban or lower-class population. The importance of the import-export cycle is reflected in the attempts 10 11 12 13 14

Hermippus fr. 63, Poetae Comici Graeci. Demosthenes, Orations 35.33 Mehl 1987; Demir 2007. Posidippus 14.2; Williams 2006: 116–7. Quass 1993: 244–6, 250–2.

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of civic authorities to protect and regulate the maritime staple trade and in the prominent location of the fish-processing establishments in relation to the cities, often within the city itself where the plant could be defended more easily against raiders from the steppes. In the seventh book of his Geography (early first century AD), Strabo describes fishing for pelamys (either young bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) or bonito (Sarda sarda)) on the southern coast of the Black Sea: Now these fish are hatched in the marshes of Lake Maeotis [the Sea of Azov], and when they have gained a little strength they rush out through the mouth of the lake in schools and move along the Asian shore as far as Trapezous [Trabzon] and Pharnacia. It is here that the catching of the fish first takes place, though the catch is not considerable, for the fish have not yet grown to their normal size. But when they reach Sinope, they are mature enough for catching and salting.15

In the fifteenth book of his work On the Characteristics of Animals, Aelian (second to third century AD) describes fishing on the same coast: Now consider the Pontic cities: Heraclea and Tion and Amastris. Those who live in the whole region know exactly when the tunny-fish are arriving, and at that time of year the fish come in and a large quantity of equipment is held ready: boats and nets and a high watchtower. This watchtower is placed on some beach where there is a clear view to all sides … Two tall pine posts are held apart by transverse timbers; these are spaced at short intervals and help the lookout when he is climbing to the top. Each boat has six young men a side, stout rowers. The nets are stretched out; they are not light, held up by cork floats and weighted with lead; and the shoals of fish swim straight into these nets … And the men fasten a very long rope to one of the posts of the watchtower, then row their boats in close formation, keeping near one another, since, as you can see, the net has to be distributed evenly between the boats. And the first boat lets go its section of net, then returns to shore; then the second, then the third; and the fourth lets its section out. But the rowers in the fifth boat wait, for they must not release the net yet. Then the others row in each direction and take in their section of the net, pausing from time to time … So the rowers capture – as the poet might say – the population of fish, as though it were that of a city.16

Strabo was a native of the region and may have obtained his information directly from local informants. Aelian may have drawn most of his information from the observations or anecdotes of others, but his description of a tuna-fishing team and its organisation is corroborated by an inscription from Parium on the Hellespont (below). The wealth of technical detail, too, suggests that Aelian or his informant had witnessed an actual fishing operation. Fishing or fish processing in the Black Sea is also described in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder (first century AD), the Halieutica (On Fishing) by Oppian (second century AD), the Deipnosophistae (The Learned Banqueters) by Athenaeus (a contemporary of Aelian) and other authors. Plutarch (first century AD) tells an anecdote about Cleopatra playing a trick on Mark Antony using a pontikos tarichos, ‘Pontic salt-fish’ (in the English translation rendered as ‘a salted Pontic herring’,17 but, whatever the species of the fish used by Cleopatra for her practical joke, it was not a herring, which is not native to the Black Sea). In his treatise On the Properties of Foodstuffs the medical writer Galen (second century AD) 15 16 17

Strabo 7.6.2. Aelian, NA 15.5. Plutarch, Lives: Antony 29.4.

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discusses fish products of various types and origins, including salted young tuna from the Black Sea.18 A poem On Fishing has been ascribed to the Roman poet Ovid (first century AD).19 If this attribution is correct, it may be taken to describe fishing activities near Tomi (modern Constanţa) on the Black Sea, the place of Ovid’s exile. These and other literary sources amply attest to the importance of the Black Sea’s marine resources in the Greek, Hellenistic and Roman periods. From our viewpoint, however, they suffer from two weaknesses. The first is that it is rarely possible to fix the information at a given point in time. Athenaeus occasionally gives source references for his information, but all the authors draw heavily on the writings of earlier naturalists, philosophers and topographers. Parts of Oppian’s information may have been taken from Aristotle, who wrote half a millennium earlier. The second problem is the almost complete lack of quantitative information. At best, fish stocks are described as ‘large’, ‘enormous’, ‘numerous’, ‘rich’, etc. Apart from the ‘eleven or twelve jars’ of fish mentioned by Demosthenes in the speech against Lacritus, the literary sources contain no quantitative data.

3. The evidence from inscriptions A large number of Greek as well as a few Latin inscriptions have been preserved from the coastal cities of the Black Sea, but only a handful of these deal specifically with fishing or the fish trade. From Parium on the Hellespont we have a dedicatory inscription to Priapus listing the members of a fishing collective: the leader (archon), the net-masters (diktyarchai), the fish-watchers (skopiazontai), pilots (kybernetai), the man in charge of the cork floats (psellochalaston), the lookout (ephemereuon), the secretary (antigrapheus), the boat-masters (lembarchontes), all listed by name, and finally ‘the fishermen’ (synnautai) as an unnamed group.20 Since Parium is located on a major migration route for tuna and mackerel21 and the same number of boats (five) is involved, we may take it that the Parians were engaged in the type of fishing described for us by Aelian. This would also explain the high number of participants in the fishing collective. Presumably these were not full-time fishermen but individuals who fished as a secondary, seasonal occupation when shoals of fish were passing through the strait.22 A freshwater fishing cooperative attested from Roman Egypt exhibits some of the same organisational characteristics, but, unlike their colleagues at Parium, the Egyptian collective may have operated full time and also had a share in the fish-salting process.23 Several Black Sea cities possessed specialised market areas for trading fish. The earliest known example is in Olbia, attested by the Protogenes decree of the third century BC, which specifically mentions an ichthyopolis.24 Another inscription from Chersonesus (modern 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Galen, On the Properties of Foodstuffs 3.31 (728–9 Kühn). Ovid, Sea Fishing. IK 25.5–6; Robert 1950: 80–93; Bekker-Nielsen 2010; García Vargas and Florido del Corral 2010: 213; Garcia Vargas, this volume p. 270. Athenaeus 3.116c. Cf. the pronounced seasonality of modern tonnara fishing in the Mediterranean: Garcia Vargas, this volume. POxy 49.3495. IOSPE 12, 32.

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Sevastopol) and now in the Charkov University Museum informs us that ‘Theagenes, the son of Diogenes, agoranomos, from his own resources built an opsopolis’.25 The inscription has been convincingly associated with a building complex in the centre of ancient Sevastopol, excavated by Grigorij D. Belov in 1935. When publishing the inscription in 1947, Semyon A. Semenov-Zuser interpreted opsopolis as ‘a place where delicacies such as fish are sold along with delicate fish sauces, or … where fish sauces are sold’. This interpretation was taken up by Vladimir I. Kadeev in his monograph Očerki istorii ekonomiki Chersonesa Tavričeskogo v I–IV vekach n. e. (Studies in the Economic History of the Tauric Chersonesus in the First to Fourth Centuries AD), where it is claimed that ‘evidence for the nature of the fishing industry is provided by the inscription honouring Theagenes, son of Diogenes (second century AD) in which a specialised market for the sale of fish sauce is mentioned’.26 This ‘specialised market for fish and fish sauces’ reappears in a later work, co-authored with Sergej B. Soročan27 and in a more recent book on ancient Chersonesus.28 There is, however, no reason to interpret opsopolis as ‘a market for fish sauce’: the word opson may denote food in general and, more specifically, luxury foods such as fish. Though the term opsopolis is rare, the purpose-built market for fish and other perishable products (usually known as a macellum) is found in many cities throughout the Roman world.29 The opsopolis of Chersonesus no doubt belonged in the same category, a market area set aside for the retail trade in fish and other perishable foodstuffs such as meat or poultry.

4. Pictorial evidence From the Mediterranean world in general, a significant number of scenes showing fish, fishing, fishing boats or the fish trade have been preserved,30 ranging from the frescoes of Thera (second millennium BC) via the polychrome mosaics of the Roman period to early medieval manuscript illustrations. If we limit our search to the Black Sea region, however, the number of ship images is disappointingly small and fishing scenes are altogether absent from the archaeological evidence. This need not necessarily reflect that the settlers along the Black Sea coasts took less interest in sailing, or fishing, than their contemporaries in the Mediterranean world, rather that specific pictorial media such as mosaics are only rarely found in the region and that iconoclasm has taken a heavy toll on late Roman art. A detailed graffito image of a Hellenistic galley was found in Nymphaeum, (modern Geroevka).31 An eagle hovers above the ship holding a trident in one claw. In nearby Panticapaeum, a limestone stele found in 1897 (published as CIRB 264) shows two people in a boat, one sitting down and the other standing. The relief is somewhat eroded and the identity and function of the person standing in the boat is difficult to make out. He seems to be wearing a shield and helmet, suggesting a marine soldier, but there is no evidence of a military affiliation in the inscription itself. Though the composition (one person standing, 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Semenov-Zuser 1947: 245–6; Bekker-Nielsen 2007. Kadeev 1970: 5. Kadeev and Soročan 1989: 91–2. Soročan et al. 2001: 620–1. De Ruyt 1983. For an inventory of ship images in Hellenistic and Roman art, see Pekáry 1999. Grač 1984: 81–8; Murray 2001: 250–7.

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one person sitting) is reminiscent of fishing scenes from the Mediterranean region, neither this nor the Nymphaeum graffito can be taken as evidence of fishing activity. A more promising category of pictorial evidence is provided by the local coinage of the Pontic cities. Fish are depicted on coins from a number of cities, including well-known fishing or fish-processing centres such as Panticapaeum, Chersonesus, Sinope and Byzantium.32 Chronologically, these range from the early Classical period to the third century AD. While some of the coins merely show stylised or ‘generic’ fish, others are so naturalistic that species identification is possible. Among the marine species frequently found on coins are sturgeons,33 bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) and dolphins (Delphinus Sp.). It is tempting to interpret depictions of marine life on coinage as indicators of the commercial importance of fishing, whether for the table or for the processing industry. There are, however, a number of reservations to bear in mind.34 First, the fish may be a religious symbol; for instance, it has been suggested that the popularity of Syrian Aphrodite may explain the use of the fish motif in the coinage of the western Pontic cities.35 Again, the species in question may have been selected as symbolic of the region, for example bluefin tuna in the case of Byzantium (known for its rich tuna fisheries on the Bosphorus shores) and sturgeon on the coins of Panticapaeum (at the entrance to the Sea of Azov where sturgeon were plentiful). The choice of the dolphin is almost certainly symbolic rather than a reference to fishing; though dolphins may have been caught for their fat, a city would hardly use its coinage to advertise an activity that would seem barbarian to the eyes of most of Greeks.36 Finally, while every Pontic city striking ‘fishy’ coins is a fishing port, not every fishing city is known to have struck coins depicting fish.

5. Fishing sites Five different categories of fishing implements are known to have been used in the ancient Black Sea: spears and tridents; hooks and lines; moveable nets; fixed nets, creels and traps. Nets and traps were mostly produced from organic materials such as hemp or flax, cork and wood.37 On most sites, only artefacts made from inorganic materials are preserved: spear-tips (metal), fishing hooks (metal), needles for mending nets (metal), net sinkers and weights for casting nets (stone, lead, pottery). Hooks and net sinkers are recorded from a number of sites in the Pontic region.38 Finds of large stocks of fish hooks on one site imply line fishing on a significant scale, probably using multiple-hook lines, while quantities of small net weights of equal size (fig. 10.3) point to the use of hand-casting nets (amphi-

32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Stolba 2005: 117–28. As Stolba (2005: 121–3) points out, despite the detailed images on the coins, it is rarely possible to assign the sturgeon depicted to one particular species. Ripoll López 1988; Wright 1990. Stolba 2005: 126–7. Kadeev 1970; Stolba 2005: 115. On the special place of the dolphin in the Greek world-view, Beaulieu 2015: 119–20. In the Mediterranean, ceramic pots were (and are) used for catching cephalopods, but there are no cephalopods in the Black Sea. Højte 2005: 135–6, with references; also Gajdukevič 1971: 411–2.

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Fig. 10.3: Clay weights from Elizavetovka. (Marčenko, Žitnikov and Kopylov 2000, fig. 76). blêstra), either from shore or from boats. Larger net sinkers, typically of stone, were used to stabilise a stationary net (peza) or hold a seine (sagênê) suspended vertically from floats. Much of our present knowledge of early fishing techniques derives from the excavation of the settlement at Elizavetovka by the river Don, published by Konstantin K. Marčenko et al. (2000). Although located at the northern periphery of the Black Sea region, in the fifth to the third century BC Elizavetovka was an important trading settlement with far-reaching contacts, and the technology applied at Elizavetovka may be taken to reflect conditions in the Black Sea region generally. While their analysis to some extent remains shackled by the theoretical categories of pre-1990 Soviet scholarship, Marčenko et al. deserve credit for their meticulous attention to economic aspects: tools, fishing tackle and household implements. According to the excavators, during the fifth century BC fishing at Elizavetovka was oriented towards the needs of the local economy, and it was not until the close of that century that fish became an export commodity. A transition from subsistence to commercial fishing at this time can be observed at other sites in the region39 and presumably reflects the integration of the local economy into the trading network of Aegean Greece. One assumes that, for export, fishermen would tend to concentrate on large fish of high value that were suitable for preservation, such as sturgeon; this is corroborated by the finds of fish remains in refuse pits and by finds of net-mending equipment and net sinkers. The dimensions of the net-mending needles (fig. 10.4) and the use of large stone sinkers indicate that coarsemeshed fixed nets were used, as one would expect in estuarine sturgeon fisheries. Smaller terracotta net weights may have been used for casting nets.40 Remarkably, no hooks have been found associated with the Scythian layers at Elizavetovka. The importance of fishing in the economy of the Elizavetovka settlement is also reflected in the rich deposits of fish scales and bones, both as layers of fish waste up to 20 cm thick and in refuse pits at the periphery

39 40

Marčenko et al. 2000: 177. Marčenko et al. 2000: 179.

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Fig. 10.4: Bone implements for making and mending nets, found at Elizavetovka. (Marčenko, Žitnikov and Kopylov 2000, fig. 77). of the settled area.41 Most of this material presumably dates to the period when commercial fishing was flourishing at Elizavetovka, i. e. the fourth and third centuries BC. The range of species represented in the waste deposits reflects the species composition in the inner Sea of Azov and the delta of the Don, but the pattern of size variation suggests that the efforts of the fishermen were oriented towards large individuals and that smaller specimens were possibly discarded:42 yet another warning against taking terrestrial fish deposits as a slice of marine life.43 Unfortunately, not every site in the region has been published as thoroughly as Elizavetovka, and, for a significant number of excavations, the records have not been published at all. While some finds of fishing tackle are exhibited, one cannot expect every local museum to devote attention to these unglamorous everyday objects. When viewed in relation to the rich archaeological heritage of the Black Sea region, the resources set aside for museums and national antiquities authorities are not large, and in many cases the system is further strained by the need to deal with a backlog of unpublished finds, undertake rescue excavations on construction sites and restrain the activities of clandestine excavators. Stray finds are equally likely to go unrecorded, as an ancient fishing hook is not unlike a modern one in appearance and the significance of a perforated clay or stone sinker may not be clear to the farmer who comes across one on his land. Even if the object is recognised as ancient, it is by no means certain that it will find its way to a museum collection. On the northern coast, fish-salting cisterns have been found neither in the early settlement at Tanaïs nor in Elizavetovka, and the excavators conclude that in this period – the fourth and third centuries BC – fish was preserved by drying, possibly also by smoking.44 This may partly have been related to the difficulties of obtaining adequate quantities of salt from the brackish waters of the Sea of Azov. In the Black Sea region sensu stricto, fish was salted and exported as early as the fifth century BC, as evidenced by the literary sources (above), but no certain finds of fish-salting cisterns have been reported from the southern 41 42 43 44

Marčenko et al. 2000: 175–7. Marčenko et al. 2000: 179. Cf. Morales and Roselló-Izquierdo, this volume. Marčenko et al. 2000: 179.

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Fig. 10.5: Plan of Tyritake. At the lowest (southern) end of the plan, a complex of 16 cisterns (sector I) can be seen immediately west of the railway embankment. In the south central sector of the settlement (sector XIII) a cluster of five small cistern complexes, see fig. 10.6. (GajdukeviČ 1971, pl. 51).

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Fig. 10.6: Plan of sector XIII at Tyritake with fish-salting vats marked in black. (GajdukeviČ 1971, pl. 97). coast. These may have been located so close to the shoreline that they have been eroded away (as have, for instance, a large part of the extensive ancient salting facilities at Tróia in Portugal); they may be overlaid by silting in estuaries or swamped by rising sea levels, a common problem along the Black Sea coasts.45 It is possible that a systematic survey of the coastline, onshore and offshore, would reveal unrecorded remains of ancient fish-processing sites. Complexes of purpose-built, mortar-lined cisterns for producing garum and tarichos have been found at numerous sites on the Crimean peninsula; especially noteworthy are those in Chersonesus (Sevastopol)46 and the settlements on the Cimmerian Bosphorus, for 45 46

On sea level changes in this region, see Fouache et al. 2004: 55–6. Kadeev 1970; Kadeev and Ryzov 1973, with references to earlier literature; Romančuk 1973; 1977.

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Fig. 10.7: A group of salting vats at the southern extremity (sector I) of the Tyritake settlement during excavation. (GajdukeviČ 1971, pl. 95). instance at Tyritake (figs 10.5–8).47 The cisterns occur both singly and in groups. Vats scattered singly or in small units around the edges of a settlement (as at Tyritake or Chersonesus) presumably belonged to the owners of nearby houses, and we may take it that in these cases fish-processing began as an extension of the oikos economy. Groups of vats designed and laid out on a larger scale, such as the group of sixteen vats on the southern outskirts of Tyritake (fig. 10.7) or a similar complex found in the centre of Myrmecium, point to larger, market-oriented enterprises owned by a single proprietor or held jointly by investors united within a hetaireia, the Greek equivalent of the Latin societas. Viktor F. Gajdukevič hypothesises that some salting installations might have been royal property or controlled by aristocratic absentee owners resident in nearby Panticapaeum.48 In terms of numbers or gross cubic volume, the salting complexes of the Crimea are comparable with those of other well-known production regions such as Baetica, Lusitania and Mauretania; at Tyritake alone, Gajdukevič claims to have identified no less than 59 fish-salting vats.49 On the other hand, the cooler climate of the Black Sea may have required a longer production cycle for fish sauce (though not necessarily for tarichos): thus Pontic salters may have turned over fewer cistern-loads of garum annually than their colleagues 47 48 49

Gajdukevič 1971: 376–8, with references; Vinokurov 1994. Gajdukevič 1971: 186. Gajdukevič 1971: 376 n. 17.

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Fig. 10.8: The site of Tyritake in 2003. (Author’s photo). along the western Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. In fact, if the processing plants on the Cimmerian Bosphorus depended on migratory fish for their input, they may have completed a single production cycle or even less per year, and, if catches varied greatly from year to year, the cisterns will rarely have been filled to capacity. Thus any attempt at relating cistern capacity to total production volume involves so many variables and uncertainties as to be largely meaningless.50 Cisterns apart, the other specialised structure associated with large-scale fishing is the watchtower.51 From Aelian’s description, quoted above, it is clear that such towers are unlikely to have left archaeological traces. The tower itself was constructed of wood and located directly at the water’s edge. For him to discern the tell-tale disturbances on the surface of the water, the tunny-watcher’s point of vantage should not be too elevated and, in order to communicate with the fishermen, he had to be close to the water’s edge. Towers located at high points in the landscape are thus a priori unlikely to be fish-watching lookouts; they were more probably observation posts for defensive purposes. In the case of the western Mediterranean and Atlantic fish-salting industry, the evidence of the fish-processing installations is matched by copious quantities of amphorae and amphora fragments, enabling us to follow the track of Iberian, Gaulish or African garum from the production sites to their point of consumption. This is not the case for the Black Sea region. There is no shortage of amphora finds; large numbers of amphora fragments from the Aegean and the Levant have turned up on Pontic sites of the Classical and Hellenistic periods, and during the Roman period amphorae from the northern Adriatic found their way to Tanais, at the northern extremity of the Sea of Azov.52 Trade flows in the opposite 50 51 52

Cf. Højte 2005: 157. Cf. Lytle, this volume p. 117–20. Paczynska and Naumenko 2004.

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direction are attested by remains of Pontic amphorae found at Athens and elsewhere in the Aegean region. Sinopean amphorae are the most frequent, followed by other production centres on the southern Black Sea coast (Heraclea, Amastris) and in the Crimea (Chersonesus). Compared to the evidence for imports into the Black Sea region, and for trans-Pontic trade (for example from Sinope to Chersonesus or Histria), the total number of recorded amphorae coming out of the Black Sea is not large, and among the more common Pontic amphora types none can be conclusively associated with garum.53 An amphora found off the Bulgarian coast at Varna was found to contain bones of sheatfish (Silurus glanis), but this may have been reused.54 Yet if tarichos and garum from the Black Sea region were not shipped in amphorae, how were they exported? Amphorae coming into the Black Sea region containing wine or oil may have been reused to export Pontic fish products, or fish products may have travelled in ‘crates, baskets or other containers of perishable material’.55 There is some evidence for systematic reuse of amphorae in other parts of the Empire, such as Egypt; and while not every amphora could be recycled – a garum amphora would be highly unsuitable for wine – there is no reason why oil amphorae coming into the Pontic region could not be used for garum on the return journey. While wine and oil amphorae might conceivably be refilled with garum, their narrow necks would, however, make them less suitable for tarichos, the commodity most often mentioned in our literary sources. The deposition by Hippias from Halicarnassus preserved in Demosthenes is very specific about the way the cargo was packed: boxes of wool, jars of salt-fish, bundles of goat-hides – unless Hippias is using ‘jars of salt-fish’ as a unit of measure to denote so-and-so-much fish packed in bulk. Either way, in his time (the fourth century BC) the standard container for salt-fish was ceramic. By the last century BC, wooden barrels were coming into favour for shipping Gaulish wine and from the second to fourth century AD, garum produced on the Channel coast was shipped in barrels to inland consumers.56 Tarichos could certainly be packed in barrels, as was the case in more recent times; dried or semi-dried, it might even be carried in baskets. An Egyptian customs record of the Trajanic period mentions salt-fish in a chlibion, interpreted by Robert Curtis as ‘a basket of some sort’;57 however, in the context of a customs account, chlibion – the word is very rare – could also denote a unit of measure. As already mentioned, Sinopean amphora fragments are among those most frequently found on sites along the Black Sea. The Romanian archaeologist Nicolae Conovici has undertaken a large-scale survey of more than 500 Sinopean amphora stamps found at Histria on the western Black Sea coast; based on the symbolism of the stamps, he concludes that the amphorae were used to carry wine rather than oil or fish products, since one out of four stamps bears direct relation to wine (grapes, Satyrs, etc.), while no symbols refer to fish or olives.58 Two points need to be noted regarding this conclusion. First, the interpretation of amphora stamps faces the same semiotic problems as the interpretation of coin types. In fact, the rarity of fish emblems on Sinopean amphora handles 53 54 55 56 57 58

Gabrielsen and Lund 2005: 166–7. Gabrielsen and Lund 2005: 164. Gabrielsen and Lund 2005: 164–7. Martin-Kilcher 1990; Marlière 2002: 174–3; Ejstrud 2005. Curtis 1991: 171. Conovici 1998: 193–4; Gabrielsen and Lund 2005: 163.

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is matched by the rarity of fish among Sinopean coin types;59 its significance, if any, should thus reflect the limited role of fish in the city’s economy in general, not among its amphora-borne exports. Second, and more importantly, the pattern of commodities going north from Sinope to Histria cannot be taken as representative of export flows south to Aegean ports. As Demosthenes points out, ‘wine is imported to the Pontos from our region … while altogether different goods are imported from the Pontos to our region’.60 The Histrians may have been so well supplied by the fisheries of the shallow northwestern shelf (see Ardeleanu, this volume) that they felt little need to import preserved fish; but, located near the northern limit of vine-growing, they had to rely on imports for high-quality wine. In the Aegean, on the other hand, there was plenty of good wine close at hand, but the steady demand for salted fish products outstripped the capacity of the eastern Mediterranean fisheries and salteries.

6. Effects on fish stocks From an eco-historical viewpoint, the key question is not what was harvested or how it was consumed, but the impact of harvesting on the marine ecosystem. According to one view, there was none. Some Russian and Ukrainian scholars have claimed that the composition of Black Sea fish stocks in antiquity was similar to that of the twentieth century.61 Such a static situation is a priori highly unlikely, considering the increased salinity and varying temperature, the silting of the northwestern shelf due to discharge from the Danube and Dnjepr, the arrival of new species since antiquity, massive industrial pollution in the estuarine areas and the well-documented decline of one of the top predators, namely sturgeon. The static theory is also contradicted by the archaeofaunal evidence from a number of archaeological sites along the Black Sea coast. Over recent decades, methodologies have developed to the point where it is now possible to make accurate assessments of species, age and size of individuals from the remains of bones.62 The interpretation of fish residue from processing installations is less problematic than the remains from fishing settlements, where minute fish bones may be scattered over a wide area and easily overlooked, even by the most conscientious excavator, unless the material is sieved on a very fine mesh. Obviously, this affects the perceived species distribution: if only the larger bones are recorded, medium to large fish with a robust skeletal structure (such as scombrids) will be over-represented, while small fish (such as clupeids) will be as good as invisible in the archaeological record.63 On older excavations in the Black Sea region, the material was either not sieved at all or sieved through a coarse mesh. Furthermore, small fish eaten whole, for example anchovies, will leave no archaeological trace whatever, as their bones are completely dissolved during the digestive process.64 Thus the fish-species composition on a terrestrial site is far from being a random sample of the species in the sea offshore. For instance, Gajdukevič notes 59 60 61 62 63 64

Stolba 2005:124. Demosthenes, Orations 35.35. Ščeglov and Burdak 1965: 21–3; Ščeglov 1969: 128–30; Stolba 2005: 132. Desse-Berset and Desse 2000; Enghoff 2000; Locker 2001; 2007; MacKinnon 2007; Morales et al. 2007: 61–2. Morales and Roselló-Izquierdo, this volume. Wheeler and Jones 1989: 69–74.

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that the species most often found on archaeological sites in the Kuban and along the Azov coast are sturgeon, carp and pike,65 all easily identified from their bones. On the other hand, anchovies, which in later periods were plentiful in the Black Sea, are rarely reported from settlement sites.66 Working from fish remains found at Olbia and Berezan, Nadezhda V. Ivanova has attempted to trace the variation in fish stocks in the Dnjepr estuary over time and relate a possible decline in stocks or size of individuals to human exploitation, i. e. overfishing.67 For its time, Ivanova’s work represented a major advance, not least because it revealed that the relative frequency of different fish species was significantly different from that found today, thus refuting the hypothesis of a static faunal composition in the Black Sea. It also suffered from certain weaknesses. As discussed above, an exceptionally thorough examination of the excavated material is necessary to gain a complete picture of the fish remains on a site. The dominance of species with a robust bone structure (bream, sturgeon) in Ivanova’s material suggests that smaller fish and species with fragile bones may be under-represented. Secondly, finds on archaeological settlement sites do not reflect the complete range of fish species in the sea: finds on land will include only commercial species, while those non-edible or non-marketable fish that were caught have been discarded at sea or at the water’s edge. At each intermediate stage between the sea and the waste heap, information and/or fish are lost. Thus the image presented by studies of waste pits may depict only a small portion of the complete picture of life in the sea. Similarly, changes over time need not reflect changing faunal composition. All fishing techniques are to some degree selective and will have changed over time in response to demand. For instance, if anchovies increased in commercial importance, smaller net meshes would have been used in order to catch them, and, in turn, would produce by-catches of smaller individuals of other species. It furthermore needs to be borne in mind that for sturgeon and other anadromous species, the mere presence of fixed nets, weirs and other fishing installations in estuaries present obstacles to migration that may have a far greater impact on fish stocks than direct harvesting. For a clearer picture of species and size composition in fish stocks, we must go to the study of deposits in the sea itself. In most oceans, a dead fish is soon broken down by biological degradation, and, in shallow waters, seabed deposits are disturbed by other fish and human activity. In the Black Sea, however, anoxic conditions preserve organic materials such as fish scales or bones, and, at depths of 1,000 m or more, seabed deposits are beyond the reach of anchors and trawl nets. Since the deposits are layered (varved), their contents can be dated with great accuracy. The pilot study of seabed cores held in the collection of the Middle East Technical University’s research centre at Erdemli by Inge Enghoff (2006) showed that it is possible to identify not only larger, but also very small species (for example pipefish) and date the finds with a high degree of accuracy (fig. 10.9).

65 66 67

Gajdukevič 1971: 126. Demir 2007. Ivanova 1994; for a critique, see Morales et al. 2007: 4.

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Fig. 10.9: Remains of a pipefish from the southern Black Sea, c. 240 BC. (Photo courtesy of Inge B. Enghoff)

7. Conclusion Our evidence for the interaction between human and marine populations along the Black Sea is rich and varied, but also somewhat contradictory. The number and extent of the salting installations in the Crimea leave no doubt that fish processing (producing tarichos and fish sauce) took place on an industrial scale. The questions of cubic capacity, number of annual production cycles, etc. need to be taken into consideration but do not affect the fundamental fact that in terms of gross cubic capacity and capital investment, the fish-salting installations of the Crimea were a match for those of North Africa or the Iberian peninsula. This in turn requires a major input of fish. The archaeological evidence for commercial fishing is considerable, when allowance is made for non-registration or non-publication of stray finds of fish hooks and weights. Since large-scale fishing for smaller species involved nets, which were made from organic materials and have not been preserved on land, we should not, in any case, expect to find many traces of large-scale commercial fishing. What evidence we have in the form of fishing tackle and implements tends to confirm the general picture provided by the salting installations. For the southern coast, there is no archaeological record comparable to that for the Crimea or the northern coast, but the works of Strabo, Aelian and Oppian attest to the importance of fishing along the southern Black Sea coast and in the Thracian Bosphorus. Pontic fish processing is likewise mentioned in an impressive array of sources, and when the product is identified, it is most often as tarichos, more rarely garum/garos. With the present state of our knowledge, it is difficult to relate the copious and varied evidence for the production of salt-fish and sauces with the tenuous evidence for the trade

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and transport of the same commodities. No amphora types can be specifically identified as intended for Pontic salt-fish or fish sauce and while Pontic fish products are mentioned in a general way by ancient authors, the scattered literary notices do not permit us to trace trade routes in detail. For a closer analysis, we need to distinguish between the Classical/Hellenistic and the Roman periods, and between different product types. Following the Greek colonisation of the Black Sea in the Archaic period, an export trade in fish developed, and by the late fifth century even a settlement as far north as Elizavetovka had been drawn into the economic orbit of the Aegean. The Classical and Hellenistic sources are, however, concerned only with tarichos and in the archaeological evidence from the Crimean processing sites there is no certain indication that garum/garos was produced before the last century BC, a time when the demand for fish sauces in Mediterranean markets was growing. Significantly, this is also the period when wooden barrels begin to appear in larger numbers on western Mediterranean sites.68 It is possible – but by no means proven – that the transition from tarichos to a wider range of processed fish products was prompted not merely by the growth of Roman markets but also by the appearance of a new type of transport container, the barrel. This would go some way towards solving the problem of the missing fish containers, though it still does not explain their absence from sites of the Hellenistic period. Whatever the internal contradictions of the evidence, it leaves no doubt that harvesting of marine resources on a commercial scale took place in the Black Sea region from the Classical through the Hellenistic period and on an industrial scale in the Roman period. Clearly, we would like to know what effect this had on fish stocks. For a study of human impact on marine resources, the Black Sea provides a unique test case because it is a closed body of salt water with a short history and fishing activities on its shores are comparatively well documented. Here, if anywhere, we should be able to trace the effect of human harvesting on fish stocks in the pre-industrial period. Ivanova’s 1994 paper shows that some trends can be identified and, perhaps, related to local overfishing, but the evidence is inconclusive.69 For a clearer impression of the faunal history of the Black Sea, we need to explore the potential offered by archaeo-faunal analysis of seabed cores, since the anoxic depths of the Black Sea provide an exceptional environment for the preservation of fish remains and other organic materials. Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen Department of History, University of Southern Denmark Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M [email protected]

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Marlière 2002. Morales et al. 2007: 67.

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8. References 8.1 Primary sources Demosthenes, Orations 4, with an English translation by J. H. Vince, C. A. Vince, A. T. Murray et al. (LCL 318). Cambridge MA, 1936. Galen, On the Properties of Foodstuffs, translated by O. Powell. Cambridge 2003. Ovid, Art of Love, Cosmetics, Remedies for Love, Ibis, Walnut-tree, Sea Fishing, Consolation, translated by J. H. Mozley (LCL 232). Cambridge MA 1929. Plutarch, Lives 9, with an English translation by B. Perrin (LCL 101). Cambridge MA 1920. Poetae Comici Graeci 5, edited by R. Kassel and C. Austin. Berlin 1986. Posidippus, Posidippi Pellaei quae supersunt Omnia, edited by C. Austin and G. Bastianini (Biblioteca Classica 3). Milan 2002. Procopius, History of the Wars, Books III and IV: The Vandalic War, with an English translation by H. B. Dewing (LCL 81). Cambridge MA 1916. Theophanes Confessor, Chronicle, in Bilderstreit und Arabersturm in Byzanz: Das 8. Jahrhundert aus der Weltchronik des Theophanes, translated by L. Breyer (Byzantinische Geschichtsschreiber 6). Graz 1957.

8.2 Secondary literature Beaulieu, M.-C. 2015. The Sea in the Greek Imagination. Philadelphia. Bekker-Nielsen, T. 2007. ‘The one that got away: a reassessment of the Agoranomos inscription from Chersonesos’ in V. Gabrielsen and J. Lund (eds), The Black Sea in Antiquity: Regional and Interregional Economic Exchanges (Black Sea Studies 6). Aarhus, 123–31. Bekker-Nielsen, T. 2010. ‘Fishing in the Roman world’ in T. Bekker-Nielsen and D. Bernal-Casasola (eds), Ancient Nets and Fishing Gear. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Nets and Fishing Gear in Classical Antiquity: A First Approach (Monographs of the Sagena Project 2). Cádiz, 186–203. Bekker-Nielsen, T. (ed.) 2005. Ancient Fishing and Fish Processing in the Black Sea Region (Black Sea Studies 2). Aarhus. Borchardt, L. 1906. Nilmesser und Nilstandsmarken (Abhandlungen der königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1906, Anhang, Philosophische und historische Abhandlungen). Berlin. Conovici, N. 1998. Histria VIII: Les timbres amphoriques 2 (Corpus international des timbres amphoriques 3). Bucharest. Curtis, R. I. 1991. Garum and Salsamenta: Production and Commerce in Materia Medica (Studies in Ancient Medicine 3). Leiden. Dahl-Jensen, D., K. Mosegaard, N. Gundestrup et al. 1998. ‘Past temperatures directly from the Greenland ice sheet’, Science 282, 268–71. De Ruyt, C. 1983. Macellum: Marché alimentaire des romains (Publications d’histoire de l’art et d’archéologie de l’Université catholique de Louvain 35). Louvain-la-Neuve. Demir, M. 2007. ‘The trade in salt-pickled hamsi and other fish from the Black Sea to Athens during the Archaic and Classical periods’ in G. Erkut and S. Mitchell (eds), The Black Sea Region: Past, Present and Future: Proceedings of the International, Interdisciplinary Conference, Istanbul, 14–16 October 2004 (British Institute at Ankara Monograph 42). Ankara, 57–64. Desse-Berset, N. and J. Desse 2000. ‘Salsamenta, garum et autres preparations de poissons. Ce qu’en disent les os’, MEFRA 112, 73–97. Ejstrud, B. 2005. ‘Size matters: estimating trade of wine, oil and fish-sauce from amphorae in the first century AD’ in T. Bekker-Nielsen (ed.) 171–82. Enghoff, I. B. 2000. ‘Fishing in the southern North Sea region from the first to the sixteenth century AD: evidence from fish bones’, Archaeofauna 9, 59–132.

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Enghoff, I. B. 2006. ‘Report on a pilot study of fish remains in Black Sea sediment cores’. Unpublished report to HMAP-Mediterranean and Black Sea. Fouache, E., A. Portorov and C. Müller et al. 2004. ‘The role of neo-tectonics in the variation of the relative mean sea level throughout the last 6000 years of the Taman Peninsula (Black Sea, Azov Sea, Russia)’, Polish Geological Institute Special Papers 11, 47–58. Gabrielsen, V. and J. Lund 2005. ‘A fishy business. Transport amphorae of the Black Sea region as a source for the trade in fish and fish products in the Classical and Hellenistic periods’ in T. Bekker-Nielsen (ed.) 161–70. Gajdukevič, V. F. 1971. Das Bosporanische Reich. Berlin. García Vargas, E. and D. Florido del Corral 2010. ‘The origin and development of tuna fishing nets (almadraba)’ in T. Bekker-Nielsen and D. Bernal-Casasola (eds), Ancient Nets and Fishing Gear. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Nets and Fishing Gear in Classical Antiquity: A First Approach (Monographs of the Sagena Project 2). Cádiz, 204–27. Grač, N. L. 1984. ‘Otkrytie novogo istoričeskogo istočnika v Nimfee’, Vestnik drevnej istorij 1, 81–8. Højte, J. M. 2005. ‘The archaeological evidence for fish processing in the Black Sea region’, in T. Bekker-Nielsen (ed.) 133–60. Ivanova, N. V. 1994. ‘Fish remains from archaeological sites of the northern part of the Black Sea region (Olbia, Berezan)’, Offa 51, 278–83. Jarvis, C. 1936.‘Flood-stage records of the River Nile’, Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers 101, 1012–71. Kadeev, V. I. 1970. Očerki istorii ekonomiki Khersonesa Tavričeskogo v I–IV vekach n. e. Charkov. Kadeev, V. I. and S. G. Ryzov 1973. ‘Novaja rybozasoločnaja cisterna v Chersonese’, Archeologija Kiev 12, 76–80. Kadeev, V. I. and S. B. Soročan 1989. Ekonomičeskie svjazi antičnych gorodov severnogo pričernomorija v I v. do n. e. – V v. n. e. Charkov. Lericolais, G., I. Guichard, C. Morigi et al. 2011. ‘Assessment of Black Sea water-level fluctuations since the Last Glacial Maximum’ in I. V. Buynevich, V. Yanko-Hombach, A. S. Gilbert et al. (eds), Geology and Geoarchaeology of the Black Sea Region: Beyond the Flood Hypothesis (Geological Society of America, Special Paper 473). Boulder, 33–50. Locker, A. 2001. The Role of Stored Fish in England 900–1750 AD: The Evidence from Historical and Archaeological Data. Sofia. Locker, A. 2007. ‘In piscibus diversis: the bone evidence for fish consumption in Roman Britain’, Britannia 38, 141–80. Lofi, J., F. Sage, J. Dévergère et al. 2011. ‘Refining our knowledge of the Messinian salinity crisis records in the offshore domain through multi-site seismic analysis’, Bulletin de la Société Géologique de France 182, 163–80. MacKinnon, M. 2007. ‘Osteological research in Classical archaeology’, American Journal of Archaeology 111, 473–504. Marčenko, K.K, V. G. Žitnikov and V. P. Kopylov 2000. Die Siedlung Elizavetovka am Don. Moscow. Marlière, É. 2002. L’outre et le tonneau dans l’Occident romain (Monographies Instrumentum 22). Montignac. Martin-Kilcher, S. 1990. ‘Fischsaucen und Fischkonserven aus dem römischen Gallien’, Archäologie der Schweiz 13, 37–44. Mehl, A. 1987. ‘Der Überseehandel von Pontos’, Stuttgarter Kolloquium zur historischen Geographie des Altertums 1 (Geographica Historica 4). Bonn, 103–85. Morales, A., E. Antipina and A. Antipina et al. 2007. ‘An ichthyoarchaeological survey of the ancient fisheries from the northern Black Sea’. Unpublished report to HMAP-Mediterranean and Black Sea. Murray, W. M. 2001. ‘A trireme named Isis: the sgraffito from Nymphaion’, IJNA 30, 250–6. Paczynska, K. and S. V. Naumenko 2004. ‘Forlimpopoli amphorae at Tanais in the second and third centuries AD’ in J. Eiring and J. Lund (eds), Transport Amphorae and Trade. Acts of the International Colloquium held at the Danish Institute at Athens, 26–29 September, 2002. Aarhus, 309–12.

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Pekáry, I. 1999. Repertorium der hellenistischen und römischen Schiffsdarstellungen (Boreas Beiheft 8). Münster. Quass, F. 1993. Die Honoratiorenschicht in den Städten des griechischen Ostens: Untersuchungen zur politischen und sozialen Entwicklung in hellenistischer und römischer Zeit. Stuttgart. Ripoll López, S. 1988. ‘El atún en las monedas antiguas del estrecho y su simbolismo económico y religioso’ in E. Ripoll Perelló (ed.), Actas de Congreso Internacional el Estrecho de Gibraltar, Ceuta – Noviembre 1987 I. Madrid, 481–6. Robert, L. 1950. Hellenica 8: Recueil d’épigraphie, de numismatique et d’antiquités grecques. Paris. Romančuk, A. I. 1973. ‘Novye materialy o vremini stroitel’stva rybozasoločnych cistern v Chersonese’, Antičnaya drevnost’ i srednie veka 9, 45–53. Romančuk, A. I. 1977. ‘Plan rybozasoločnych cistern v Chersonese’, Antičnaya drevnost’ i srednie veka 14, 18–20. Ryan, W. and W. Pitman 1998. Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries about the Event that Changed History. New York. Ščeglov, A. N. 1969. ‘Novyj metod opredelenija veličiny ryby po ee češue i nekotorye dannye o promysle kefali v Severo-Zapadnom Krymu v 1 v. do n. e.’, Kratkie Soobščenija Instituta Archaeologii AN SSSR 119, 128–30. Ščeglov, A. N. and V. D. Burdak 1965. ‘O promysle ryby u beregov Tarchankuta v antičnuju epochu’, Rybnoe chozjajstvo 3, 21–3. Semenov-Zuser, S. 1947. ‘Rybnyj rynok v Chersonese’, Vestnik drevnej istorij 1947.2, 237–46. Soročan, S. B., V. M. Zubar’ and L. V. Marčenko 2001. Žizn’ i gibel’ Chersonesa. Charkov. Stolba, V. F. 2005. ‘Fish and money’, in T. Bekker-Nielsen (ed.) 115–32. Toussoun, O. 1925. ‘Memoire sur l’Histoire du Nil’, Memoires à l’Institut d’Egypte 18, 366–404. Vinokurov, N. I. 1994. ‘Rybozasoločnye kompleksy chory Evropejskogo Bospora’, Rosskaja Arkheologija 1994.4, 154–70. Vinther, B. M., P. D. Jones, K. R. Briffa et al. 2010. ‘Climatic signals in multiple highly resolved stable isotope records from Greenland’, Quaternary Science Reviews 29, 522–38. Wang, G. 1999. ‘Nilometers, El Nino, and climate variability’, Geophysical Research Letters 26, 489–92 Wheeler, A. and A. K. G. Jones 1989. Fishes (Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology). Cambridge. Wilkins, J. 2005. ‘Fish as a Source of Food in Antiquity’ in T. Bekker-Nielsen (ed.) 21–30. Williams, M. F. 2006. ‘The new Posidippus papyri and Propertius’ Shipwreck Odes’, Classica et Mediaevalia 57, 103–24. Wright, G. R. H. 1990. ‘Of fish and men: Fish symbols in ancient religion’, Journal of Prehistoric Religion 3–4, 30–44. Yanko-Hombach, V., P. J. Mudie, S. Kadurin et al. 2014. ‘Holocene marine transgression in the Black Sea: New evidence from the northwestern Black Sea shelf ’, Quaternary International 345, 110–8.

Constantin Ardeleanu

Fishing in the Lower Danube and its floodplain from the earliest times to the twentieth century

1. Introduction Since prehistoric times, fishing has been a major occupation for the inhabitants of presentday Romania, a fact which can be related to its rich water resources, in which the Danube, for almost 1,000 km from the Iron Gates to the Black Sea, represents the backbone of a large network of rivers, running from the Carpathians towards the great European river. Carrying an enormous amount of water, especially in the spring when its flow rate increases considerably, the Danube overflows and floods the vast meadows lying on its banks, providing an ideal spawning ground for numerous aquatic species. According to some sources, there used to be more than 1,300 lakes and pools supplied by the Danube (in the Wallachian floodplain proper, in the Borcea and Brăila ponds and in the Danube delta), which provided excellent habitats for fish and, consequently, for a whole trophic chain, in which humans have been the ultimate beneficiaries.1 Ichthyologists calculate that about 188 fish species, representing 55 families, are common in Romanian inland and maritime waters, with the Danube and its floodplain as the most frequent environment for spawning and proliferation. Romanians use 580 different names to denominate these taxa, creating a lexical fund which amounts to 720 terms (including regional variations), of which 670 refer to ‘identified species’ and 50 to ‘undetermined fish’.2 The same linguistic diversity exists for fishing techniques and fishing gear, with words derived from several ancient and modern languages (Dacian, Latin, Greek, Russian or Hungarian); thus there is a linguistic treasury which supports the verisimilitude of the thesis stated above: fishing has been one of the most important occupations of the autochthonous inhabitants of the Lower Danube area. Starting from this premise, this paper aims to present briefly the role of fish and fishing in the communities settled along the banks of the Danube, from the earliest times to the 1

2

Before World War I, the Danube floodplain covered a surface of over 930,000ha, of which 432,187ha were permanent pools and 500,000ha were floodable plains, flooded for several months each year (Antipa 1916: 182). In the interwar period, the Danube floodplain had a surface of 488,000ha, and the Danube delta 430,000ha (Buşniţă 1939: 580). During the twentieth century, the largest part of the river on Romanian territory was diked, and thus the Danube floodplain shrank considerably. As for the Danube delta, it now extends over 564,000ha, 442,000 in Romania and 122,000 in Ukraine (Brylski and Steward 2000: 97). Giurescu 1964: 27.

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beginning of the twentieth century, by which time fishing was regulated by modern law. This establishment of this regulation was the lifetime achievement of the father of Romanian ichthyology, Grigore Antipa, the scholar and statesman who dedicated his public activity and scientific career to preserving the river, its unique natural wealth and its anthropological and ethnological diversity.3 His masterpiece (Fishery and Fishing in Romania, published 1916), a seminal book for Romanian ichthyology, is a minute examination of contemporary practices in Danubian fishing and all the auxiliary activities related to this profession. Viewed from another perspective, Romania’s involvement in World War I and the subsequent evolution of the conflict greatly affected all local fisheries, making the year 1916 a dividing marker for the examination of these issues. The spatial delimitation of this paper will be exclusively focused on the last section of the river, the so-called Lower Danube, stretching from the Iron Gates (the 134 km-long river gorge cut as the Danube makes its way through the Carpathian Mountains) down to the Black Sea. The Danube and its floodplain used to be the largest fishing domain in Romania, with over three-quarters of the national fish harvest coming from here.4 Equally impressive is the diversity of its fish: 57 species were recorded in 1916, with 41 being exclusively freshwater, fifteen anadromous (with the sturgeon and the Black Sea shad being the most economically productive) and one catadromous fish (the eel).5 Special attention will be given to the Danube delta region, the area formed on the very last section of the river by the three branches (Kilia, Sulina, Saint George) through which the Danube discharges its waters into the Black Sea. This is a wetland area where fish remains the traditional food and in which fishing has formed the professional, artistic and cultural focus of the inhabitants. This is unsurprising, given that in recent surveys 135 fish species have been recorded in the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve: 44 solely freshwater species (pike, tench, rudd, ide, barbel, etc.), 58 marine fish (sprat, anchovy, whiting, turbot, bluefish, etc.) and 31 euryhaline species, i. e. capable of tolerating a wide range of salinity levels (taxa from the gobius, neogobius and acipenseridae genera, brown trout, etc.).6 The consideration of such a long chronological and broad spatial range requires a careful selection of relevant examples and a certain degree of generalisation; this is a rather delicate enterprise, as Romanian historiography is not rich in studies and monographs devoted to the evolution of fishing habits. A notable contribution is Constantin C. Giurescu’s History of Fishing and Pisciculture in Romania (1964); this is a valuable synthesis by an eminent Romanian historian, comprising a review of the main directions of research, but it is now rather outdated. Similar endeavours have not been attempted since, and, except for a few papers on different aspects of fishing during the prehistoric, ancient and medieval ages, the historiographer can extract information only from more general works covering the socio-economic life of the various communities that have lived, throughout the ages, in the area of modern-day Romania.

3 4 5 6

For a biography, see Bârca and Băcescu 1969; Negrea 1990. Buşniţă 1939: 580. Antipa 1916: 224. Gâştescu and Ştiucă (eds) 2008: 157.

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Fig. 11.1: Map of the Lower Danube region, showing sites mentioned in text. (Richard Szydlak).

2. Fishing during prehistoric times Fish was a valuable source of nutrition for the prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations living in settlements bordering the Lower Danube. Material remains discovered at several sites along the river have led archaeologists to conclude that the river and its floodplain provided a significant portion of the prehistoric peoples’ daily food and that fishing techniques were continuously developed in this region throughout the millennia. Without focusing very much on instances which would require the more specialised knowledge of a zooarchaeologist, a few examples should suffice, especially if they cover a sufficiently broad chronological and geographical range. Thus, in the Iron Gates region at the Mesolithic settlement of Ostrovul Corbului-Botul Cliuciului, dated to the Schela Cladovei culture (eighth millennium BC), the faunal remains included several fish bones identified as belonging to large examples (up to 200 kg) of sheat-

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fish (Silurus glanis) and carp (Cyprinus carpio). Discoveries from Epipalaeolithic sites (bones and scales) in the same area, indicate both the fishing techniques employed (antler harpoons) and the wide variety of species caught: bream (Abramis brama), sterlet (Acipenser ruthenus), beluga (Huso huso), Danube sturgeon (Acipenser güldenstaedti), chub (Leuciscus cephalus), sheatfish (Silurus glanis), carp (Cyprinus carpio), pike (Esox lucius), pikeperch (Stizostedion lucioperca) and bass (Perca fluviatilis).7 The relative development of technology and the sedentism specific to the Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures are visible in the rising levels of qualitative and quantitative information regarding fishing habits available from archaeological sites. Zooarchaeological researches coordinated by specialists from the National History Museum of Romania demonstrate the importance of fishing for several communities in southern Romania. Three of them (Hârşova, Isaccea and Luncaviţa) are in the proximity of the Danube, whereas two others (Coslogeni and Borduşani) are located in its floodplain. The Neolithic level of habitation at Coslogeni, corresponding to the Boian-Bolintineanu culture, produced 4,482 bone fragments, of which 3,770 (84.11 %) are fish remains. The largest number of remains, dating from both prehistoric ages, is recorded at Hârşova: 5,095 from the Boian Neolithic level and 260,478 from the Gumelniţa Chalcolithic level, amounting to about 85–90 % of the total faunal remains. These figures can be related to the role of fish in the diet of the inhabitants of these ancient settlements (table 1).8 Table 1. Fish remains as a proportion of all bone fragments9 Archaeological site Borduşani Coslogeni

Danube floodplain

Hârşova Isaccea Luncaviţa

Proximity of the Danube river

Boian (Neolithic) culture % –

Gumelniţa (Chalcolithic) culture % 49.64

84.11

–

83.21

91.73

72.68

–

–

50.38

In terms of taxonomy, the most numerous individuals from the three settlements belonging to the Boian culture (Coslogeni, Hârşova, and Isaccea), dated to the fifth to fourth millennium BC, are the cyprinidae (mainly carp), siluridae (sheatfish), acipenseridae (sturgeon), percidae (pikeperch) and esocidae (pike). For the Gumelniţa culture (Borduşani, Hârşova, and Luncaviţa), 21 species have been identified, the richest site being Hârşova with 19 taxa. Although anadromous saltwater fish (sturgeons) have been found, the majority of the discoveries are freshwater species: pikeperch, carp, pike, bream, etc. Osteometric analysis led to some interesting conclusions regarding the sizes of different individuals caught. Thus, to mention only a few cases, bone remains belonging to a beluga over 2.8 m in length and weighing over 181 kg have been discovered at Isaccea, the average size of pike identified in 7 8 9

For general references, see Schuster and Morintz 2006: 65–6. Radu 2003: 35–41. Data from Radu 2003: 35–41.

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the Boian settlements is 678 mm in length and 2.2 kg in weight, and sheatfish from the Gumelniţa Danubian sites range from 20 cm and 3 m in length.10 Regarding fishing gear and techniques, almost all major fishing techniques are directly or indirectly attested. Spearing, in the case of large fish, is demonstrated by the discovery of antler harpoons, such as those from Gumelniţa, Hârşova and Cernavodă, a settlement on the right bank of the Danube. Used both for hunting and combat, harpoons were extremely useful tools with which to catch large fish, such as beluga and sheatfish; in fact, these were easy prey for prehistoric hunters, particularly during spawning periods. Angling is documented by finds of copper hooks, which are very common in the later phases of the Chalcolithic cultures (with discoveries at Căscioarele, Vidra and Gornea). Finds of bone sinkers (at Pietrele or Hârşova) and large burnt limestone anchors are related to net fishing. The use of fishing nets made of threads of animal hair or wool, and later of vegetal fibres, represented a considerable development, providing prehistoric communities with plentiful food resources to cover both their own needs and a surplus to use in bartering exchanges with neighbouring populations. Trapping also probably took place, using weirs or bottomless baskets. The discovery of stone anchors (at Hârşova) is proof that fishermen used not only stationary techniques but also mobile ones (small craft, dugouts or simple rafts), in order to increase their range.11 During the transition period, the Bronze Age and the Hallstatt, fishing remained a common occupation for the Danubian communities, although archaeological data are not as impressive as for previous periods. Nevertheless, discoveries such as those from the Iron Gates region (fish and shell remains, copper hooks) demonstrate that aquatic species continued to form part of the standard diet of the local inhabitants.12

3. Fishing in classical antiquity The oldest written information about fishing in the Danube region is found in Arrian’s account of the campaigns of Alexander the Great. In 335 BC, while struggling against local tribes, the Macedonian king intended to cross the river and attack the Getae population living north of the Danube; thus, he collected all the boats available from the surrounding country. ‘Of these there was a great abundance, because the people who dwell near the Ister use them for fishing in the river, sometimes also for journeying to each other for traffic up the river’.13 Unfortunately, however, narrative evidence with references to Danubian fishing are not very abundant and, when available, it does not include direct observations but only second-hand reports, though these may be extremely interesting. Thus, Athenaeus, a Greek writer from second-century AD Egypt, in a work called Deipnosophistae (The Learned Banqueters) compares a large fish from the Nile, weighing about 200 pounds and having exceedingly white and very delicious meat, with a fish from the Danube called glanis (probably

10 11 12 13

Radu 2003: 102–32; other data, in Romanian, can be found in Bălăşescu and Radu 2004: 105–17; Bălăşescu et al. 2005: 75–86; also Bălăşescu and Radu 2002: 78–9. Examples selected from Comşa 1996: 177–91; 2000: 302–3; Schuster and Morintz 2006: 66–9. For references to archaezoological studies in the southwestern part of Romania, see El Susi 1996. Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander 1.3.6.

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the sheatfish),14 which, according to Pliny the Elder, was caught with large hooks of iron.15 Another very important excerpt is also preserved by Athenaeus: ‘He received a sturgeon, which the mighty Danube nurtures, the half-salt joy of Scythians’.16 This statement is to be related to the trade in Danubian sturgeon and caviar, which flourished and was carried out by the Greek colonists settled on the western shores of the Black Sea as early as the eighth century BC. Histria, for example, located close to the Peuce mouth of the Danube, was, for almost a millennium, a significant centre in the ancient ‘international’ fish trade. With excellent connections with the eastern Mediterranean–Black Sea routes and, via the Danube, with the hinterland, Histria may be included amongst the series of fishing stations founded by the Milesians at the mouths of the great fishing rivers of this region (the Danube, the Dniester, the Bug, the Dnjepr), all holding out ‘the promise of easy profits and miraculous draughts of fish’.17 In the first century BC, the Greek colonies were conquered by the Romans and then included in the province of Moesia, but they maintained their fishing rights. Relevant details come from several diplomas issued by the Roman governors of Moesia and addressed to the magistrates and inhabitants of Histria, such as that dated about AD 50–57 in which governor Flavius Sabinus confirmed the former rights of the Histrians; since he was told that ‘almost the sole income of the city comes from salted fish’, he reasserted that, according to their ‘old custom’, the Histrians could preserve, without having to pay any duties, ‘the freedom to fish in the Peuce mouth’ of the Danube.18 Similar freedoms were acknowledged in the following decades, in accordance with the right which, ‘from the emperors’ mercy’, their ‘ancestors and parents uninterruptedly enjoyed’.19 In the absence of extensive narrative sources, archaeological discoveries are crucial, and the large quantities of remains of fish and fishing gear found in excavations of Hallstatt and La Tène sites confirm the presumption that fishing held a special value for the Iron Age communities living in the proximity of the Danube. During the Roman period in the Danube region, as for the rest of the Empire, fish was an essential foodstuff, especially for the aristocracy, who sometimes preferred it over beef or pork, and ate it fresh, salted or smoked. At Histria, the presence of fishing is attested in all archaeological levels both by a large quantity of shells and fish bones, and by the remains of fishing gear such as hooks and sinkers.20 The same conclusion regarding the place held by fishing may result from an analysis of the numismatic and epigraphic pieces displaying the official emblem of the city: an eagle holding in its claws a dolphin or, according to other interpretations, a sturgeon (figs 11.2–3).21 Also rewarding may be the consideration of linguistic evidence, particularly for the period when, after the withdrawal of the Roman administration south of the Danube (AD 271) and the beginning of the great migrations, the region became the melting pot that was to 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Athenaeus 7.311. Pliny, NH 9.145. Athenaeus 3.119; for references to sturgeon in the ancient world, see Carney 1967: 202–20; on the problems related to sturgeon fishing, see Ardeleanu 2011. Rostovtzeff 1922: 61–63; for fishing large sheatfish in the Danube by means of hooks and ropes pulled by oxen or horses, see Aelian, NA 14.25. Quoted in Pârvan 1974: 60; see also Lytle, this volume, p. 122. Pippidi 1956: 138–9. Pippidi and Berciu 1965: 164–5; Suceveanu 1977: 82. Giurescu 1964: 49–50; see also Bekker-Nielsen, this volume, p. 294.

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Figs 11.2–3: Coins of Histria (Istrus) showing eagle and dolphin on reverse. (Photos courtesy of Numismatik Naumann GmbH, Munich and Dr Busso Peus Nachfolger Münzhandlung, Frankfurt). produce the Romanian people. If the words baltă (pool), gard (weir) and cârlig (hook) are considered as lexical legacies from the Dacian language, a large portion of the vocabulary related to fish and fishing comes from Latin: the generic term peşte (fish) from piscis, piscem; lapţi (milk) from lactes; băşică (bladder) from bessica/vessica lactes; solzi (fish scales) from solidus. Fishing gear that was also used during the Roman period, in a diachronic linguistic interpretation, included sacul (sack, from saccus), reţeaua (net, from retella/retis) and furca (fishing trident, from furca). The Slavic tribes which settled in the Danubian region from the sixth century AD, were skilful fishermen, and this is also visible in the Romanian lexical treasury. Thus, several Romanian fish names – morun (beluga), nisetru (common sturgeon), viză (fringe barbel or ship sturgeon), cegă (sterlet), crap (carp), ştiucă (pike), babuşcă (roach), clean (chub), etc. – as well as terms for fishing tools such as plasă (fishing net), mreajă (toil), vîrşă (fyke net), vintir (pound net) and undiţă (angle) are derived from Slavic.22

4. Fishing in the early Middle Ages Few narrative sources enlighten the history of the Danubian territory during the so-called ‘dark millennium’, between the fourth and the fourteenth centuries when the region was ravaged by barbarian invasions and faced instability, disorder and confusion. Yet there are some sources, supported by archaeological data, regarding fish and fishing which assert to the permanence of this profitable occupation. Thus, regarding fishing in the Danube and in its floodplain, relevant data come from the archaeological excavations at Bisericuţa (Garvăn) in Tulcea county. In this Roman and Byzantine stronghold, identified as the ancient settlement of Dinogeţia, fishing was clearly one of the main activities, as demonstrated by the proportion of fishing-related material in the archaeological inventory. The diversity of fishing techniques employed is attested by the variety of gear discovered here: the remains of a fishing net, brick and stone sinkers (over 200), iron and bronze hooks, iron harpoons, fishing lines with hooks for catching sturgeon and fishing tridents. The fishing net, a rare discovery, is particularly interesting; it was made 22

Giurescu 1964: 51–4.

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Fig. 11.4: Fishing gear found at Dinogeţia. (Barnea 1969, fig. 32). of hemp rope using the same system as those manufactured today, with a mesh size measuring 6.5 cm square. It was thus a rather coarse-meshed fishing net, suitable for catching large fish. Similarly, an almost 24 cm-long iron harpoon would also have been employed mainly for catching large fish and for fishing during the colder seasons.23 Although there is not complete agreement amongst all specialists, some of the storage holes (veritable ‘barrels’, about 2 m deep) found in several early medieval settlements seem to have been used for preserving salted fish for long periods of time. The interiors were loamed or even burnt in order to keep out water and rats. The employment of other rare fishing tackles, such as the ostia (trident) 23

Iron spikes and bone skates might also have been used for winter fishing and ice walking: Barnea and Ştefănescu 1971: 385.

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which retains the same form today, is further proof that these were professional fishermen, earning their living from fishing and, most probably, from trading a portion of their catch.24 The same conclusions are true for the Byzantine settlement of Păcuiul lui Soare (tenth century AD), where the numbers and sizes of hooks, harpoons, limestone and brick sinkers, etc. indicate that fishing for large fish, mainly sturgeon and sheatfish, was a commonplace activity. This is also confirmed by the dimensions of the fish remains preserved, and suggests the existence of specialised fishermen and of fishing as a permanent activity. The medieval settlement, dated to the eleventh to fourteenth century, provided the same substantial archaeological materials – a further indication of fishing being a chief profession of the local inhabitants during the broader period.25 Recent archaezoological research at nine archaeological settlements in Dobrudja (Hârşova, Capidava, Isaccea, Piua Petrii, Slava Rusă, Oltina, Dinogeţia, Adamclisi, Dumbrăveni), covering an extremely long chronological interval (fourth to seventeenth century), has demonstrated that fish formed part of the common diet of the medieval population. Although this material is very difficult to analyse (sieving was not employed during the excavations and in consequence, a large proportion of the faunal remains were lost), thirteen fish species (all freshwater) were identified as well as the sturgeon. The fish remains preserved at Dinogeţia (fourth to sixth century) represent 15.5 % of the whole faunal dataset, at Hârşova (ninth to twelfth century) 36.65 % and at Isaccea (eleventh to thirteenth century) only 6.44 %. The most prevalent identified species are: pike, identified at eight settlements; carp, identified in all samples, except the one from Piua Petrii; sheatfish, identified at seven sites (not at Adamclisi and Dumbrăveni); pikeperch, found at Hârşova, Oltina, Garvăn, Slava Rusă and Dumbrăveni; and sturgeon, found at Piua Petrii, Hârşova, Isaccea, Oltina, Dumbrăveni, Dinogetia and Slava Rusă. The other species identified were bream (Abramis brama), asp (Aspius aspius), white bream (Blicca bjoerkna), common rudd (Scardinius erythrophthalmus), crucian carp (Carassius carassius), ziege (Pelecus cultratus), roach (Rutilus rutilus), tench (Tinca tinca) and perch (Perca fluviatilis).26 For the Byzantine village of Oltina (tenth to eleventh century), recent zooarchaeological research has allowed estimates to be made of the sizes and weights of several commonly fished species. For carp, the total restored length of the body ranges between 37 cm and 88.6 cm, and the weight between 0.7 kg and 10.2 kg; bream are between 40 cm and 47 cm in length and 0.79 kg to 1.33 kg in weight; sheatfish range between 41.72 cm and 228.36 cm (0.5–81 kg); pikeperch vary from 39.25 cm to 80.9 cm (0.5–4.9 kg); and pike are most commonly (in 63.6 % of cases) between 50 cm and 70 cm in total length (0.89–2.4 kg). Equally interesting are the methods used to cook the fish, which can be demonstrated indirectly: concentrations of scales from the Cyprinidae and Percidae taxa identified near fireplaces in houses indicate that a portion of the fish were descaled and probably boiled or fried in a variety of containers and not only directly in the embers.27

24 25 26 27

Barnea 1955: 99–121; Constantinescu 1956: 407–10; Barnea 1969: 36; Barnea and Ştefănescu 1971: 177, 387–8. Diaconu and Vâlceanu 1972: 174–7; 1977: 33–5. Stanc and Bejenaru 2008: 273–7. Stanc et al. 2006: 273–80; see also Bejenaru and Stanc 2002: 226–32; Bejenaru et al. 2007: 101–6.

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Fig. 11.5: Fishing gear found at Păcuiul lui Soare. (Diaconu and Valceanu 1972, fig. 71).

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Fig. 11.6: Fishing implements found at Păcuiul lui Soare, 14th century AD. (Diaconu and Baraschi 1977, fig. 20). Narrative sources from this period also suggest that fishing was a significant occupation. During his campaign against the nomadic Cumans in 1148, the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus found at Demnitzikos (identified as Zimnicea) numerous dugout canoes, belonging most probably to the local fishermen; he used these boats to cross the Danube, just as Alexander the Great had done one and a half thousand years earlier.28 In 1247, when King Bela IV of Hungary allowed the Knights Hospitaller to settle south of the Carpathians and defend the Hungarian borders against invading tribes, he granted them, in the territories ceded, significant privileges and properties, including the ‘fisheries now existent or those which will be established by them’, with the exception of ‘the fisheries from the Danube and the ponds from Celei’, whose income was to be shared between the royalty and the knights. Indirect evidence of the fish trade on the Danube comes from 1299, when the Byzantine ambassador Theodore Metochites, sent to the court of Stephen Miliutin, king of Serbia, was given salted fish, which ‘in Constantinople, come rarely and are sought after by some with priority, but not always with success’. In the case of Dobrudja, then in the Byzantine sphere 28

Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander 1.3.

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of influence, this trade was extremely profitable, particularly as Genoese merchants had established active colonies there. Another relative indication is linked to the use of Byzantine coins; in Wallachia, the hyperpryon (a very common coin in the twelfth to thirteenth century) became the name of a tax, paid at the fishery, in this coinage, for a cart or a ship loaded with fish.29

5. Fishing in the fourteenth to eighteenth century The foundation of the Romanian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in the fourteenth century and the subsequent multiplication and diversification of written sources cast new light on the importance of fishing for the Danubian population. As owners of the fishing domains, especially of the ponds and brooks of the Danube floodplain, the hospodars enjoyed considerable revenues from fishing exploitation, which could be donated to the local nobility, the boyars, or, most often, to the monasteries. Thus, for example, in 1374 Prince Vlaicu of Wallachia gave the Vodiţa Monastery ‘the princely income at the Danube from eight casting nets’ in the Iron Gates region, and another hospodar later granted Cozia Monastery an immense fishing territory, measuring at least 25 km in length, in the region of the Borcea branch of the Danube.30 Heavy penalties were imposed on those who did not respect the exclusive fishing privileges: according to a contemporary document referring to the fishing rights of the Cozia Monastery, in 1503 nobody, without parish approval, ‘was allowed to fish or to weir on these ponds, neither townsman, nor boyar, nor other people, nor the village of a boyar’; if anyone disobeyed, ‘a stone will be fastened to his neck, and he will be thrown into the water’.31 The proprietors of fishing territories had the exclusive right to levy a tax on fishing, the tithe or the fish duty: a tenth of the catch. A dignitary called a stolnic was responsible for supervising fishing and gathering the tithe from the princely ponds. In subsequent centuries, the tax demanded by certain owners, chiefly the monasteries, greatly increased and reached up to a third of the catch. Documents also mention that those living in the vicinity of the Danube were compelled to fish three days a year for the benefit of the reigning prince, mainly during periods when valuable fish, such as sturgeon, could be caught. The organisation of fishing in the Danube delta established by the Moldavian hospodars was preserved by the Ottoman authorities after the conquest of Kilia fortress (1484) and the complete subjection of the area, a fact confirmed in a regulation issued by order of Sultan Bayezid II.32 The right to fish in the branches and brooks of the delta was granted to tenants, called sahibs (owners or patrons) by the Turks, in exchange for a tithe (a tenth of the catch) being given to the central authority, as well as an additional 100 barrels of fish a year (about 11.1 tonnes). In the spring and autumn, the sultan (as previously the hospodar) received one cartload and two cartloads of fish respectively (mainly sturgeon). The military magistrates 29 30 31

32

Giurescu 1964: 57–61. Giurescu 1964: 65–9. For other examples from Moldavia, see Neamţu 1955: 35–6. Giurescu 1964: 275–98. There are three important chapters related to the organisation of fishing in this period: the princely dignitaries and fishing; the taxes and labours or obligations related to fishing; and the lovişte and branişte (places for hunting or fishing), access to which was completely forbidden to those who did not possess the necessary authorisations. Beldiceanu 1968: 237–9.

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of Kilia also received a portion of the catch and had the right to buy several barrels of fish at half price. The customs charge, paid by the buyer, was three aspers per barrel, plus 0.25 aspers per barrel to the secretariat of the central authority. This arrangement was preserved by the Ottomans, who usually maintained existing fiscal systems in newly-conquered territories.33 In the sixteenth century, the Ottoman authorities received a third of the fresh fish caught in the special enclosures of the Kilia branch of the Danube; at Silistra and Vidin, the representatives of the Turkish port administration received a quarter of the catch.34 Considerable revenues were obtained by the Ottoman, Wallachian and Moldavian authorities from leasing fishing in the Danube and its floodplain. According to a seventeenth-century foreign source, the hospodar of Wallachia received 60,000 scudi a year from leasing the Danube fisheries – a significant income, equivalent to the revenue from leasing the country’s customs houses.35 Narrative sources abound in references to the richness and diversity of the Danube aquatic population and to the cheapness of fish, which must presumably be related to the large number of fishing places, to the techniques employed and to the enormous catch. Foreign travelogues are very interesting, with chroniclers impressed with this fish wealth. There are numerous works which concur with the opinion, stated by the Russian general von Bauer in 1778, that ‘the numberless array of fishes of all species in the Danube surpasses everything that can be said; it’s difficult to believe it, if you have not seen it with your own eyes’.36 According to another eighteenth-century observer, the most important fish, from an economic point of view, were: the sheatfish, which could reach up to 200 pounds or about 112 kg and several metres in length: ‘sometimes one and a half fathoms; the breadth of its belly is close to that of two corpulent persons’; the carp, which could weigh 30 pounds (16.8 kg); and the pike, which was larger, ‘up to four cubits in length, about two palms in breadth and weighing up to sixty pounds’ (33.6 kg). The eelpout was another valued fish, having one of ‘the tastiest and the most healthy’ meats. But the most appreciated species was the sturgeon, a veritable treasure of the Danube: the largest sterlet from the Danube weighed ‘eleven pounds, of which three are roes’, and its meat was the tastiest; the beluga was about two fathoms long and weighed 500–600 pounds (280–336 kg), but it could be as heavy as 900 pounds (504 kg).37 Regarding the techniques employed to catch this abundance of fish, the sources refer to a large variety of tackle and methods used by fishermen, according to the type of water in which they fished, to the species targeted and to the season. In his impressive book of 1916, Antipa classified fishing techniques into several categories, and these demonstrate the complexity of fishing in the Danubian area. From the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the largest and most important of the fishing gears employed in the Romanian principalities, both in terms of use and of economic productivity, was the seine. Various types were used in all kinds of waters, both in the Danube itself and the neighbouring rivers, lakes and ponds, and the seine was a very efficient 33 34

35 36 37

Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru 1971: 267–70. Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru 1971: 270–5; Mateescu 1991: 211–2; on how fishermen from Silistra were deported to Kilia to exploit the rich fish resources of the area, see Beldiceanu and Beldiceanu Steinherr 1975: 42–3, 47–50. Holban et al. (eds) 1971: 14. Von Bauer 1778: 7. Marsigli 1744: 7–8, 32–6, 57–8, 63–4, 72.

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instrument (about 2,000–3,000 kg were caught in each haul of the net, although even larger catches are reported). Nevertheless, it was a very complex enterprise, requiring about twelve fishermen to use a seine, with six fishermen in each of the two boats involved in the operation. The seine fishers were led by a master (vătaf), whose ability to coordinate the teamwork and knowledge of rich fishing places was decisive to the success of the operation. A variant of the seine, used particularly in shallow waters (ponds, channels, etc.), was the tifan, and this needed at least six fishermen and two boats to be operated. The orie (a net in the shape of a large sack, about 6 m long), on the other hand, was managed by only two people in two boats travelling downstream, and was employed mainly in the spring and autumn to catch sheatfish.38 The mreaja was another very effective fishing gear; this was a gill-net of thin and resistant thread, up to 100 m long, that was placed vertically in the water and in whose mesh fish were trapped during the night. The coteţ was a round enclosure made of reed or twig wattle; it had a small opening through which fish, having entered, were unable to escape. Tunnel nets, known as vintire or vârşe, were nets with a cylindrical form and a conical end; their narrow entrance allowed the fish to enter, but not to exit. Another very common fishing method, largely employed due to its economic productivity (in terms of both the quality and quantity of the catch), employed weir structures constructed from wooden posts, as described by the Syrian chronicler Paul of Aleppo. Travelling on the Danube in the middle of the seventeenth century, Paul reached the port of Kilia, in the environs of which there were fourteen traps ‘for catching fish, and in particular the sturgeon’. The weirs had to be reconstructed each year, as each spring, upon the thawing of the winter ice, ‘the stream carries away the stakes, by the violence of its overflow’. The construction procedure is described as follows: workmen cut thousands of stakes, bring them to the Danube, plane off the heads to form spear-like points and drive them into the ground, … in a row from end to end, leaving only, on one side, an opening sufficient for the passage of a boat; whilst at the further end is a narrow channel enclosing a kind of small house, all of wooden stakes fastened in the ground. When the morona [beluga] or other fish approach this enclosure, they are made, by an excellent contrivance, to fall into it; and the company of persons charged with this occupation strike them with long spears, till they are killed; for the fish have no means of retreating.39

Other minute details of these fishing weirs are provided by the description of the Turkish voyager Evliya Çelebi. In 1658–9, Çelebi saw large piles of stakes at the Danube mouths and 2,000 peasants working, with 200 boats, to fix them into the river bed: By means of long, bifurcated poles, they place at the bottom of the water nets knit from vines and attach them to the rafters. When these nets reach to the surface of the water, the Danube has the aspect of a river crossed by mats, so that not even fish the size of a palm can swim beyond these nets’.40

38 39 40

For further, detailed information, see Giurescu 1964: 208–18. Paul of Aleppo, The Travels of Macarius 2.420; in Romanian, in Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru and Mehmet (eds) 1976: 284–5. Giurescu 1964: 92–3; for the whole description of Evliya Çelebi, see Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru and Mehmet (eds) 1976: 442–3.

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A similar type of fishing weir was described at Silistra, where stakes of fir, oak and hornbeam, allegedly over 50 m long, were driven into the river bed. The workers bound twig wattle to them, starting from the bed of the river and leaving only a single opening fitted with a wattle gate which would allow boats to pass. The trap was watched day and night by the contractor and his men, 100–200 people, who continuously collected the fish caught in the wattle fence.41 Although fishing was done all along the Danube and in its lakes and ponds, there were several places where it was especially profitable and which provided large quantities of fish for local and foreign markets. The Danube delta had enormous fish resources, with the fisheries of Kilia being the most productive of them all. The Italian monk Niccolo Barsi who visited Kilia in 1633, wrote that all species of fish were caught there and sold at a very cheap price; beluga was sold fresh, but also salted, and an excellent caviar was made of their roe, and, as a consequence, ‘merchants from Constantinople, Poland, Hungary, Wallachia and other countries come to buy fish and make provisions for their cities’.42 The Frenchmen Jean Baptiste Tavernier also mentions that at Kilia ‘they fish each year many belugas, whose roes are prepared pressed or fresh’.43 In 1672, the Italian Cornelio Magni considered the fishing at Kilia ‘the biggest that is done on the Danube’,44 and, in the middle of the eighteenth century, the French consul Claude Charles de Peyssonel stated that there was intense beluga fishing at Kilia, of which two important products were made: salted fish and caviar. The fish trade was worth about 100,000 piastres, and each fish, weighing about 60–70 okkas (47–55 kg), was sold for 3.5–4 piastres, which equals a total annual catch of about 25,000 large beluas.45 Ismail, upstream on the river, was another important fishing location, where the local pasha and his men were usually the tenants of the fishing rights. The Dutch traveller George Dousa wrote, in a narrative published in 1590, that there was a great abundance of very good and cheap fish, in particular carp, which was exported not only to Greece but also to the western countries.46 In the 1650s, the Bulgarian archbishop Petru Baksici mentioned that the inhabitants of northern Dobrudja live ‘especially by fishing’, as they caught ‘very large quantities of fish’.47 Galaţi, the most important port of Moldavia, was a key point in the internal fish trade and in that oriented towards Poland. Several travellers noticed the abundance and cheapness of the fish sold here. In 1612, Tomaso Alberti wrote that he found ‘many and good fishes, that is fresh belugas, Danube sturgeons, pikes, in a very large number and at a very cheap price, almost for nothing’;48 in 1652, Robert Bargrave noted that the fish was so cheap that for the equivalent of two pence, he bought enough fish to feed five or six persons.49 Brăila, the largest Wallachian port and, since the 1540s, a Turkish stronghold, was the centre of a large fish export industry, as the settlement collected the harvest of the Brăila and Borcea 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru and Mehmet (eds) 1976: 373–5; on the importance of fishing during the Ottoman period, see Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru 1971: 267–82. Holban et al. (eds) 1973: 84. Holban et al. (eds) 1980: 525. Holban et al. (eds) 1980: 547. De Peysonnel 1787: 142, 320–1. Holban et al. (eds) 1972: 87. Holban et al. (eds) 1973: 223. Holban et al. (eds) 1970: 157–8. Holban et al. (eds) 1973: 486.

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ponds and exported it to Transylvania or, through the Danube mouths, to the Mediterranean markets. The Ottoman stronghold of Silistra, on the right bank, owed its economic prosperity to intensive fishing and the fish trade, controlled by the local pasha. The town had many fish bazaars, and fish was carried ‘from here to the whole of Europe’.50 Fishing was as considerable in the Wallachian floodplain, … where, when the Danube floods, the neighbouring ponds are filled with all types of fishes that are in this river, to such an extent that in only a day they take out from these ponds fish worth a thousand scudi; they salt it and bring it to several countries to sell it.51

A similar remark was made, at the end of the eighteenth century, by the Austrian consul Ignaz Stefan Raicevich: The banks of this river, in Wallachia, are very low and they flood in spring. When the waters start to retreat, channels are formed … the fishermen enclose with reed fences the mouth of the channels, and so the fish cannot get out … and is caught very easily and then salted and smoked.52

The Iron Gates region, where fishing was leased by the pasha of Vidin, was the last important fishing area on the Lower Danube. At Orşova, for example, all the inhabitants were involved in net fishing; in this rather small town, there were 50 fish-cellars in which fish were preserved. At Vidin, according to Çelebi, large quantities of salt and hundreds of thousands of fish were brought each year from Wallachia: ‘beluga and common sturgeon, on all being paid a customs tax by those who bring the fish’.53 5.1 Fish trade and fish prices Although mainly occupied with catching fish, fishermen were also involved in trading fish in the Romanian principalities and abroad. Due to the abundance and cheapness of fish, the domestic fish trade was substantial throughout these centuries. Transport took place in carts drawn by oxen or, in the case of fresh fish, by horses. Written sources regarding Petru Rareş, a sixteenth-century Moldavian fisherman and later ruler, mention that he brought from Galaţi to the capital ‘ten carts, each with six oxen, full of fish’.54 In most urban settlements of Moldavia and Wallachia, fish was sold in designated fish markets, but in the capitals and in other large towns, fish merchants were spread out along entire streets full of fish stalls. Fish merchants were usually specialised, being divided into two categories: sellers of fresh fish (prospătaşii) and sellers of salted fish (sărătaşii). In the eighteenth century, the fish merchants of Bucharest were united into a guild, led by a master, whose duty it was to 50

51 52 53 54

Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru and Mehmet (eds) 1976: 371. In 1657, Conrad Jacob Hiltebrandt mentioned that he received at Silistra several belugas, ‘big, beautiful and fat fishes’, caught in the Danube: Holban et al. (eds) 1973: 606. Evliya Çelebi noticed that merchants from several countries, including those of western Europe, came to Silistra to buy salted fish, roe and fish glue: Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru and Mehmet (eds) 1976: 373–4 Giurescu 1964: 115. Raicevich 1822: 44–5. Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru and Mehmet (eds) 1976: 625. Giurescu 1964: 265.

Fishing in the Lower Danube and its floodplain from the earliest times to the twentieth century 325

ensure that the fish was sold only in specially designated places and at the right price (nart), i. e., the maximum price imposed by the public authorities on certain everyday products. At the same time, there were fish traders who brought fish to the villages and sold it at fairs and markets, or bartered it in exchange for products such as flour, cheese and fruit.55 As noted by both domestic and foreign sources, the price of fish was very low. In 1582, the Englishman John Newberie remarked on the cheapness of the fish caught at the Danube mouths.56 Later on, George Dousa emphasized the supply of very good fish, mainly carp, and, due to this, their very cheap price.57 At Galaţi, Tomaso Alberti wrote of the wealth of fresh beluga, other sturgeons and pikeperch, and their very low price: being sold ‘almost for nothing’.58 A similar statement was made by the Italian monk Barsi in 1633: the sturgeon, very numerous at Kilia, were so cheap that he often bought fish weighing ‘30 pounds each, for four aspers, which in Venetian currency is four gazettes’.59 Fish was still as cheap in the eighteenth century, when in 1795 the Austrian agent Merkelius reported that in the Danube ports live carp and pike could be bought at four to five piastres per 100 okkas (one okka = 1.283 kg), and live beluga and other large fish for eight to ten piastres. According to a source, the price had been even lower. On the Danube, fresh beluga was four paras an okka, whereas in the market it cost eight paras; carp and sheatfish were five and four paras an okka respectively; bream and other small fish were one para an okka, ‘and nobody bought it’; ‘lobsters 20 for a para; pressed caviar 30 paras an okka and fresh caviar 20 paras an okka’.60 Prices rose during the foreign occupations and in the subsequent periods of instability, so that a maximum price, nart, was introduced. Nevertheless, due to the multitude of weights and measures employed and the variety of coins in circulation (the principalities had no domestic currency), the estimates regarding the evolution of prices are rather questionable and inconclusive. From the fifteenth century onwards, documents provide more detailed data, enabling general quantitative evaluations regarding the Danubian fishing industry. Fish exports from the Romanian principalities were regulated by a series of charters granted by the Romanian hospodars to local or foreign tradesmen, who had to pay customs duties both in cash and in products. In 1422, merchants exporting fish to Transylvania, part of the Kingdom of Hungary, were taxed seven fish and two hyperpryons for each maja (a measurement unit equivalent to a cartful) of carp at Rucăr, while for a maja of beluga the rate was nine hyperpryons and two ‘belts’ (long, thin strips of beluga back). Similar conditions were imposed in 1408 on Polish merchants exporting fish to Lvov, the tax being paid as money; the customs duty paid by Transylvanian merchants importing fish from Moldavia, however, was paid in kind: ‘one fish for every thirty fishes’.61 A large portion of the fish caught in the Danube area was exported to Transylvania, where the Saxon towns of Braşov, Sibiu and Bistriţa were not only large consumers, but also storehouses from whence the entire region was supplied. The bulk of the fish exported from 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

Giurescu 1964: 227–43. Holban et al. (eds) 1970: 515–6. Holban et al. (eds) 1972: 87. Holban et al. (eds) 1972: 360. Holban et al. (eds) 1973: 84. Giurescu 1964: 241. Giurescu 1964: 245–60.

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the Romanian principalities was salted fish, although sometimes, early in spring or late in autumn, fresh fish was traded as well; so were smoked fish and caviar. Transport usually took place by pack-horse, more rarely by carts and carriages. Thus, the measurement unit found in the sources is a povara (‘burden’, plural poveri), equivalent to about 135 kg. Quantitative data are available for the sixteenth century, when the customs registers of Braşov recorded all incoming merchandise from Wallachia. Fish was by far the most traded product, as it represented, by value, between half and two-thirds of the city’s total import trade.62 The largest quantity was registered in 1545, when a total of 8,713 poveri or 1,176 tonnes of fish, worth 888,500 aspers (62.7 % of the total imports to the Braşov market) were imported from the Wallachian principality. Moldavia also exported fish to Braşov. Although fewer data are available for this trade, documents state that over a ten-month period at the end of the fifteenth century, 2,295 poveri (310 tonnes) of fish worth 250,360 aspers, were imported from Moldavia;63 by comparison, the quantities recorded for the sixteenth century are completely insignificant: 23 poveri in 1503, nothing in 1529–30 and 1543, four poveri in 1545, seventeen in 1547 and twenty in 1549. In Braşov there was a large fish market (forum piscium, forum piscarium, Fischmarckt), close to the merchants’ house, as well as a ‘fish house’ (domum piscium), fish cellars (boltae piscium) and fish storehouses (camerae piscium), in which fish could be kept in exchange for a rent paid to the town council.64 Table 2. Total fish imports to Braşov, selected years 1503–1554.65 Quantity (in poveri)

Value (in aspers)

1503

5,285.0

595,350

1529–30

4,264.5

471,510

1542

3,218.5

332,960

1543

7,318.5

761,900

1545

8,713.5

888,500

1546

7,134.5

766,760

1547

6,855.5

738,980

1548

6,290.0

688,100

1549

7,610.0

797,940

1550

7,174.0

702,340

1551

4,506.5

475,820

1554

4,760.0

492,420

In terms of species, it can be seen from Table 3 that freshwater fish, carp and sheatfish, dominated the commerce, comprising over three-quarters of the imports to Braşov. It is in62 63 64 65

Manolescu 1965: 132–5. Manolescu 1965: 112. Giurescu 1964: 233–4. Figures from Manolescu 1965: 110–2. In 1548, 25 carts were recorded and, in 1551 and 1554, two carts in each year. Similar information is to be found in Manolescu 1955: 87–94.

Fishing in the Lower Danube and its floodplain from the earliest times to the twentieth century 327

teresting to note that in 1548 two huge sheatfish, weighing over 150 kg and worth 100 aspers each, were imported. Pike and beluga were commonly traded, as were carp and beluga roes. Regarding prices, pike, sheatfish, bream, pikeperch and pike roe were valued by the local authorities, who imposed the local tax or vigesima (one-twentieth of the value) on all products, at 80 aspers a povara (‘burden’), carp and carp roe at 120 aspers, shad at 100–160 aspers, and beluga and caviar at 160 aspers per povara. Market prices were much higher, about double those of the taxation valuation, and provided merchants with enormous profits.66 Large quantities of fish, but smaller than those of Braşov, were imported to Sibiu. In 1500, 2,538 poveri were imported, made up of 1,534 poveri of carp (60 %), 479 of sheatfish, 379 of pike, 74.5 of beluga and 72 poveri of mixed fish. Fish was the most valuable product imported to Sibiu from Wallachia, its value representing 78 % of the total merchandise bought by local tradesmen from their southern neighbour.67 Table 3. Fish imports to Braşov by species, selected years 1503–1542.68 1503 Quantity (poveri)

1529–30 Value (aspers)

Carp

3,193

383,160

Pike

Quantity (poveri)

1542 Value (aspers)

2,804

336,480

Quantity (poveri)

Value (aspers)

1,052.5

126,300

1,041.5

83,320

143

11,440

525.5

42,040

Sheatfish

461.5

36,920

1,078

86,240

1,167.5

93,400

Beluga

538.5

86,160

210

33,600

399

63,840

Bream

–

–

–

–

51.5

4,120

Pikeperch

–

–

–

–

1

80

Shad

2.5

250

12

1,340

–

–

Carp and pike

33

3,260

–

–

–

–

Carp roes

3

360

9

1,080

5.5

660

Pike roes

–

–

–

–

0.5

40

12

1,920

8.5

1,330

15.5

2,480

5,285

595,350

4,264.5

471,510

3,218.5

332,960

Beluga roes Total

The Moldavian share of the fish export trade was as substantial. It was directed, in the first place, towards Lvov in Poland, where accounts mention the trade in beluga and fish products as early as 1405. Among the most active fish merchants was Prince Stephen the Great, who is alluded to in several documents as having sent fish to Poland by means of an Armenian bulk trader from Suceava. Most probably, these products originated from the tithe received from the Danube fisheries. It should be noted that fish was included among the 66 67 68

Manolescu 1965: 108–9. Manolescu 1956: 217. Based on Manolescu 1965: 110–2.

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feudal obligations of the Moldavian rulers towards their Polish suzerains, as was the case in 1436, when Prince Iliaş pledged to send 200 poveri of beluga to the Polish king. This trade remained as significant in the following centuries: thus, for example, Bishop Bandini wrote, in 1646, that ‘several thousand carts of fish are sent each year to Podolia, Russia, Ukraine and Transylvania’; in the eighteenth century, Polish merchants are noted as buying fish, mostly beluga, at Galaţi, Kilia and Ismail.69 Constantinople was another major key player in the fish and caviar trade, as it was here that the production of the Black Sea was collected and redistributed across the entire Mediterranean. Caviar was in great demand in Greece and the Orthodox countries, particularly during fasts, when Christians did not eat anything ‘warm-blooded’; and it was as popular among the more prosperous Italian cities. Thus, according to recent research, the Lower Danube region was an important provider of sturgeon and caviar to the Constantinopolitan market, and also for cities of the Adriatic, being transported either by sea or by the Balkan overland routes. This trade proved so profitable for Venetian merchants that, in the seventeenth century, the Venetian bailo obtained from the Porte the authorisation to appoint a consul at Kilia. As the Ottomans were not very willing to allow foreign merchants to trade directly in the Black Sea basin, the transports were usually shipped in the name of Ottoman subjects, such as the merchants of Ragusa (Dubrovnik). The Italian monk Barsi mentions that he met some of these at Kilia, where they were salting beluga and other sturgeon and preparing them for export.70

6. Fishing in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries From the middle of the eighteenth century, a series of political, economic and social transformations paved the way for the arrival of modernism in the Romanian principalities – with its important economic attributes of capitalism and, later on, industrialism. These new realities greatly influenced Danubian fishing and fisheries, which had to cope with the challenges of a period in which, it seems, everything increased exponentially, both quantitatively and qualitatively. As far as fishing was concerned, this meant a higher demand for, catch of and consumption of fish, particularly of the economically most valuable species. Furthermore, this period also saw the first official and scientific attempts to protect the aquatic resources of a river against over-exploitation. A political situation which significantly affected Danubian fishing was the Russo-Ottoman confrontations, in which control of the Danube delta shifted between the opposing parties. After four centuries of Ottoman domination, the Danube delta came under Russian control by the provisions of the treaties of Bucharest (1812) and Adrianople (1829), only to be returned to the Ottoman Empire after the Crimean War (with the southern districts of Bessarabia granted to Moldavia); after the war of 1877–8, the whole province of Dobrudja was assigned to Romania, but southern Bessarabia was once more annexed by Russia.71 The effects of these territorial modifications are to be seen, in terms of fishing, in the even greater 69 70 71

Giurescu 1964: 252–6; on the importance of Moldavian fishing in the fifteenth century, see Neamţu 1955: 39–40. Luca 2007: 262–70. For further interesting details on the roe and caviar trade, see Giurescu 1964: 256–9. On fishing in the Ottoman period, see Mateescu 1991: 216–20.

Fishing in the Lower Danube and its floodplain from the earliest times to the twentieth century 329

diversification of specialised fishing gear employed in a veritable ‘laboratory’ of fishing by an array of fishermen of many different origins who at different times had settled in the Danube delta: Turks, Tatars, Lipovans, Cossacks and Romanians. The decades during which Russia controlled the region (1812–56) deserve particular mention, as the experienced Russian fishermen who settled at the Lower Danube introduced many technical innovations, refined gear and new techniques which increased the quality and quantity of the catches. A large fishing station was established in the region of Lake Vîlkov, where, in the 1830s, the annual catch weighed 200,000 poods or about 3,276 tonnes, of which 491 tonnes were sold at Kilia and 819 tonnes at Ismail.72 A large portion of these fish, as well as the catch from Ottoman Dobrudja, was sent to the Romanian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, where economic data indicate an increase in fish imports during this period.73 The continuing decline of the fishing industry in the Danube floodplain in the principality of Wallachia was related to the growth of agriculture: the demand of European markets for Romanian grain led to large areas of the floodable plains being turned into arable land. At the same time, fishing was affected by the development of river navigation, which limited the number of places where the very profitable ‘fish fences’ could be employed. In this period, fishing on the Danube and in its floodplain became a much more specialised occupation which can be divided into three distinct forms: fishing on the river (with differences between the regions of the cataracts, the Danube proper and its branches); fishing in the river ponds; and fishing in the flooded plains, where it was not only important to catch the fish, but also to catch them at the moment of highest profitability. Much better regulated, in the nineteenth century, was the transport of fish from the fishing stations to the market. The information available, dating from the second part of the period, permits several observations about the organisation of this important stage in the journey between the fisherman and the final consumer. Fisheries and fishing stations became specialised enterprises, better equipped for catching fish and for sending them to the market. As well as the operation of the actual catch, fishermen were also very interested in preserving it fresh, smoked or salted. Usually, fish from the economically ‘superior’ species were sent fresh to market, whereas other, smaller and cheaper species – such as roach, small pike, crucian or smolt – were set aside for preservation. In order to get the fresh fish to market, the fishermen employed various techniques to keep them captive and alive (large sacks, nets and well-boxes or, in the case of extremely large fish, tying them with a rope) or maintaining their freshness by using ice until a suitable quantity had been gathered together for shipment. Thus, large icehouses were necessary investments for the major fishing stations (cherhana); some of them (Jurilovca, Sarichioi, St. Gheorghe, Mila 23, Sulina, etc.) employed even more advanced techniques for storing and packing the fish, so that it reached the market in the best physical condition possible. These stations employed specialists (butchers, smokers, salters) to manufacture different types of preserved fish or other fish products, such as roe, stockfish (salted, undried fish), canned fish, fish oil, fish glue and fish bladder (isinglass).74 Specialists dealt with selling the fish and transporting it to the fish markets. Large fish markets were established in the Danubian ports of Galaţi and Brăila, as well as in Bucharest. 72 73 74

De Hagemeister 1835: 148. See, e. g., Diculescu et al. (eds) 1970. On the techniques and equipment for preserving, preparing and transporting the fish to market, see Antipa 1916: 685–718.

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Galaţi, for example, had a dedicated fishing port where the fish was unloaded before being taken to the fish halls and sold by public auction. The fish halls in Galaţi had compartments for wholesalers and for fish commissioners (middlemen hired to buy fish and send it to clients in other localities), a special hall for packing and dispatching the fish, a central refrigeration system, a market for selling and loading fish on the carts which were used to distribute it throughout the region, along with other necessary facilities. The refrigeration system, which used carbon dioxide, maintained a suitable temperature across an area of 1,174 m² and for a quantity of 600 tonnes of fish. The fish market even operated its own special railway, which was connected to the national rail system.75 Large quantities of fish were traded here, by wholesalers, commissioners, exporters interested in selling fish in central European countries, retailers from neighbouring localities and the small-scale mălăieri (merchants involved in bartering fish in the villages or at fairs in exchange for other products, mainly corn flour).76 As table 4 shows, demand was higher than supply, confirming the great interest of clients in good quality fish. Table 4. Fish traded through the markets at Galaţi and Braila (26 June 1910 to 1 February 1911).77 Galatz

Braila

Quantity ordered

5,785

3,001

Quantity received

3,592

2,500

Sent to Bucharest

382

112

1,353

876

Sent to villages

176

307

Bought by cart merchants

428

382

Bought by local retailers

491

823

Bought by wholesalers

761

–

3,591

2,500

Sent to other cities

Total sold

Despite the prominent role played by fish products on the Romanian market, Danubian fisheries were, at the end of the nineteenth century, in a parlous state. After 1878, when Dobrudja was annexed by Romania, the central authorities attempted to secure the entire revenue from the rich delta fisheries for the state; in 1882, all its waters became state property under the administration of the Ministry of Domains.78 The Romanian state leased the fishing rights in the Danube for five-year periods to entrepreneurs who paid less and less money for the privilege, only about 300,000–400,000 lei a year.79 As there were no attempts 75 76 77 78 79

Pisica 2002: 97–9. For the organisation of the fish trade, see Antipa 1916: 719–38. Based on Antipa 1911a: 29–30. Daia 1928: 415. For all the fisheries of the Danube delta, an area of 430,000ha, including the beluga fisheries and the Romanian territorial sea, the sum received was 311,000 lei; for Lake Razelm, covering 80,000ha, the state received 5,000 lei; and for all the Danubian fisheries, on an 800 km-length of the river, the Romanian authorities received 61,993 lei: Antipa 1933: 16.

Fishing in the Lower Danube and its floodplain from the earliest times to the twentieth century 331

at regulation, irrational exploitation of the aquatic resources was common practice80 and in consequence the production of the Romanian fisheries continually decreased. The main causes of this depopulation of fish stocks include fishing during spawning periods, fishing by means of destructive techniques using karmak hooks – large, bait-less hooks placed on the river bed – harmful both to the fish stocks and to the waters, and fishing small, immature individuals. The fish stocks were also affected by the silting up of the channels connecting the ponds with the river and the contamination of the water in these ponds (fresh water was not able to reach them and putrefying vegetation consumed oxygen from the water) and the salting of the littoral lakes.81 Table 5. Imports and exports of fish 1881–1898.82 Import

Export

tonnes

%

tonnes

%

1881

1,730

41.01

2,488

58.99

1882

2,374

47.33

2,642

52.67

1883

4,733

75.21

1,560

24.79

1884

4,722

74.49

1,617

25.51

1885

4,851

81.38

1,110

18.62

1886

3,262

81.96

718

18.04

1887

3,989

79.94

1,001

20.06

1888

4,435

81.14

1,031

18.86

1889

3,692

66.55

1,856

33.45

1890

4,397

71.10

1,787

28.90

1891

6,385

85.03

1,124

14.97

1892

4,512

85.50

765

14.50

1893

6,255

79.23

1,640

20.77

1894

5,545

80.91

1,308

19.09

1895

6,752

74.54

2,306

25.46

1896

6,189

73.04

2,284

26.96

1897

4,688

63.58

2,685

36.42

1898

3,607

39.39

5,551

60.61

As can be seen in table 5, a progressively smaller quantity of fish was exported from the Danube region in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, and Romania imported significant quantities of fish. The imports came mainly from Russia (917 tonnes in 1881, 1,544 tonnes in 1882 and 2,597 tonnes, 2,323 tonnes, 3,240 tonnes and 3,679 tonnes for the 80 81 82

Daia 1928: 417. Antipa 1933: 17. Antipa 1899, table 3.

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following four intervals of three years, covering the period 1883–95) and other neighbouring countries (Serbia, Bulgaria, Ottoman Empire). The largest exports were directed towards Austria-Hungary (an average of 463 tonnes for the period 1881–5, a sharp decline to 195 tonnes in 1886–90, during a customs dispute between Romania and Austria-Hungary, and then a continuous increase) and to neighbouring countries (Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria).83 The Romanian statistics for this period do not provide many details regarding the most traded species, as the customs categories in which these products were included are rather general: (1) unidentified fresh, salted or dried fish; (2) unidentified smoked fish (but not sheatfish and trout); (3) fresh, salted or dried beluga, common sturgeon, sterlet, fatback, carp, pikeperch and sheatfish; (4) smoked beluga, common sturgeon, sterlet, fatback, carp, pikeperch and sheatfish; (5) black roe of any kind of fish, fresh, dried or pressed; and (6) unidentified roe, beluga and sterlet fins, milt and other parts of fish.84 There are, however, sufficient data for the subsequent years (table 6) to ascertain that, in terms of quantity, Black Sea shad, pike and carp were the main commercial species, sold both fresh and salted. In terms of price, the most expensive fresh species were, besides sturgeon, pikeperch, grey mullet, sheatfish and large carp. Roe, especially caviar, generated high profits for the fishermen and fish traders. Table 6. Fish exports from Romania by species and size (1907–8).85 Fresh fish Quantity (kg)

Value (lei)

Salted fish Average price (lei)

Quantity (kg)

Value (lei)

Average price (lei)

Pikeperch

63,822

39,469

0.62

11,105

4,953

0.45

Sheatfish

429,390

197,513

0.46

370,709

137,716

0.37

78,821

40,636

0.52

11,687

7,705

0.66

104,454

51,707

0.50

24,147

14,230

0.59

Middle carp (about 1–2 kg)

1,119,781

350,282

0.31

306,712

113,832

0.37

Small carp (less than 1 kg)

667,392

184,399

0.28

465,632

139,038

0.30

1,667,982

282,651

0.17

66,840

10,462

0.16

391,893

109,873

0.28

88,266

24,914

0.28

2,121,436

428,200

0.20

456,156

111,910

0.25

Bream

83,979

23,739

0.28

19,254

6,739

0.35

Bleak (Alburnus alburnus)

85,270

8,144

0.10

44,426

6,802

0.15

176

28

0.16

167

36

0.22

62,161

9,229

0.15

36,250

6,424

0.18

Very big carp (larger than 3–4 kg) Big carp (2–3 kg)

Crucian Tench Pike

Zope (blue bream) Small bream 83 84 85

Antipa 1899, table 3. Antipa 1899, table 2. Antipa 1911a: 34.

Fishing in the Lower Danube and its floodplain from the earliest times to the twentieth century 333 Fresh fish Quantity (kg)

Value (lei)

Salted fish Average price (lei)

Quantity (kg)

Value (lei)

Average price (lei)

Perch

415,954

51,013

0.12

33,415

4,141

0.12

Roach

674,428

94,031

0.14

191,327

31,316

0.16

Beluga

369,166

355,185

0.96

11,460

6,322

0.55

Common sturgeon

218,137

213,519

0.98

6,856

7,273

1.06

21,889

15,042

0.69

1,006

786

0.78

Starred sturgeon Sterlet

8,361

11,150

1.33

–

–

–

Beluga roes

7,164

215,117

30.03

–

–

–

Common sturgeon roes

7,863

137,730

17.52

137

2,434

17.77

Carp roes

3,996

4,970

1.24

–

–

–

Grey mullet

417,012

202,600

0.49

10,906

6,050

0.55

Flounder

168,910

14,697

0.09

–

–

–

Black Sea turbot

183,919

44,628

0.24

86

19

0.22

3,152,171

843,357

0.27

271,017

52,005

0.19

208

108

0.52

2,925

170

0.06

46

29

0.63

–

–

–

5,146

9,533

1.85

–

–

–

99

1,274

12.87

–

–

–

18,282

7,774

0.43

6,239

3,017

0.48

12,549,308 3,947,627

0.31

2,436,725

698,294

0.29

Black Sea shad Small Black Sea shad Milt Pike roes Starred sturgeon roes Danube shad Total

In the context of this precarious state of Romanian fish production, the biologist Grigore Antipa published several books86 and drew up a detailed memorandum, publicly exposing the dangers, from economic, biological and ecological perspectives, of the irrational practice of leasing the waters to entrepreneurs who were neither willing, nor compelled to obey the standards of scientific and responsible fishing. In his report, Antipa advised the immediate adoption of a fishing law, of measures to restrict the harm being committed against the fish stocks and of active programmes to restock the waters with endangered species. At the same time, he urged the government to cease the practice of leasing fish resources to private entrepreneurs: instead, the state should take an active role in the management of the fishing domain, employing professional fishermen organised in cooperatives. More attention should – Antipa wrote – be paid to the development of Romanian pisciculture, to the improvement of the Danube fishponds, to the development of marine fishing in the Black Sea, to the systematic establishment of fishing stations and to construction of fish halls in Galaţi and Bucharest fitted with all the necessary modern facilities. Other suggestions 86

Antipa 1894; 1895.

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concerned improving the organisation of the fish-canning industry and of the fish trade, encouraging fish exports, concluding fishing conventions with the Danubian and Black Sea riparian states and, last but not least, increasing investment in scientific research into fishing and pisciculture.87 The fishing law was adopted in 1896; the 48 articles of the document aimed to check the savage exploitation of Romania’s aquatic resources. It established closed seasons or two months’ duration during spawning, timed according to the spawning behaviour of different species. Minimum limits were introduced regarding the size of fish and, with fishing for undersized individuals now being illegal, the mesh gauges of the nets used for various species were officially regulated. Fishing by means of explosives, narcotics, poisons, spears, firearms, etc. was no longer permitted, and the same restrictive provision could be extended to any other technique which would endanger the proper usage of Romanian waters. Although it had several flaws, Antipa’s fishing law, the first adopted in the Lower Danube region, brought beneficial changes for the Danubian fisheries.88 Under the new arrangements, the state, as owner of the fishing domains, improved and maintained the condition of the waters and organised fishing in accordance with a general plan of exploitation. The state was the protector, guide and organiser, on a cooperative basis, of the fishermen’s work. It facilitated the procurement of gear for the fishermen and permitted them to fish, in conformity with the general exploitation plan, in exchange for a part of the catch. The catches were sold daily by public auction, and the revenue obtained was divided between the state and the fishermen, in accordance with agreements concluded for each individual fishing domain. This system was maintained until 1914, when the state, under the pretext of reducing fish prices, transformed it into a monopoly by taking control of all aspects of the fish trade. The scientifically-based service intended to organise commercial fishing and the fish trade, and to improve the fish resources, was transformed into a state-controlled commercial administration overnight, with disastrous consequences for the fishermen and the final consumers.89 The implementation of several of Antipa’s proposals had led to significant improvements in Romanian fishing. Larger and more hygienic fishing stations, the amelioration of the ponds and the channels connecting them to the river, as well as other hydrotechnical works in the delta resulted in a constantly growing catch over two decades (table 7).90 Production in the delta doubled, with a large portion of the catch being high-quality fish and the total production of the ponds also rose to 32,000 tonnes, with beneficial results for consumers, who could purchase a nutritious and healthy foodstuff at an affordable price.91 During this period, Romanian fish production (estimated by Antipa at about 100,000 tonnes a year) not only satisfied domestic demand, but, by rational and scientific utilisation of the aquatic resources, fish became a valued export product. 87 88 89 90 91

Antipa 1895: 45–79. Gică 2000: 26–8. Antipa 1927: 43–4. See, for example, Vidraşcu 1928: 425–30. For more on this, see Antipa 1899; 1911b: 18. A single example: for Lake Razelm the catch increased from 380 tonnes of ‘standard’ fish in 1895–6 to 4,000 tonnes of quality fish in the following year (800 tonnes being pikeperch, of which only 72 tonnes had been caught in the previous year in all Romanian fisheries).

Fishing in the Lower Danube and its floodplain from the earliest times to the twentieth century 335

Table 7. Fish catches in the Danube delta, 1895–1916.92 Quantity (tons)

Revenues (in thousands lei)

Average revenue per ton (in thousands lei)

7,363

1,670

0.23

1896–97

9,979

2,418

0.24

1897–98

11,711

2,184

0.19

1898–99

11,245

2,319

0.21

1899–00

12,780

3,936

0.31

1900–01

10,306

3,093

0.30

1901–02

12,654

3,559

0.28

1902–03

12,355

3,956

0.32

1903–04

9,326

3,869

0.41

1904–05

8,751

3,699

0.42

1905–06

8,663

3,867

0.45

1906–07

9,155

3,766

0.41

1907–08

18,080

6,183

0.34

1908–09

16,323

6,688

0.41

1909–10

13,822

6,395

0.46

1910–11

10,174

4,703

0.46

1911–12

11,458

6,612

0.58

1912–13

9,516

6,587

0.69

1913–14

10,651

5,874

0.55

1914–15

9,676

4,075

0.42

1915–16

11,564

4,934

0.43

1895–96

7. Conclusions At the end of this rather general and summary presentation, we can reassert that fishing has been, from the earliest times, one of the most important occupations of the inhabitants living close to the Danube and on its floodplain. The steady development of fishing gear and techniques, and the continuous specialisation of Danubian fishermen, led to constantly increasing catches which attracted merchants from central and eastern Europe and from the eastern Mediterranean to the Danubian fisheries, and made salted fish and other fish products (especially caviar) well-known and popular products in the fish markets of ancient Greece, the Roman and Byzantine Empires, Genoa and Venice, Ottoman Constantinople, Hungary and Poland. The Danubian fish production was so large and diverse during ancient and medieval times that foreign travellers of various origins (Turks, Italians, Englishmen, 92

Data compiled from Daia 1928: 420.

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Frenchmen, Dutch, etc.) were often afraid that they would not be believed when reporting how abundant and inexpensive fresh and salted fish were in the Romanian principalities. Thanks to the numerous days of fasting in the Orthodox Christian calendar, about 200 a year, and also as a result of the rich Romanian water resources, fish was part of the daily diet. In the late nineteenth century, the level of fish consumption in the Danube region was so high and prices so low that Antipa had no hesitation in calling Romania ‘an ichthyophagous nation’.93 When, during the later communist rule, the political ideologists launched the slogan ‘No meal without fish’, it struck a national chord, although freshwater fish had by then been substituted by oceanic fish. Fishing was a very profitable enterprise not only for those dealing directly in it, but also for the central state authorities, which in all historical periods derived high revenues from fishing and the fish trade. Later on, the state took on itself the role of protecting these resources, when savage exploitation and over-fishing endangered the aquatic species and the anthropological and ethnological diversity which made the Lower Danube (especially its delta) a real laboratory of fishing and the fish trade. Nevertheless, the steady development of agriculture in the nineteenth century slowly but continuously encroached on the Danube floodplain and is fish resources, as the construction of dikes, to protect arable lands against the river overflow, greatly reduced the spawning grounds for numerous species. Despite the temporary successes of scientific attempts to restore the fish populations, Danubian fishing faced new political, economic, hydrological, biological and ecological challenges which eventually ruined it completely. Constantin Ardeleanu Department of History, University of the Lower Danube at Galaţi Str. Domnească 47, R-800008 Galaţi [email protected]

8. References 8.1 Primary sources Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru, M. M. and M. A. Mehmet (eds) 1976. Călători străini despre Ţările Române 6. Bucharest. Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander 1: Books 1–4, with an English translation by P. A. Brunt (LCL 236). Cambridge MA 1976. Bauer, F. W. von 1778. Mémoires historiques et géographiques sur la Valachie. Frankfurt and Leipzig. Hagemeister, J. de 1835. Mémoire sur le commerce de ports de la Nouvelle Russie, de la Moldavie et de la Valachie. Odessa and Simferopol. Holban, M., M. M. Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru and P. Cernovodeanu (eds) 1970. Călători străini despre Ţările Române 2. Bucharest. Holban, M., M. M. Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru and P. Cernovodeanu (eds) 1971. Călători străini despre Ţările Române 3. Bucharest. 93

This is no longer the case today, when high prices and poverty have placed Romania in last place on the scale of European Union fish consumption, with an average of only 2.5 kg of fish consumed per person per year, at least ten times lower than in western European countries.

Fishing in the Lower Danube and its floodplain from the earliest times to the twentieth century 337 Holban, M., M. M. Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru and P. Cernovodeanu (eds) 1972. Călători străini despre Ţările Române 4. Bucharest. Holban, M., M. M. Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru and P. Cernovodeanu (eds) 1973. Călători străini despre Ţările Române 5. Bucharest. Holban, M., M. M. Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru and P. Cernovodeanu (eds) 1980. Călători străini despre Ţările Române 7. Bucharest. Marsigli, L. F. de 1744. Description du Danube 6. The Hague. Peysonnel, C. C. de 1787. Traité sur le commerce de la Mer Noire 1. Paris. Raicevich, I. S. 1822. Voyage en Valachie et en Moldavie: avec des observations sur l’histoire, la physique et la politique, augmenté de notes et additions pour l’intelligence de divers points essentiels. Paris.

8.2 Secondary literature Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru, M. M. 1971. ‘Pescuitul în Delta Dunării în vremea stăpânirii otomane, (sfírşitul sec. XV – Începutul sec. al XVIII-lea)’, Peuce, Studii şi comunicări de istorie 1.2, 267–82. Antipa, G. 1894. Lacul Razim: starea actuală a pescăriilor din el şi mijloacele de îndreptare. Bucharest. Antipa, G. 1895. Studii asupra pescăriilor din România. Bucharest. Antipa, G. 1899. Legea pescuitului şi rezultatelor ce le-a dat. Un răspuns atacurilor ce i s-au adus. Bucharest. Antipa, G. 1911a. Ce poate face statul pentru ieftinirea peştelui. Bucharest. Antipa, G. 1911b. Pescăriile statului din Tulcea. Un răspuns la atacurile aduse prin expunerea situaţiei judeţului Tulcea pe anul 1910 de I. C. Atanasiu. Bucharest. Antipa, G. 1916. Pescăria şi pescuitul în România. Bucharest. Antipa, G. 1927. Punerea în cultură a regiunii bâltoase a României: terenurile inundabile şi pescăriile. Bucharest. Antipa, G. 1933. Pescăriile şi regiunea inundabilă a Dunării în cadrul economiei naţionale şi mondiale. Bucharest. Ardeleanu, C. 2011. ‘Sturgeon and caviar trade at the Lower Danube – a historical approach to a contemporary problem’ in R. Gertwagen, T. Fortibuoni, O. Giovanardi et al. (eds), When Humanities Meet Ecology: Historic changes in Mediterranean and Black Sea marine biodiversity and ecosystems since the Roman Period until nowadays: Languages, methodologies and perspectives. Rome, 133–40. Bălăşescu, A. and V. Radu 2002. ‘Culesul, pescuitul şi vânătoarea în cultura Boian pe teritoriul României’, Studii de preistorie 1, 73–94. Bălăşescu, A. and V. Radu 2004. Omul şi animalele: Strategii şi resurse la comunităţile Hamangia şi Boian. Târgovişte. Bălăşescu, A., V. Radu and D. Moise 2005. Omul şi mediul animal între mileniile VII–IV î.e. n. la Dunărea de Jos. Târgovişte. Bârca, G. and M. Băcescu 1969. Grigore Antipa: monografie (Savanţi de pretutindeni). Bucharest. Barnea, I. 1955. ‘Meşteşugurile în aşezarea feudală de la Garvăn (sec. X–XII)’, Studii şi cercetări de istorie veche 6.1–2, 99–121. Barnea, I. 1969. Dinogeţia (2nd edition). Bucharest. Barnea, I. and Ş. Ştefănescu 1971. Bizantini, români şi bulgari la Dunărea deos (Din istoria Dobrogei 3). Bucharest. Bejenaru, L. and S. Stanc 2002. ‘La pêche dans certains habitats médiévaux sur le territoire de la Roumanie: données archeozoologiques’ Analele Ştiinţifice ale Universităţii Al. I. Cuza din Iaşi: Series Animal Biology 48, 226–32. Bejenaru, L., S. Stanc and C. Tarcan 2007. ‘Fishing in the territory of today’s Romania in the Middle Ages’ in H. H. Plogmann (ed.), The Role of Fish in Ancient Time: Proceedings of the 13th Meeting of

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the ICAZ Fish Remains Working Group October 4th-9th Basel/Augst 2005 (Internationale Archäologie 8). Rahden, 101–6. Beldiceanu, N. 1968. ‘Kilia et Cetatea Albă à travers les documents ottomans’, Revue des Études Islamiques 36.2, 215–62. Beldiceanu, N. and I. Beldiceanu-Steinherr 1975. ‘Deportation et pêche à Kilia entre 1484 et 1508’, Bulletin of the Society of Oriental and Asiatic Studies 38.1, 40–54. Brylski, P. and J. F. Steward 2000. ‘Romania and Ukraine: Danube delta biodiversity conservation’ in L. Alexander Norsworthy (ed.), Rural Development, Natural Resources and the Environment: Lessons of Experience in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Washington DC, 97–100. Buşniţă, T. 1939. ‘Pescăriile României’ in D. Gusti (ed.), Enciclopedia României 3. Bucharest, 580. Carney, T. F. 1967. ‘The helops: a case-study of the transmission of a piece of scientific knowledge by the scholarship of antiquity’, Phoenix 21, 202–20. Comşa, E. 1996. Viaţa oamenilor din spaţiul carpato-danubiano-pontic în mileniile 7–4 î.Hr. (Pagini de istorie). Bucharest. Comşa, E. 2000. ‘Pescuitul’ in C. Preda (ed.), Enciclopedia arheologiei şi istoriei vechi a României 3. Bucharest, 302–3. Constantinescu, Ş. 1956. ‘Pescuitul în bălţile Dunării în lumina săpăturilor arheologice de la Garvăn (sec. X–XII)’, Studii şi cercetări de istorie veche 7.3–4, 407–20. Daia, A. 1928. ‘Pescăriile dobrogene’ in C. Brătescu (ed.), Dobrogea: 50 de ani de viaţă românească 1878–1928. Bucharest, 415–23. Diaconu, P. and D. Vâlceanu 1972. Cetatea bizantinăl (Păcuiul lui Soare 1). Bucharest. Diaconu, P. and S. Baraschi 1977. Aşezarea medievală (Păcuiul lui Soare 2). Bucharest. Diculescu, V., S. Iancovici, C. Papacostea et al. (eds) 1970. Relaţiile comerciale ale Ţării Româneşti cu Peninsula Balcanică (1829–1858) (Biblioteca istorică). Bucharest. El Susi, G. 1996. Vânători, pescari şi crescători de animale în Banatul mileniilor VI î.Ch. – I d.Ch. (Bibliotheca historica et archaeologica banatica 3). Timişoara. Gâştescu, P. and R. Ştiucă (eds) 2008. Delta Dunării: Rezervaţie a Biosferei. Biosphere Reserve. Bucharest. Gică, G. 2000. ‘Situaţia pescăriilor din Delta Dunării în perioada 1878–1916’, Steaua Dobrogei 8, 26–8. Giurescu, C. C. 1964. Din cele mai vechi timpuri până la instituirea legii pescuitului (1896) (Istoria pescuitului şi a pisciculturii în România 1). Bucharest. Luca, C. 2007. Ţările Române şi Veneţia în secolul al XVII-lea. Bucharest. Manolescu, R. 1955. ‘Unele date referitoare la exportul de peşte al Ţării Româneşti în prima jumătate a secolului al XVI-lea’, Buletinul Institutului de Cercetări Piscicole 14.1, 87–94. Manolescu, R. 1956. ‘Relaţiile comerciale ale Ţării Româneşti cu Sibiul la începutul veacului al XVIlea’, Analele Universităţii ‘C. I. Parhon’ 5, 207–60. Manolescu, R. 1965. Comerţul Ţării Româneşti şi Moldovei cu Braşovul (secolele XIV–XVI). Bucharest. Mateescu, T. 1991. ‘Pescuitul în Dobrogea în timpul stăpânirii otomane’, Anuarul Institutului de Istorie şi Arheologie A. D. Xenopol din Iaşi 21, 211–20. Neamţu, V. 1955. ‘Exploatarea peştelui în Moldova în secolul al XV-lea (Contribuţii)’, Studii şi cercetări ştiinţifice 6.1–2, 28–49. Negrea, Ş. 1990. Pe urmele lui Grigore Antipa. Bucharest. Pârvan, V. 1974. Începuturile vieţii romane la gurile Dunării (2nd edition, edited by R. Vulpe). Bucharest. Pippidi, D. M. 1956. ‘Hotărnicia lui Laberius Maximus (la patruzeci de ani de la descoperire)’, Studii şi cercetări de istorie veche 7.1–2, 137–58. Pippidi, D. M. and D. Berciu 1965. Geţi şi greci la Dunărea de Jos: Din cele mai vechi timpuri până la cucerirea roman (Din istoria Dobrogei 1). Bucharest. Pisică, V.-S. 2002. ‘Halele de pescării de la Galaţi’, Danubius 20, 97–103. Radu, V. 2003. Exploitation des ressources aquatiques dans les cultures néolithiques et chalcolithiques de la Roumanie Méridionale. PhD thesis. Université Aix-Marseille I.

Fishing in the Lower Danube and its floodplain from the earliest times to the twentieth century 339 Rostovtzeff, M. 1922. Iranians and Greeks in Southern Russia. Oxford. Schuster, C. and A. S. Morintz 2006. Ambarcaţiuni şi navigaţie în preistorie: Cu privire specială la Dunărea de Jos şi Marea Neagră. Târgovişte. Stanc, S. and L. Bejenaru 2008. ‘Fishing in the territory between the Danube and the Black Sea in the 4th-17th centuries. Archaezoological data’ Analele Ştiinţifice ale Universităţii Al. I. Cuza din Iaşi, Series Animal Biology 54, 273–7. Stanc, S., V. Radu and L. Bejenaru 2006. ‘Fishing in the Byzantine fortress of Oltina: archaeozoological data’ Analele Ştiinţifice ale Universităţii Al. I. Cuza din Iaşi, Series Animal Biology 52, 273–9. Suceveanu, A. 1977. Viaţa economică în Dobrogea romană: secole I–III e. n. (Biblioteca de arheologie). Bucharest. Vidraşcu, I. 1928. ‘Lucrările technice pentru valorificarea pescăriilor dobrogene’ in C. Brătescu (ed.), Dobrogea: 50 de ani de viaţă românească 1878–1928. Bucharest, 425–30.

Ruthy Gertwagen

Towards a Maritime Eco-history of the Byzantine and Medieval Eastern Mediterranean

1. Introduction This paper provides an introduction to the known and the unknown regarding the Byzantine and medieval marine eco-history of the eastern Mediterranean, focusing on the human aspects of fishing and fish consumption. By so doing it aims to fill the gap between the end of antiquity and the Renaissance period, both of which are periods rich with studies on the subject matter. The paper offers a multi- and interdisciplinary methodology based on documentary and archaeological evidence, noting both their limitations and their research potential. It argues that the sea and its resources played a significant role in the economy and diet of the people of the eastern Mediterranean. The chronological scope of the investigation extends from the seventh century to the end of the fifteenth. During these approximately 900 years the eastern Mediterranean experienced dynamic political, religious and cultural changes, and these changes have a direct bearing on the research task.

2. The historic, religious and cultural mosaic Until the seventh century the eastern Mediterranean was under the domination of the Eastern Roman Empire, in modern terminology known as the Byzantine Empire. The empire was religiously Christian and culturally Roman/Hellenic; the latter element was the dominant one, with Greek being both the everyday and formal language. In 618, the Levant was separated from the Byzantine Empire for a little more than a decade due to the Persian conquest. It was, however, Arab penetration into the Mediterranean that brought profound religious and cultural changes to the region. By the 640s, the Muslim Arabs had taken control of the southern (the Maghreb and Egypt) and eastern shores (the Levant) of the Mediterranean from the Byzantines; Antiochia (Antakya) on the Orontes river, conquered in 637/8, was now on the northeastern border with Byzantine Asia Minor. Along with political and religious changes, the southeastern Mediterranean also underwent a social and cultural ‘Islamicisation’. This was a gradual process and reached its completion at the end of the seventh century with the reforms of the Umayyad Khalif Abd el-Malik (685–705). This led to the replacement of Greek by Arabic as the administrative language of government, the introduction of a new Islamic coinage and the building of Islamic monuments (although the architectural style itself was actually borrowed from Byzantine architecture). The new religion was not imposed by force on the local Byzantine/Christian population, which eventually converted in masses to Islam, with some

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exceptions such as the Copts in Egypt. Nevertheless, for those who remained Christians, Arabic took the place of Greek in the liturgy and was used in literature and in everyday life. According to the Muslim geographer al-Muqqadasi (c. 940–90), in his time, ‘the scribes here [in Syria and Palestine] as in Egypt, are Christians, the Muslims simply depending on their knowledge of their language’.1 In other words, over time, the Islamic conquests transformed the identity of the local population in the southeastern Mediterranean region.2 The second phase of Islamic conquest of Byzantine territory took place in the late eleventh century when Seljuk Turkic tribes conquered Asia Minor. From his base in northwestern Anatolia, Osman (died 1326), the founder of the Ottoman dynasty, began a process of conquest that extended the area of Ottoman rule from northwestern Asia Minor into Byzantine territory in Thrace, the Gallipoli peninsula, the Balkans and what is now Greece; it was completed by the conquest of the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, in 1453 and the Black Sea coast in the 1470s.3 Among other consequences, the Seljuk conquest of Asia Minor in the late eleventh century helped prompt the Crusades, which, from the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth century, resulted in the formation of the Crusader kingdoms in the Levant. The Crusaders, along with the populations of the merchant colonies established in the Crusader Levant by the Italian city-states of Venice, Genoa and Pisa, and later of other southern European cities, like Marseille, were of course Christians, belonging to the Western (‘Catholic’) Church. They did not impose their religion or culture on the local Byzantine (Eastern Orthodox) or Muslim populations. With the final defeat of the Crusader states in the Levant at the end of the thirteenth century by the Mamluks of Egypt, the whole area was once again under Muslim control; after the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517 it was part of the Ottoman Empire.4 From the fourteenth century, Muslims dominated in Asia Minor, the Levant, Egypt and North Africa, while Christians maintained control over the Aegean and Ionian Seas, the Peloponnese and mainland Greece until the late fifteenth century. The Fourth Crusade ended in 1204 with the capture of Constantinople by the crusaders and the Venetians was followed by the creation of the ‘Latin Empire’ and various Venetian possessions in the Ionian and Aegean Seas that much later (from the 1380s) evolved into a Venetian maritime empire at the expense of the former Byzantine territories. Despite the Byzantine re-conquest of Constantinople in 1261, the Ionian and Aegean Seas and most of the Peloponnese, the Greek mainland and the Black Sea remained under Latin and Venetian rule. After 1261, the Genoese established their dominion in the northeastern Aegean in Constantinople and the Black Sea region.5 The writing of a comprehensive study of the marine ecological and environmental history of the medieval eastern Mediterranean involves the reading of multiple types of published and archival documents in many languages and dialects: Greek, Latin, Arabic, German, French, Genoese and Venetian, to name a few. Along with local Byzantine and Arabic sources, Western archives too need to be studied in order to understand the eco-history and 1 2 3 4 5

Al Muqaddasi (transl. Collins 1994): 166. Grabar 1987: 1–18; Kennedy 1988: 98–9; Whitcomb 1995: 49. Imber 1990; 2002: 1–42. Smail 1973. Lane 1974; Balard 1978; Gertwagen 2014.

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human impact on the environment, including fishing. Deciphering the various medieval archival documents, requires specialist palaeographic skills. The language and script found in Renaissance documents more often resemble modern forms and language. This complexity of the documentary material would seem to be the reason behind the claim, often made by European scholars involved in this field of research, but occupied with the early modern period, that in the Middle Ages the fishing skills of the Roman period had been forgotten.6 The neglect of the medieval period is very conspicuous, for instance, in Roesti’s study on the economic role of Mediterranean tuna fishing since early antiquity. After a systematic review of the subject matter from prehistoric times until AD 476 (the date he selects for the end of the Roman Empire), the author goes on to describe the situation in the seventeenth century.7 Nevertheless, a small number of studies drawing on historic documents, even if they do not discuss fisheries specifically or directly, attest to a rich marine fauna and to intensive sea fishing in the medieval eastern Mediterranean.

3. The Byzantine world and the Black Sea The great bulk of studies based on historic evidence published so far concern the Byzantine world, covering, in a sporadic fashion, the period from the seventh century until the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453. The variety of Byzantine sources includes: history, literary works (poetry and letters) and legal documents, as well as Greek texts on aspects of pharmacology and dietetics; these texts discuss fishing and marine animals as part of their consideration of culinary habits and the nourishing and health qualities of food items in general. The texts are partly translated into English and analysed in Andrew Dalby’s stimulating book on Flavours of Byzantium (2003) and by Alice-Mary Talbot in her paper, ‘Mealtime in monasteries’ (2007). Maria Chrone-Vakalopoulos and Angelos Vakalopoulos (2008) discuss the works of Byzantine doctors and the so-called Geoponica. The authors present the terminology used for fish and various other aquatic species in all the Byzantine sources available and identify each species with its current scientific name. They note that more than a 110 names of fish and about 30 names of other marine creatures are found in the Byzantine literature, mostly in medical texts. Their identifications are based partly on the categorisation provided by some of the sources, but mainly on parameters related to the physiology of the species, as described in modern ichthyology.8 Legal texts, such as the Book of the Eparch, compiled in the early tenth century, and the Basilica, a revised version of the Justinianic Codex issued by the emperor Leo VI (886–912), as well as later revisions of the Basilica in the mid twelfth to fourteenth century, shed light on several issues: new definitions of public and open marine spaces and the depth for fishing, on the one hand, and, on the other, the protection of private property rights where none existed before and the distances between fisheries (see Lytle, this volume). The geographic zones concerned are Constantinople and the Bosphorus to the north and the Sea of Marmara to the south. Other issues dealt with are the organisation and operation of the fish markets at Constantinople and the nature of the interactions of the players involved. In his 6 7 8

De Nicolò 2011. Roesti 1966. Chrone-Vakalopoulos and Vakalopoulos 2008.

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instructive study, Gilbert Dagron9 extensively analyses the connections between the various fish genera, the fishing devices, the specific geographic environment of Constantinople and the revisions of the existing laws made by Leo VI. He also shows that similar situations, regarding both fishing gear and fishing rights, existed in early twentieth-century Istanbul/ Constantinople. George V. Maniatis, in a thorough research paper, interprets and supplements the relevant sections of the various law texts with sound economic analysis and offers references to social matters.10 One of the striking facts yielded by these sources is the richness of the marine fauna that characterised the northeastern Mediterranean. Fish were classified according to quality, health, digestion and origin: marine or freshwater.11 High-quality fish were considered ‘white fish’ (leukoi ichthys); these were in limited supply and therefore of relatively high price. ‘White’ sea fish included red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus), grey snapper (Lutjanidae), red mullet (mullus barbatus) – although these were regarded as rather coarse – sea bass and porgy (Chrysophrys), known also in the Mediterranean as sea bream. Other species considered ‘white fish’ include both freshwater and marine species: surmullet (Mullus surmuletus) and sturgeon mourozoulin and berzitikon that were imported to Constantinople from the northern Black Sea, even long after the Byzantines had lost their hold on this area. In Italian, salted and dried sturgeon fillets were – according to the fourteenth-century Florentine Francesco Balducci Pegolotti’s trade manual – known as schienali and they were shipped in large quantities from Tana to Constantinople, and especially to Pera, the Genoese quarter of the city. They were brought overland to Tana from the Caspian Sea and the Volga river.12 According to the Spanish traveller and ambassador to the Tatars, Pero Tafur, who was a contemporary of Pegolotti, large quantities of fish, especially sturgeon, were taken on board ships and carried as far as Castile and Flanders.13 In the fifteenth century, great sturgeon, morone, from the northern Black Sea were exported through Constantinople to Crete.14 The eggs from this fish were processed for caviar. Among the inferior genera of deep-sea and inshore white fish were marlin (Istiophoridae) – also spearfish (Tetrapturus pfluegeri), swordfish (xiphias gladius), skate and cartilaginous fish: the sting ray and electric ray of the same family that are less favoured nowadays. Also esteemed was the monkfish, presently known in the Mediterranean also as anglerfish and angler. Although a bit hard to digest, it was very nourishing. Other fish were the dogfish and the various genera of grey mullet, both marine and freshwater, which were considered unhealthy since they customarily feed on mud; guitar-fish, sole and plaice were thought to be moderately productive of both good and bad humours. On the other hand, the fish of the Scombroid family were considered to be of the lowest quality; these include mackerel and various types of tuna, the albacore (Thunnus alalunga), palamide and bonito. They are

9 10 11 12 13 14

Dagron 1995; Talbot 2007. Maniatis 2000, esp. 16 concerning some of Maniatis’ reservations regarding Dagron’s interpretations. For the Greek terminology as it appears in the various Greek sources, see Dalby 2003: 185–237; Chrone-Vakalopoulos and Vakalopoulos 2008. Balducci Pegolotti, Pratica (ed. Evans 1938): 380; Tzavara 2004: 813–4. Tafur, Travels (transl. Letts 1926): 135. Jacoby 2009: 367

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described as stinking, crummy, lean, foul, heavy, indigestible, unwholesome and a cause constipation and flatulence. Therefore they were to be eaten pickled or salted.15 Other marine animals that were considered high quality and sought after were the various types of crabs (karkinoi, pagoryroi), lobsters and cuttlefish, shrimps, octopuses and squid, as well as a range of other shellfish: oysters, mussels, scallops, cockles and winkles. Although favoured and nourishing, all these species were considered indigestible; only when boiled and with the liquid drained off were they considered highly as an aid to getting the digestion under control.16 Consumption of different species is attested for different social levels, both lay and religious, including monasteries. According to the twelfth-century satirical poem by an author calling himself Ptochoprodromos, addressed to the emperor Manuel I Comnenus,17 and to European travellers, such as the Catalan Pero Tafur, of the fifteenth century, members of the ‘high society’, so to speak, including bishops and abbots, during Lent and on fast days (totalling 200 days of the calendar year) when meat was not permitted on the table, ate the highly-prized bloodless fish: shellfish such as lobsters, crabs, pan-fried prawns, oysters, mussels and stewed crayfish. The humble monks, on the other hand, ate ‘holy soup’ that consisted of boiled water with onions tossed in and three splashes of oil that was poured over their bread.18 Due to the low prices of oily fish, the ordinary lay and poor people ate them; they would also have eaten them on fast days as well, since low-income families would have had no other alternative.19 The early tenth-century, The Book of the Eparch, mentioned above, prohibited the residents of Constantinople from buying fish directly from the fishermen; fish could be purchased only through the fish merchants in the city market. Thus there were two fish markets: a wholesale one at the waterfront, where the fish merchants bought from the fishermen, and a retail market, in the city. The fish were to be sold fresh; salting for export was prohibited. The prohibition itself attests undoubtedly to the opposite being the common habit. The documents indicate a rich activity of selling fresh fish in the fishing grounds of the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. In the late ninth and early tenth centuries, the Basilica and its later revisions took steps to promote the utilisation of all suitable shorelines and their sustainable development, to encourage proper management and to ensure the accessibility of necessary investments in fixed and working capital.20 The law stipulated the quota of daily fresh fish to be offered on the retail market, while the surplus fish were to be salted, pickled in brine or vinegar or dried, to prevent spoilage. The highest production levels were mainly achieved during seasonal migration peaks. The migrating fish that were cured included sardine, tuna, mackerel, swordfish and grey mullet. The processing stage, however, was a separate activity from the fishing, undertaken by in15

16 17 18 19 20

On the health and nutrition qualities that were included in texts compiled in the seventh century, see Dalby 2003: 68–9, 145–6, 148, 150, 154–60; Chrone-Vakalopoulos and Vakalopoulos 2008. On ‘white fish’ and the lowest-quality fish, see Maniatis 2000: 29, nos 68–9. Dalby 2003: 67, 148, 153; Chrone-Vakalopoulos and Vakalopoulos 2008. Ptochoprodromos (transl. Eideneier 1991): 4.325–6 and 4.93 respectively (= p. 157 and 144); Talbot 2007: 114, 118. Tafur, Travels (transl. Letts 1926): 119. Maniatis 2000: 37, n. 86. Maniatis 2000: 14–8, 40–1; Book of the Eparch 17 cited in Dalby 2003: 65.

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dependent businessmen; it required basic technical skills, equipment and tools, processing facilities in the form of sheds and working capital for operating expenses. Consequently, an active market for the preservation of fish developed, with adequate storage space that eased the pressure of excess of supply. Moreover, to prevent the waste of an essential nutritional resource, it led to an attendant price structure for certain varieties of processed fish.21 The Byzantine documents refer also to fishing techniques. These, according to Dagron, have continued from Byzantine times to the present day. They vary from fishing with harpoons or tridents to the use of baskets (for crabs and shellfish), rods, nets thrown by individuals and nets pulled by boats to encircle the fish, nets cast overnight and fixed nets anchored on poles driven into the sea floor in shallow sea waters, lagoons and river estuaries. The latter were very useful during migration periods. The first migration period begins around April, passing from the Sea of Marmara into the Black Sea, where it ends on its northern coast in July. The first to migrate are mackerel, followed by tuna (adults), palamide (of around one year in age) and bonito (the very young ones). In September, the period of reverse migration from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara begins, ending in November. The first to migrate out are tuna, palamide and bonito, followed by mackerel, which might also stay at the Bosphorus. The straits provided rich fishing grounds for migratory fish, and there were two main types of fixed nets used to exploit this. Those used in shallow water (aulakia, gripoi, gripobolia) were nets consisting of compartments in the shape of a funnel. In deeper water, the fishermen formed an enclosure (époche, Turkish dalyan) made from nets stretched on beams, with an entrance that is closed after the fish have entered the ‘trap’. Near the enclosure there would have been several watchmen’s huts on poles, from which the patron could watch the movement of the fish and so time his order to close the trap.22 One can speculate that this was the role of the tenth-century stylite Loucas, whose column stood at the sea’s edge near Chalcedon. This, and not only his blessing, from the top of his column, of the net installations that the fishermen set up nearby, would explain the tithe of fish he received as tribute.23 In addition to fish, crab and other fruits of the sea, there were two other marine-based products on the Byzantine menu. One was fermented fish sauce, garum or liquamen. It may have originated in the early Greek colonies in the northern Black Sea (Bekker-Nielsen, this volume) and later became ubiquitous. Whilst it had been forgotten in the West by the tenth century, it was still being prepared in Constantinople in the early sixteenth century, then under Ottoman rule since 1453.24 The Ottoman conquest did not affect the culinary mentality and habits of the conquered Byzantine population, which the Ottomans did not dislike. Another ichthyic product appreciated by the Byzantines as well as across the Aegean region and western Europe was the various types of caviar. One was made from grey mullet and tuna roe, ootarikhon or botargo in modern terminology, dried and cured in sea salt for few weeks.25 Another was red/pink caviar and a third was black caviar. According to the 21 22 23 24 25

Maniatis 2000, 21, 30–32. Dagron 1995, 60–63 and figs 1–4; 2002, 458–9. Delehaye, Les saints stylites, ch. 16, 212–3. Dalby 2003, 27, 67–9; Dagron 2002, 448 and n. 320 on ancient periods, see Bekker-Nielsen 2008. Dalby 2003, 67; Jacoby 2008. Unlike Jacoby who claims that the only source of the botargo was

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twelfth-century archbishop Eustathius of Thessaloniki, red or pink caviar was made from the roe of salmon; it was pressed into bricks and served in slices. Black caviar, in contrast, was served in loose heaps in wicker baskets. The same Eustathius notes that black caviar originated from Tana on the Don river and emphasises that it was a choice product;26 there was another market in the northern Black Sea, in Lo Copa at the mouth of the Kuban river, coming from the northern Caucasus into the Sea of Azov.27 Both markets were seasonal, connected to the migration patterns of fish: Lo Copa operated from spring until the end of May and Tana from July until the departure of the northern Italian, mainly Genoese and Venetian, merchant convoys in early September. The caviar was exported in barrels or baskets by ship to Constantinople, the Aegean area, Europe, the western Mediterranean and through the Strait of Gibraltar to Flanders.28 According to the fourteenth-century trade manual of Pegolotti, at market the caviar was sold stuffed into the tail half of a fish skin, called fusco in Italian.29 In contrast to the rich evidence for the export of fish and caviar provided both by Byzantine and later western European texts, documents regarding the processing industry, its facilities and manpower, still need to be studied thoroughly. From the few archival sources so far considered, it is clear that the key players in this industry were the Byzantines and Tatars.30 Regarding processing techniques, the only evidence so far available (which highlights the promise of further investigation of the archival material) is provided by the fifteenth-century Spaniard Pero Tafur, who writes: They kill there certain fish which they call merona and say that they are very large, and they put the eggs into casks and carry them for sale all over the world, especially to Greece and Turkey, and call them caviar. The eggs look at first like black soap, and they take them when they are soft and they press them with a knife, as soap here [in Spain], and put them into braziers, which makes them hard and look like the eggs of fish. This stuff is very salty.31

In Ottoman Bursa, caviar was served with olive oil. Bertrandon de la Broquiere, who visited the town on a fact-finding mission in 1432 on behalf of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, found it detestable.32 It seems that despite their nomadic origin, the Ottomans adopted Byzantine marine dishes, even the very salty ones like caviar and garum. One can safely speculate that the Ottoman archives might shed further light on this aspect of Ottoman culinary habits, and related economic and social issues. No similar modern study of the marine environment and ecology, based on Byzantine texts as well as on later Western documents, exists for other parts of the Byzantine world, around the Ionian and Aegean Seas, and in the southeastern Mediterranean. At face value,

26 27 28 29 30 31 32

the Caspian Sea, evidence introduced below points to the availability and distribution of both species in the south-eastern Mediterranean. Eustathius of Thessaloniki (ed. Metzler 2006), 66; Jacoby 2008. Berindei and Veinstein 1976: 130–1; Balard 1978: II, 706–7. On trading patterns, see Balletto 1976: 390–476; Balard 1978: II, 207; Tzavara 2004; followed by Jacoby 2008. Pegolotti (ed. Evans 1938): 24 Balard 1978: II, 707, n. 29. Tafur, Travels (transl. Letts 1926): 135. Bertrandon de la Broquiere, Voyage (ed. Schefer 1892): 135.

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it seems that fish were mainly consumed in Constantinople. Dagron argues that the role of fish in the diet of this area was a function of geographic circumstances, which were especially favourable to Constantinople. Therefore fish compensated for recurrent wheat shortages in the city.33 However, there are similar environmental and geographic settings, for example the Dardanelles or Chalcis/Euboea in the northern section of the central Aegean. In many respects, Byzantine research, as noted by Dalby in the preface to his book, is still a wide open field, and there is much more information waiting to be gathered and utilised. Dalby refers specifically to our ignorance of the rules of daily life for the residents of monasteries regarding culinary habits,34 but the sources may also contribute to our understanding of the marine environment, eco-history and various aspects of fishing across the whole Byzantine eastern Mediterranean. Echoes of such evidence can be found, for instance, in linguistics. The Greek term for egg pickle adapted for salted grey mullet roe is ootarikhon. It is the Greek source of Coptic outarakhon. The Copts were and are the Monophysite Christian population of Egypt. The Coptic term was adapted into Arabic as butarkha35 which resembles the sound of Italian botargo. This linguistic evidence argues for the fishing of mullet and tuna around Egypt and the processing of their roe as caviar in both the Byzantine and the following Muslim periods, from the seventh century AD. The question is: what documentary and ichthyo-archaeological evidence do we have to support this argument?

4. The Muslim world The early Muslim evidence that deals with our subject matter mainly includes geographic works and travellers’ accounts. These, however, emerge only from the late ninth century, along with the first administrative sources.36 The study of administrative texts may provide evidence regarding taxes and regulations imposed on the fishing industry. Nevertheless, there is a gap of 200 years between the arrival of the Arabs and the date of these Muslim documents. To fill this gap we should, from a historical point of view, continue to consult Byzantine or local Greek documents. As far as I know, there are no modern studies devoted entirely to fishing in the early Muslim period. Eliahu Ashtor’s thorough paper (1968) on the dietary habits of the various social classes of the Middle East from the tenth century onwards does deal with fish. Despite its title, the author focuses mainly on fish in Egypt. The early Muslim as well as western European documents of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that Ashtor gathers together yield interesting, if partial, information regarding fishing. According to these sources, fish were very cheap compared to meat and were, therefore, consumed by the poorer classes. Both the Muslim geographers and the western travellers praise the fishing grounds along the Mediterranean coast of Egypt and those of the Nile. The works of Ibn Hawqal and alMuqaddasī, based on first-hand observations made in the tenth century, describe the sea fish sold at al-Farmā or Pelusium on the Nile delta; Yāqūt in the thirteenth century counted 79 species of marine fish caught around Tinnis. 33 34 35 36

Dagron 1995: 447. Dalby 2003: 7; although there are some studies on the subject, such as Talbot 2007. Dalby 2009: 67 On the principal sources for the history of the Near East, 600–1050, see Kennedy 1988: 350–88, esp. 371–2 for geographical sources and travellers’ reports.

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The medical doctor al Mukhtār b. ‘bdūn Ibn Butlān, of Christian origin, who in 1047 travelled from Baghdad to Cairo, reported that salt fish was sold at Tinnis and considered expensive; it was, therefore, served on the tables of the rich. In 1339 a high-ranking individual in Tinnis bought 200 jugs of salt fish. Another medical doctor of the late twelfth century reports that poor people ate small fish and fish spreads. He also indicates that a lot of fish was sold at Damietta, which was cooked with the same ingredients which were used with meat. Western travellers of the fourteenth century admired the fish around Damietta, which were salted and sent by camel all over Egypt.37 These salt fish were appreciated by the rich. This picture regarding salt fish as a delicacy reserved for the tables of the wealthy sits in sharp contrast to the one outlined above for Europe and Byzantium. The historical evidence presented by Ashtor regarding the subject matter of this paper is limited, since it is not his main interest. Nevertheless his source references are important and, if studied thoroughly, they may reveal details about the various fish species, fishing and fish-processing techniques and devices, marketing and export, and storage. For instance, in the last quarter of the tenth century Ibn Hawqal referred to a story, written by a person whom he considered stupid, about a certain fish around Alexandria called arus that was beautiful in appearance, covered with stripes and very tasty. According to the story, if a man ate the fish, he would dream of having homosexual relations or that many black people started relations with him, unless he drank water with honey or ate a lot of honey. Ibn Hawqal claims that he and others ate this fish and did not have such dreams, which proved the stories to be false. As we shall see below, a version of this story was repeated in the twelfth century by Idrīsī. Ibn Hawqal also describes in detail the deep lagoon around Tinnis and Damietta, its depth, its water circulation and the effect on fish. During summer, when the Nile rose, the water in the lagoon was fresh. During the winter, when the Nile level decreased, seawater entered the lagoon along with marine animals such as dolphins, which were abundant along the Mediterranean coast.38 Interestingly, the water system of this lagoon is also described, from another perspective, in the Book of Curiosities, which was probably compiled by an inhabitant of Tinnis in the first half of the eleventh century, i. e. almost half a century after Ibn Hawqal. Every year, the salt waters of the lagoon were driven out to sea by the fresh waters of the rising Nile. Inlets, depicted on the annotated diagram that accompanies the text, allowed the flood water to refill the huge cisterns on which the city depended for its water supply. Although the author’s text does not include any reference to fish, he does depict a fish market on the diagram.39 The geography and map of the Mediterranean by al-Idrīrsī (1099–1165), not discussed in Ashtor’s paper, describes the marine fish which used to enter the Nile. According to Idrīrsī, there were many species, but he names only three. The first was the al-buri or the grey mullet, with a beautiful colour. As mentioned earlier, mullet roe had been processed since Byzantine times by the Copts, who called the resulting product outarakhon, cf. modern botargo. The identification of the other two species is not certain. One was the al-shabel, perhaps Clupea alosa. It was one cubit long, beautiful and oily. The other species, the shabbût, was a small variation of the former. 37 38 39

Ashtor 1968: 1033–4. Ibn Hawqal (transl. Kramers and Wiet 1967): I, 154; on his writing, sources and importance among Arab geographers, see Kramers’ and Wiet’s introduction: I, 9–17. Johns and Savage-Smith 2003: 18, fig. 4.

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Around Rosette (modern Rashid), there was a type of a small shell fish, called telline, with a shell and dark, speckled meat. This was said to reproduce at the mouth of the Nile, where salt water mixed with fresh. The people of Rosette used to catch a great number of these at the time of their reproduction, then salt them for distribution across Egypt. This was an important element of the city’s commercial activity. Around Alexandria, an unidentified species, depicted with stripes – arus – was fished. According to the popular tradition, already mentioned, if it were eaten grilled or boiled without drinking or eating much honey it was said to arouse sexual desire. Al-Idrīrsī did not himself visit Egypt or many of the other places he describes; he relied on information provided to him by traders, travellers and captains, or he used earlier written works, and he might well have used the work of Ibn Hawqal.40 The Geniza letters, which form a most important source for understanding commerce and industry in Egypt and the Mediterranean from the late tenth and early eleventh century until the fourteenth century, yield additional details.41 Since the Geniza letters concern primarily members of the Jewish community in Egypt, we can learn from them about the active role of Jews in fishing, as attested also by the family names of fishermen and fishmongers. Those specializing in tuna fish were named tunnī or tawān; we can assume that they were also engaged in producing botargo from tuna roe. Tuna was a sought-after sea fish. There is a letter about dispatching a glass jar with minced fish pickles from Alexandria to Old Cairo42 and salted tuna fish sent as a present from Qayrawān in Tunisia again to Old Cairo and also from Barqa in eastern Libya.43 Some Jews specialised in carp pickles and in the popular little salt fish. Another category of Jews involved in the fishing industry was the shellfish gatherers. These were called mah(h)ārī and their base was at Alexandria, from where they were dispatched to the Levantine coast. Shellfish were used both for food and ‘industry’. Since the eating of shellfish is forbidden to Jews, the shellfish they gathered for themselves must have been intended for other purposes: dyeing cloth and silk (cf. Alfaro, this volume). The dyeing process, whose roots can be traced back to the Minoans and Phoenicians along the Levantine coast, was a smelly activity and therefore located outside the urban centres.44 The silk industry and its sub-industries were common in Egypt, as indicated by a list of textile occupations according to city, region and century collected by Maya Shatzmiller from

40

41 42 43 44

Al-Idrīsī (trans. Jaubert 1999): 85–7 on fish in the Nile, 87–8 on fish that enter the Nile from the sea, 241 on fishing around Raschid, 242 on fishing around Alexandria, 19–20 on Idrīsī’s style and sources of information. Like Ibn Hawqal, he also describes the marine animal populations of the Nile, yet he lingers on the crocodile and hippopotamus: 85–7; Ibn Hawqal’s descriptions, however, are more elaborate and include another species, the electric fish: Ibn Hawqal (transl. Kramers and Wiet 1967): I, 146–7. For a general discussion of the Geniza records and their contribution to an understanding of economic life, see Goitein 1967: 11–2, 17–21. Goitein 1967: 126, n. 84–6. Goitein 1973: 117. On oyster-gatherers, see Frenkel 2006: 185, 351–8 doc. 30 (late twelfth century), 533–5 doc. 71 (early thirteenth century). On ancient dye from shellfish, see Jensen 1963: 104–18 (the article starts with the Minoan period in Crete). See also Cooksey 2001: 736–69; more recently Alfaro and Mylona 2014: 149–68, 150, n. 8.

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Arabic documents of the ninth to the end of the fourteenth century.45 Still, these were only a very small percentage of the large number of occupations of the medieval Middle East. The Jews, however, played a major role in the silk industry, both under state control and in the private sector. In the southern Mediterranean, Mahdia near Tunisia and Egypt were the main centres.46 One could also argue that shellfish gathering by Jews fulfilled a specific Jewish need for two colours of threads for the fringe (ṣiṣit) of a prayer shawl (tallit). One was the bluish tekhelet produced from the hexaplex trunculus, which is abundant in the shallow offshore waters between Tyre and Haifa. A tallit with 24 grammes of woollen ṣiṣit required the dye of nearly 200 snails for the tekhelet threads. The other half of the threads were dyed the purple argaman colour, which was produced from Murex brandaris and purpura haemastoma.47 Corals were also traded by Jewish merchants, who exported them from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. They were collected partly from Tunisia and partly from the coasts of southern Europe. Alexandria in Egypt was the reloading port.48 In the early fourteenth century, Ibn Battûta, a Muslim traveler who on his journey from north Africa to Mecca passed through Egypt, recorded two types of marine species in Damietta. One was marine birds, which he indicated to be abundant and greasy but he omitted to mention their names. The other species was the buri fish, which according to his information was exported from Damietta to Syria, Asia Minor and Cairo.49 In contrast to the information that the Muslim geographers and travellers provide on the fish trade in Egypt, they have nothing to say about that along the Levantine coast (present-day Israel and Lebanon). Ibn Hawqal and al-Muqaddasi both describe urban settlements and hinterlands, the environment, rivers and climate, and details of agricultural products.50 The Persian traveller Nāşir Khusrau (c. 1004–1088) describes in his diary the Levantine coastal towns as an eyewitness and provides information about, among other things, the conditions and economies of the countries he passed through; he too ignores the topic of fishing. Even for Tinnis, in contrast to his very detailed descriptions of daily life, the economy, climate, water and food, Khusrau completely ignores the fisheries for which the town was famous.51 Considering that al-Muqaddasi only indicates as a matter of fact that fish were appreciated in Tinnis, and that both he and Khusrau refer in detail to other environmental topics in the Levant and Egypt, one may conclude that fishing was not one of their interests. On the other hand, the neglect of the subject regarding the Levantine coast by Ibn Hawqal is intriguing. The same goes for Ibn Battûta who also visited and described the coastal towns of the Levant in the early fourteenth century, but took no interest in marine species, nor fishing activies.52 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Schatzmiller 1994: 101, 103, 119. Goitein 1967: esp. 100, 116. Spanier 1987: 63–4, 214–5. Goitein 1967: 47 Ibn Batûta (transl. C. Defremery and B. R. Sanguinetti 1958; new edtion 1994): 116. Ibn Hawqal (transl. Kramers and Wiet 1967): 163–86; al-Muqaddasi (transl. Collins 1994): 148– 50, 157–8. Naşir Khosrau, Sefer Nameh (transl. Schefer 1881): 44–63 on the Levantine coast from Beirut down to and including Caesarea; 109 on the area from Ascalon to Tinnis; 110–15 on Tinnis alone. Batûta (transl. C. Defremery and B. R. Sanguinetti 1958; new edtion 1994): 167–68.

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Indeed, al-Idrīsī in the mid twelfth century also ignores fishing along the Levantine coast. Since he never visited the region himself but relied on the accounts of others for information, one may conclude that fishing was not a subject of interest to his informants. It should also be pointed out that the descriptions of the Levantine urban centres in Idrīsī’s opus, including the coastal towns, are far from uniform.53 On the other hand, in one of the Geniza letters the writer describes with horror shellfish gatherers from Alexandria drinking beer in Crusader taverns in twelfth-century Acre. According to this letter, men belonging to the lowest level of society gathered shellfish at Haifa, which the writer calls by its Greek name, Porphyrion, ‘the town of the purple snail’.54

5. Western European sources Although the Geniza documents, cited above, are the only evidence so far for a marine species fished in the Crusader Levant, other sources, mainly from the second half of the thirteenth century, do refer to fishing activities carried out by ‘citizens’ of the Italian communes (i. e., born locally or immigrants from Europe), mainly in Acre, the capital and main port of the second Crusader kingdom (1191–1291). The locals were native Pisans, called poulains, who had their own boats: ‘Barques de pesqours, poulains pizans’.55 Others were Genoese. In 1255 a partnership contract, societas, was made between two Genoese in Genoa for a voyage to the Levant, possibly to Acre, to work in fishing for a year. The dates stipulated for the extension of the contract were set by the navigation seasons. The parties were to buy and share the necessary equipment – net, boat and other utensils (which are described in detail) – at their destination port. The net was a seine that could be cast and stay on the sea floor. They intend also to enroll local help.56 A commercial contract drawn up in Genoa twelve years later by a merchant leaving for the Levant discusses an investment in ropes or lines used in fishing, in cordis piscandi.57 This evidence points to abundant fishing grounds in the Levant which would justify emigration from Genoa for this purpose; it also points to a prosperous local fishing industry. Furthermore, it suggests the promising prospect of studying notary acts in European archives, since there were no such archives in the Crusader kingdom itself. Notary acts are crucial since they deal with a wide spectrum of daily activity. To illuminate the local Crusader perspective, a thorough study of the administrative acts of the kingdom or of local contemporary chronicles will be required. Travellers’ accounts are another category of potentially informative sources. Some of them indicate places of rich fish catches, others mention the names of fish species and the methods to catch them or they enumerate the species encountered at different locations. In 1394–1395, an Italian notary named Nicolas de Martoni made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On his way back, he refers to fishing boats at Negroponte (Chalkis, on the island of

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Al-Idrīsī (transl. Jaubert 1836–40): 339–49. Goitein 1967: I, 127, n. 87. Gestes des Chiprois (ed. Raynaud 1887): 227, n. 554 cited in Gertwagen 1996: 568, n. 77; Jacoby 2005: 73–105, n. 91. Balletto 1973: 197, 205–6, n. 3. I would like to thank Laura Balletto for sending me her book. Balletto 1986: 207.

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Euboea), in the north central Aegean.58 In the late fifteenth century a German pilgrim, the Dominican friar Felix Faber, remarked on arriving at Jaffa: I know not what conditions of the air or water or other elements, that the fishes swam on the top of the sea and showed themselves on the surface more than they wont. There we beheld wondrous fishes. Some were large and quite round, like a winnowing-fan. Some had heads like dogs, with long ears hanging down [… quidam habebant capita canina cum auribus longis dependentibus] and we saw many dolphins that morning, and saw them more plainly than ever before.59

Given that Faber was a pilgrim without marine biological skills, some of his descriptions of particular marine species would be inaccurate to say the least, if not imaginary. If he really meant to describe dogfish, to illustrate the idea he may have added further details, such as the ears typical of terrestrial dogs. In any case, the scarcity of dogfish and dolphins along the Israeli coast nowadays, in contrast to their presence in the fifteenth century, requires further studies of the reason for this radical change. A similar description of fishing for large sharks and a sea turtle is provided by another pilgrim, Canon Pietro Casola. Arriving at Jaffa on board a Venetian pilgrim galley in July 1494, all were detained on board by the Mamelukes for several days. Being hungry and frustrated, the captain decided to provide some amusement by way of fishing. The following is the detailed description of fishing the shark: On this day, with certain contrivances of very strong cord and great hooks, an immense fish was caught. There was great difficulty in hauling it out of the water, because it defended itself boldly … so that is was necessary to hold it thus tied in the water until it was exhausted. The hook was so big so that it took a large sheep’s lung to bait it. The men wounded the fish with certain iron weapons suitable for the purpose … Afterwards it was found to be a shark.60

Another type of evidence are the accounts of naval expeditions. The late medieval warships were of the galley type: long, heavy ships rowed with oars. They were additionally rigged with large lateen sails for the voyage to the battlefield or during routine sailing with favourable winds. Rowing, as well as manoeuvring the sails and the large rudders, demanded lots of energy. The diet of warships demonstrates the attention, based on experience, given to every food item and its importance, although without ‘scientific’ reasoning. Ships’ biscuits provided glucose and formed the basis of the seaman’s diet. This also included vegetables or legumes, which provided B vitamins and minerals, and onions and garlic, which contained vitamin B and C complexes, anti-oxidants, anti-dermatomycosis and anti-viral agents, and minerals. Fruit contained mainly vitamins. Olive oil provided omega 9. Rice provided vitamin B complexes and minerals. Wine softened the hard biscuit and ameliorated the tastelessness of the food. Proteins were provided as cheese and salted meat or fish, mainly sardines. Sardines were a popular species, since they could be eaten with the bones and without cooking, and kept salted in barrels. They also provided calcium and iodine, vital for the

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Martoni, Relation (ed. Le Grand 1895): 578, 654. Felix Faber, Fratris Felicis Fabri Evagatorium (ed. Hassler 1843), p. 191 = f. 74b. Canon Pietro Casola’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the year 1494 (ed. and transl. M.M. Newett, 1907): 225–26.

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metabolism. Sardines were consumed by the higher ranks, especially on Fridays when meat was forbidden.61 The account of the Mediterranean military expedition of Henry Earl of Derby, later Henry IV, in 1391–1392, itemises species bought en route and the locations of their purchase. At Corfu, fresh fish were bought during two visits, including Mediterranean moray. At Modon in the southwestern Peloponnese, 48 large eels and, during another visit, 100 eels and fresh fish were purchased. At Rhodes, fresh fish were acquired. At Famagusta on Cyprus, 100 eels, 102 salted eels, Mediterranean moray as well as other salted fish and fresh fish, cuttlefish, 58 salted sturgeons (originating from the northern Black Sea, these must have been imported to Cyprus), 104 varied salted fish, 103 skombri or mackerels and Mediterranean moray were purchased. At Jaffa, fish and, during another visit, various salted fish were bought privately by the crew serving on the galley and by the earl’s staff along with fresh fish. In Alexandria, 50 Mediterranean morays were acquired. Sturgeon caviar, eels and Mediterranean moray were considered luxurious, and during Lent were eaten only by the upper classes.62 The accounts of travellers and naval expeditions are the only evidence we have so far on fishing in the medieval Ionian and Aegean Seas. There is also evidence of twelfth-century Byzantine fishing of marine molluscs for ‘industry’, used to produce the highest grade of purple dye. Purple fishers from Athens, together with those from Euripus and Carystus in Euboea, operated off the island of Gayaros, located between Andros and Kea, to the south of Euboea. The extraction of purple from the molluscs took place in Athens, the dyeing itself in Thebes. Only the highest quality of silk was treated with this dye. In the twelfth century, Thebes was the main centre for the production of high-quality silk fabrics, intended exclusively for the Byzantine emperors and members of their close entourage. These fabrics, therefore, were not marketed. This expensive industry was entirely subsidised by the imperial court, and, after the conquest of Constantinople by the Franks and Venetians during the Fourth Crusade, the industry disappeared and, instead, silk was dyed with kermes, a high-quality solid colorant obtained from the pregnant female of parasitic insects. This took place in the Aegean and the Peloponnese.63 However, to date, nobody has addressed the question as to why the extraction of purple from marine molluscs disappeared after 1204. Was it due to overfishing or other environmental repercussions that caused a scarcity of murex? There is currently no study of the Byzantine and medieval marine environment and the history of the fishing industry in the Ionian and Aegean Seas and in the southeastern Mediterranean. The evidence presented so far for other regions points to the promise of interesting results the moment such a study is undertaken.

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Tucci 1987: 103–45. The nutritional qualities of each ingredient are, however, mine, and were provided to me by a clinic dietician, Dr Varda Levi. Expeditions to Russia and the Holy Land made by Henry Earl of Derby (ed. Toulmin Smith 1965): 219–32 (the geographic order of the places is mine). Cardon 2003: 469–83; Jacoby 2005: no. xii, on p. 23 the author discusses the dyeing of silk with purple extracted from marine molluscs in the pre-1204 period.

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6. Archaeological evidence The relevant archaeological finds include fishing gear (net sinkers, hooks, net repair tools and auxiliary equipment), shipwrecks, ichthyoarchaeological data and ‘industrial’ facilities for fish processing. The only assemblages of fishing gear from the seventh century AD that have been thoroughly studied and published are those found in shipwrecks along the Aegean coast of Asia Minor and in coastal settlements along the Levantine shore, including Israel. It is argued that the standardisation of fishing gear, in terms of both sinkers and hooks, the typology of which did not change much from the Bronze Age onwards, makes it virtually impossible to date them unless they are found in dated archaeological contexts or bear clear identification signs.64 The fullest classification of fishing-net sinkers for the eastern Mediterranean was presented in 2002 by Galili, Rosen and Sharvit, based on finds from underwater exploration in the vicinity of Haifa; a longue durée typology of all types of fishing gear and their application, based on their previously-published studies, was recently offered by Galili and Rosen.65 Therefore, only fishing gear associated with wrecks will be discussed here, including consideration of the wrecks themselves and their wider context, and some suggestions will be made regarding their use beyond fishing as well as the occupations of their owners. Only four shipwrecks with fishing gear have been fully excavated and studied to date. These are detailed below, in chronological order. 6.1 An early seventh-century vessel A vessel of the early seventh century was found on a steeply sloping seabed at a depth of 32–9 m at Yassi Ada off the southwestern coast of Asia Minor, opposite the island of Rhodes. The latest coin found on the vessel dates to AD 625/6, and it was presumably wrecked soon afterwards.66 It was a small, narrow-hulled ship with a keel length of 12 m and a deck length of 20.5 m; it had a beam of 5.2 m, a breadth-to-length ratio of 1:4 and an estimated displacement of 73 tons. The loading capacity (crew, cargo and passengers) is estimated at 60 tons in calm weather and 50 tons in rougher.67 The fishing gear included 38 weights of various sizes that could be used for net or line fishing, miscellaneous lead pieces probably used in the manufacture of fishing weights on board (as is suggested by a bronze or copper spoon heavily encrusted with lead on its rim that points to it having been dipped into molten lead),68 two net needles for repairing nets and a wooden spreader. The sizes of the weights suggest three possible types of small net were used: (1) a casting net used by one person and suitable for mackerel, horse-mackerel and other pelagic species; (2) a draw net suitable for grey mullet, mullet and other shore fish (the shortness of the spreader in use for such a net found on the wreck – 30 cm from notch to notch – suggests it was a small net); and (3) a drift net for passing pelagic fish used while the ship was at anchor. The weights could also have

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Galili 2003; Galili, Zemer and Rosen 2013; Szulc-Kajak 2013. Galili and Rosen 2013. Bass 1982: 311–19. Steffy 1982: 65–86. Katzev 1982: 280, figs 12–8, MF 23.

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been used for line fishing, either with a hand line or, if a rod was used, with a tight line.69 Utensils for lead casting, which were also recovered, led to the conclusion that lead artefacts, including hull patches and fishing-net sinkers and net weights, were cast as a part of the net making and mending activities carried out on board the ship.70 6.2 A mid-seventh century shipwreck A mid-seventh century shipwreck was located in shallow water at a depth of 1–2 m in the lagoon of Dor (Tantura) on the central Carmel coast a short distance south of Haifa. The latest coins found in the wreckage were dated AD 659–663/4; thus the vessel will have been wrecked not much later.71 The fishing gear found includes lead fishing-net sinkers, for cast nets and a seine, an iron fishing spearhead (290 mm long, 155 mm wide and weighing 569 g) with evenly-distributed barbed prongs and an iron grid forming a shallow, flat-bottomed ellipsoid basket (460 mm long, 240 mm wide, 100 mm deep and weighing 1700 g), for use as a beacon that could be used to attract fish during night fishing. The latter item is a unique find; it is the only evidence of its kind from the Byzantine and medieval eastern Mediterranean for such a fishing practice. The authors claim that the absence of fishing hooks may testify to the fact that this assemblage represents the professional kit of a fisherman specialised in the art of fishing with such a device (an art that is still practised today at night near the coasts, in order to catch fish with nets and to harpoon octopodes). One hundred and fifty nine fishing-net sinkers were recovered. A lead sounding-weight shaped like a tall conical bell, an essential instrument for both fishermen and navigators, was also found. In addition to estimating water depths, sounding-weights can, with the help of a sticky material (such as tallow) placed in a cavity at the base, be used to bring up a sediment sample which allows for the study of the look, smell, texture and taste of the seabed. Sounding-weights can also be used to help locate corals, sponges and fishing grounds offshore.72 6.3 The Tantura F wreck The Tantura F wreck was also discovered in the Dor lagoon, about 70 m offshore under 1 m of water and an additional 1.5 m of sand mixed with shells and stones. It was a fishing coasting vessel c. 15 m long with a beam of 5 m. AMS radiocarbon dating and ceramic analysis point to it dating between the mid seventh and the early eighth century AD. The only fishing gear recovered was a needle that could have been used for repairing fishing nets. However, the large amount of fish remains in the hull supports the idea that the vessel was engaged in fishing.73 69 70 71 72 73

Kuniholm 1982 (the author, however, indicates reservations regarding the adaptation of the weights to a casting net). Kuniholm 1982: 296–310. Galili and Rosen 2007. Galili and Rosen 2007; Galili, Zemer and Rosen 2013. Barkai and Kahanov 2006. The archaeologists, however, unconvincingly tend to stretch the time limits: ‘The mid-7th century can be justified by being after the Arab occupation of the region (641). However, stretching the date after the mid-8th century (the end of the Umayyad period) into the Abbasid period can also be considered. Thus the suggested date of Tantura F is between the mid7th and the end of the 8th centuries’: Barkai, Kahanov and Avissar 2010: 96.

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6.4 An eleventh-century wreck A wreck dated to the eleventh century was found at a depth of 33 m off Serçe Limani on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor, opposite Rhodes. The vessel, 15.66 m long and with a beam of 5.2 m, had a boxy hull which would have allowed it to sail up shallow rivers. The vessel was dated by sixteen glass weights for pan-scales that bore the name of the caliph in Egypt and the year of his reign, 1024/5. The ship must have been wrecked soon afterwards. The fishing gear included the following items. a.

Over 900 lead net sinkers were found in three distinct piles that revealed that three nets – each 40 m long – were on deck at the time the ship sank. The sinkers were of Byzantine manufacture and their ubiquitous decoration attests to their Bulgarian origin. The crew brought the nets from their home port in the Sea of Marmara. b. Nets were found that might have been made by joining together smaller nets belonging to different, but cooperating seamen. One or two of these nets were in baskets and one net was spread out for mending. The archaeologists identified a matching Ottoman net stored at the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology. c. Near each net was a netting needle. d. Eight bone spindle-whorls suggest that the crew were spinning goat-hair threads for their nets. e. The net’s foot line, i. e. the cord at the lower edge of the net to which sinkers were attached, was made from 212 strands of goat hair. Goat’s hair was used because the hairs are long and do not absorb water (the same material is still used today in Turkey; thus there is a continuity from at least the eleventh century through the Ottoman period to the present day). f. A fishing spearhead with twelve removable prongs and a wooden handle was also found. A similar modern Italian trident is used for catching cuttlefish. In Turkey, in the early twentieth century, this type of device was used for spearing fish attracted to the surface by lights at night, and sometimes for spearing octopuses. In addition, bones of tuna, tub gurnard and drum were also found on the deck. They had been caught by the crew with the nets, no doubt for their own consumption.74 All these wrecks share some common features. First, the ships were all of small to medium size, suitable for both coastal and riverine activities. Second, fishing was not necessarily the main occupation of these vessels, but commerce.75 The cargo of the seventh-century Yassi Ada vessel consisted of provisions for the Byzantine troops fighting against the Persians. The ship belonged to the Church, on which Heraclius, the Eastern Roman emperor, relied to pay and supply his troops, since Church resources surpassed those of the state. The several bronze balances, three steelyards and several bronze balance pan-scales found with the wreck, along with weights of different weighing systems for the various types of cargo.76 74 75

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Bass, Matthews, Steffy and van Doorninck 2004: 399–435. The excavators of the mid seventh-century shipwreck at Dor do not specify the cargo connected to commerce; however, a steelyard counter-weight in the shape of a female bust is noted, associated with other steelyards bearing Greek inscriptions that were used for various commercial purposes: Galili and Rosen 2007. Van Alfen 1996.

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The thirty amphorae, typical of marine transportation, found in the Tantura F wreck suggest that the vessel was engaged in local commerce, mainly of fish products, along the Israeli coastline down to Egypt. In twenty of the storage jars, a residue of small fish bones was found. These could have contained either fish sauce or pickled fish, salsamenta. If the contents were fish sauce, then the presence of bones suggests allec, the less expensive variety of sauce. Since the amphorae were broken, sea water had contaminated their contents. The fish remains in eight amphorae were analysed and identified as whole tilapia (St Peter’s fish), a freshwater fish. The bone sizes indicate tiny fish and suggest they were caught during the breeding season. That only one species of fish was used indicates a high-value product, i. e. salsamenta. The place of origin is, however, unknown. The jars were almost certainly manufactured in the Lower Nile region; however, the resinous linings of the jars suggest they were being reused. They might have originally contained wine and only later been used to store fish. In other words, the place of manufacture of the amphorae does not necessarily identify the origin of the fish. This could well have been one of the rivers along the Israeli coastline. The scholars suggest the fish products were purchased from local fish processors along the Israeli coastline, either at Dor or Caesarea, although there is no clear indication for sauce production at this period in either place.77 It is more plausible that they were acquired at the facilities on the Taninim river, north of Caesarea. We should bear in mind the date, i. e. the Ummayyad period. In other words, either the customers were Christian Byzantines or, if they had converted to Islam, they still retained their traditional eating habits. The main cargo of the eleventh-century Serçe Limani ship consisted of glass cullet, two tons of raw glass chunks and one ton of broken glass vessels, together with ‘imported’ Islamic glass vessels; it was nicknamed the ‘glass shipwreck’ by the investigators. The ship also carried wine in amphorae; the graffiti or stamps on the amphorae together with isotope analyses of the metal artefacts prove that the crew was Bulgarian, from a Byzantine-Slavic community on the shore of the Sea of Marmara, not far from Constantinople. The ship was engaged in coastal navigation and commerce with one of the Fatimid Levantine ports,78 most probably Tyre,79 and came to grief on its return journey. The personal artefacts of the members of the crew and the people on board, and their locations on the wreck, could tell us much about the social ranks, their eating habits and daily life. One common occupation was fishing. The double function, so to speak, of the vessels points to the multiple occupations of their crews, i. e. commerce alongside fishing or vice versa. One could safely speculate that such a situation was not accidental, but a consequence of the disasters that had occurred in the sixth century: starting with the great plagues and the political and military calamities that almost nullified the territorial conquests of Justinian I, followed by the Slavic incursions 77

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Barkai, Lernau and Kahanov 2013. The fact that remains of identical fish were found at Caesarea in a sewage canal dated to a later period (Abbasid) does not attest to a production industry at Caesarea, as claimed by the authors. It definitely does not validate the conclusion that Caesarea replaced the industrial fish production along the western Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic coasts of North Africa and the Iberian peninsula, as also claimed by the authors. The Tantura F wreck perhaps provides the sole material evidence for the fish-sauce trade at this period along the eastern Mediterranean coast, as further claimed by the authors; however, as noted above, textual evidence testifies to garum consumption in the Byzantine empire even after its disappearance in the West. Bass, Matthews, Steffy and van Doorninck 2004: 363–97. For the historic economic context, ports of call and navigation routes, see Gertwagen 2009.

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and settlements in the Balkans in the late sixth century, the assassination of Maurice in 602 and the temporary Persian conquest of Syria-Palestine-Egypt in 614. These disasters, which reached their climax in the 640s with the final Arab conquest of the Levant, Egypt and North Africa, affected the structure of the state, its finances and the possibilities of trade. In 618 the annona system of grain shipments from Egypt stopped for good.80 Merchants and shipowners who suffered as a consequence must have either left their occupation in favour of fishing or alternatively, added fishing to their more limited commercial activity. Another factor was a change in nautical technology, i. e. the transition in shipbuilding method from the expensive and slow ‘shell-first’ construction to the quicker and cheaper ‘frame-first’ method. This process had already begun at the turn of the sixth century and reached its final phase by the early eleventh century. The Tantura F vessel, for instance, was built using the ‘frame-first’ technique, which came to dominate Mediterranean shipbuilding from around the year 1000 onwards.81 Only shipowners still supported by the state or rich institutions, such as the church, could afford to retain some features of the expensive older ‘shell-first’ building technology. The revival of long-distance trade after the turn of the millennium would explain the number, types and distribution of weapons found on the Serçe Limani vessel, along with tools that could be used as weapons, like fishing implements and carpenter’s tools. The assemblage of potential weapons exceeded what was needed for the basic defence of such a vessel. The scholars therefore convincingly suggest that the ship’s crew were engaged in piracy alongside commerce82 and, of course, fishing. In this context, it is interesting to note that under Byzantine sea laws of the seventh century, the crew of a vessel sailed ad partem, that is, for a share of the profits rather than a fixed wage. The owner-captain received half the profits; the other half was divided amongst the crew. In the case of failure, all losses were carried by the individual who had invested the capital. Fishermen and mariners did their utmost to complete their ventures successfully, in order to profit from them, and employed all means to do so, including piracy.83 Another important area illuminated by the evidence of the Serçe Limani wreck, which may extend to other vessels, is the hierarchical division of social and everyday life on board. This is suggested by the allocation of living space on board, and the different types of food and gaming pieces. However, the common occupations of everybody on board, without any class differentiation, were fishing and mending fishing nets.84 Some of the wrecks and their contents also offer hints as to the origin of the merchants or ship owners. This is indeed clear in the case of the seventh-century Yassi Ada and the eleventh-century Serçe Limani wrecks. It is indirectly suggested in the case of the Tantura F wreck; analyses of wood samples from the hull and the mast point to Turkey as the place of origin. However, the place of the purchase of the cargoes and their destinations remain enigmas. 80 81 82

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Laiou and Morrison 2007, 24; Dagron 2002, 450. Gertwagen 2014, 158–9. Bass, Matthews, Steffy and van Doorninck 2004: 363–97.With the further increase in maritime commerce in the following centuries, it was common for commercial ships to be engaged in piracy: Gertwagen 2013. Jackson 1989: 605–8. Bass, Matthews, Steffy and van Doorninck 2004: 363–97.

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Dor lagoon is a dangerous anchorage; it is difficult to manoeuvre in, even for those who are familiar with it.85 The shipwrecks inside the lagoon attest to the crews’ unfamiliarity with its treacherous features. One could therefore safely assume that the Tantura F vessel was wrecked after seeking refuge from an unexpected storm.86 It is highly likely that this was also the fate of the other seventh-century wreck, although this was not found in its original wreckage location; during the wrecking event the vessel drifted ashore and broke up in the shallow water in the breaker zone, at a depth of 1–2 m.87 Interestingly, attempts were not made to salvage the vessels, their cargoes or the fishing equipment, despite their short distance from the shore and the shallow depth of the water.

7. Ichthyoarchaeological evidence 7.1 Tel Taninim Fish remains were found on the site of Tel Taninim, probably known in Latin as Turris Salinarum, south of Haifa, in a Byzantine church and in a nearby Crusader vault converted into residential quarters during the Mamluk occupation (fourteenth century). The ichthyo-archaeological evidence indicates that the identified fish were intended for local consumption. All the identified fish occur in local shallow seawater, or in freshwater sources in the Tel Taninim area. The fish belong to thirteen families and comprise forty individuals. The most common are listed below. 1. Grey mullet, of which two species were present: the flathead grey mullet, mugil cephalus, and the thin-lipped grey mullet, Liza spp. This fish is an important commercial species in present-day Israel, and is raised in fish farms. 2. Several species of sea bream (Sparidae): the gilt head sea bream, Sparus aurata, measuring 23–32 cm; sea bream, Diplodus spp., 18–26 cm long (this species is common along rocky coasts); striped sea bream, Lithognathus mormyrus, with an average size of 16 cm; sea bream, Pagrus sp., 25–26 cm long. All four species are carnivorous, feeding mostly on molluscs and crustaceans. They are a highly valued food today and are taken by net. 3. Groupers (Serranidae): large marine fish which occur in the warm waters of the eastern Mediterranean and are also common along the coast of Israel. Two species were represented: dusky grouper, Epinephelus marginatus, a small one 36 cm long; and golden grouper, Epinephelus costae, 29 cm long. 4. Two species of drumfish (Sciaenidae), which are also carnivorous and feed on small fish, crustaceans and molluscs: meagre, Argyrosomus regius, 21–47 cm long; and brown

85 86

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Barkai and Kahanov 2010. Barkai and Kahanov’s claim that ‘the present geographical setting reinforces the argument that no ship entered the lagoon unless it had a specific purpose, such as trade with known local merchants’ does not make sense. It is very unlikely that the locals would have encouraged trade in a dangerous anchorage. It should be noted that there are natural protected havens adjacent to Tel Dor, north of the lagoon. Furthermore, if indeed there was anchorage for commercial purposes, we would expect salvage operations to have taken place after the storm had passed. Galili and Rosen 2007. There is no evidence for the authors’ claim that the vessel was wrecked due to piracy or other hostile activity.

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meager Sciaena umbra, 35 cm long. Both species can be caught with nets or a hook and line. Great amberjack, Seriola dumerili: usually a very large migratory fish with a maximum size of 2 m. It is fast-swimming and found world-wide. The single specimen from Taninim measured only 70 cm in length. Sea bass, Dicentrarchus sp.: a small predatory fish that migrates inshore during the summer. Parrotfish, Sparisoma cretense, 19–21 cm long. It is so-named for its gaudy colours and parrot-like beak, which it uses to scrape algae from encrusted rocks. Cartilaginous fish, represented by several shark or ray vertebrae, i. e. calcified centra (not identified).

The local freshwater fish, originating from the Taninim river, include the following species. 1. The common species of St Peter’s fish, Tilapia zillii. This is very common today in the Lake of Galilee and the rivers of Israel. At Tel Taninim it ranges in size from 16–31 cm. This species may have been the species used in the garum or salsamenta found in the Tantura F wreck. 2. The Nile catfish, Clarias gariepinus. This ranges in size from 30–70 cm. It occurs naturally in Israel, in the Lake of Galilee and in rivers, including the Tanninim river, as well as in rivers in North Africa. Piscinae (fishponds) of the Byzantine and early Muslim periods were also uncovered at the tel. However, no fish bones were found. The archaeologists presume that this was because the fish raised in these installations were removed alive, having attained a certain designated size.88 It is highly likely, however, that the remains were lost due to intensive cleaning of the excavation site without sieving the soil. Abundant shellfish remains of three types were found: Hexaplex trunculus (Murex trunculus), Murex brandaris and Purpura haemastoma. The scholars claim that the main economic activity of the site was fish farming, most probably including small-scale production of sea-sourced purple dye, made from the abundant murex in the piscinae on shore. A question they do not consider, however, is whether this was used locally or exported to dyeing facilities elsewhere. During the Muslim period, from the early eighth century onwards, some fish farms were abandoned, and this economic activity never fully recovered.89 7.2 Caesarea Maritima Fish remains found at medieval Caesarea came from two areas. The first is a former Byzantine warehouse (area LL). Fish bones were identified in an ‘abandonment layer’, dated to AD 640–690, after which the building was converted into Islamic residential quarters. The layer contained storage jars and amphorae. A total of 90 fish bones were identified, representing nine families and twenty individuals. The fish were being stored for local distribution within the city. Fish remains were also recovered from cesspits belonging to the Islamic occupants living in these quarters, providing evidence of the meals consumed here. The remains in88 89

Fradkin and Lernau 2006: 211–22. Stieglitz 2006: 88–92, 215–6, 221–2 table 10, 226–7.

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clude 148 bones representing thirteen families and 61 individuals. Fish remains were also recovered from the Crusader phase of these houses. Seventy five bones were identified, representing eight families and 30 individuals. Since in both the early Islamic and Crusader periods the fish remains recovered included head bones and vertebrae, the fish had most likely been bought fresh from the market. Area TP consists of Islamic and Crusader houses and a Fatimid and Crusader monumental public residence, most probably the dwelling of Crusader knights. Eleven fish bones were found in cesspits beneath the Islamic residences; they were identified as representing four families and seven individuals. The Crusader assemblage, also from cesspits and the drainage system, included 43 bones, representing nine families and 24 individuals. Fifty-nine percent of the identified specimens were local marine fish. The most common were grey mullet (Mugilidae), of medium-size and ranging from 22–43 cm in length. Three species were represented: the flathead grey mullet (Mugil cephalus), the thin-lipped grey mullet (Liza spp.) and the thick-lipped grey mullet (Chelon labrosus). There was also a small specimen of dusky grouper with an estimated length of 38 cm. Other fish represented in significant numbers are several species of sea bream, some similar to those found at Tel Taninim (Pagrus pagrus) and measuring 42–43 cm in length. The gilt-head sea bream (Sparus aurata) is a shallow-water species and often enters brackish waters. Those found at Caesarea range from 25–37 cm in length. The striped sea bream (Lithognathus mormyrus) is a smaller sparid and a gregarious species, sometimes swimming in large schools. Two species of drum were identified. Meager (Argyrosomus regius) and brown meager (Sciaena umbra) both range from 34–56 cm in length. Grey triggerfish (Balistes carolinensis) is a marine species and usually found in warm inshore waters in rocky or seaweed-covered areas. Bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix) is a large ferocious predatory fish, up to 50 cm in length. It lives in large schools in open waters but enters coastal waters to prey on other fish. Horse mackerel (Trachurus sp.) is a smaller fish, but is also carnivorous and lives in schools. It is common along the Mediterranean coast in the summer, but migrates offshore to deep water in the winter. Sea bass (Dicentrarchus sp.), another marine predatory fish, also migrates inshore during the summer where it frequently enters estuaries and ascends rivers. Snapper (Lutjanus sp.) is also a marine carnivorous fish. Herring (Clupeidae) is typically a small fish and may be found in marine, fresh and brackish waters. Local freshwater species include Nile catfish (Clarias gariepinus). It makes up a significant proportion of the total faunal assemblage and ranges from 42–100 cm in length. Almost all parts of the fish, including skulls and vertebrae, are represented. Since the head of this fish is quite large and heavy, accounting for about one-third of its total weight, and is inedible, the presence of cranial bones indicates that this fish was captured nearby. The common St Peter’s fish (Tilapia zillii), ranging from 14–32 cm in length, like many other Tilapias, may adapt to shallow marine waters and has been caught in the Mediterranean close to the shore. Barbel (Barbus spp.) is a kind of carp (Cyprinidae), it is a strictly freshwater fish and common in Israel’s Lake of Galilee and other waters of the Jordan river system. This local freshwater fish was represented by only a few specimens. Two freshwater fish identified at Caesarea are not to be found in present-day Israel: five individuals of Nile perch (Lates niloticus), ranging from 60–110 cm in length, and one bagrid catfish (Bagrus sp.). These are fish occurring naturally in the Nile as well as in other rivers and lakes of Egypt. The excavators suggest that these were imported. However, they also point out that since these species are common over a long time period on various exca-

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vation sites across Israel, a definitive answer to this question must await additional studies, such as isotope and DNA analyses.90 I would add that the extremely small number of individuals found can hardly point to trade. Tel Taninim, the Taninim river and Caesarea are the only Byzantine and medieval coastal sites along the Israeli shore at which ichthyoarchaeological remains have been sieved and analysed. However, the evidence provided by the Geniza letters and the western sources cited earlier helps to fill the gaps left by insufficient finds or careless archaeological work.

8. Concluding remarks This paper is a pioneering review study of human and marine animal population interactions in the Byzantine and medieval eastern Mediterranean. It consciously ignores the climate aspect, although some scholars argue for direct interaction between climate, temperature, salinity and numerous other physical, chemical and biological processes that influence fish biomass.91 However, no study has yet been undertaken on the effects of climatic conditions on the marine ecology and environment of the Byzantine and medieval eastern Mediterranean; this has been done only for Europe.92 It should be noted that only recently have climatology studies regarding the Byzantine and medieval eastern Mediterranean commenced. These are interdisciplinary, integrating historic data, various types of scientific data and archaeological evidence. However, they, mainly focus on the effects of the climate on human societies and political structures.93 Methodologically, the present paper highlights the importance of multi- and interdisciplinary study of the ecology and environment of the Byzantine and medieval eastern Mediterranean across c. 900 years, by employing historical, archaeological and ichthyologic research in combination with ichthyoarchaeological studies in a way that enables these disciplines to complement each other and illuminate the information yielded by each. For example, archaeological finds present the equivalent material evidence for the fishing devices described in historical documents, as well as for the marine animal species. Moreover, the archaeological finds fill lacunae in the historical data: about fishing installations (which are also proxy data for the migratory behaviour of various marine species), the trade in fish products and the people and vessels involved. Zoo-archaeology contributes to the definition of the marine animal populations and also provides evidence regarding culinary habits, as convincingly suggested by Van Neer and Ervynck;94 i. e., when ichthyoarchaeological data are interpreted within a wider anthropological framework, they yield a better understanding of why certain species were present on, or absent from, the menu. Nevertheless, the information provided by this paper is very fragmentary, and there are grave lacunae in terms of the time periods and geographic areas covered and the archaeological and historical evidence. Chronologically speaking, the Byzantine period is the most informative. The archaeological evidence is particularly rich along the Israeli coastline, with a statistically lower percentage of finds – although very significant ones – along the eastern 90 91 92 93 94

Fradkin and Lernau 2008. Glantz 1992: 1–7; Boero, this volume. Hoffmann 2000; Fagan 2002. McCormick et al. 2012; the controversial book by Ellenblum 2012; Haldon et al. 2014. Van Neer and Ervynck 2002: 204.

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coast of the Aegean and an almost total lack of data from any other areas. The reasons for this are mainly the absence of systematic excavations, underwater or on land, and a lack of attention to ichthyoarchaeological remains. From a historical point of view, this paper surveys both the published historical documentation and modern studies. In most, modern studies the focus on eco- and environmental history is minor or indirect, because these are not the main interests of the writer. The majority of documents remaining to be explored are unpublished and require extensive palaeographic skills that few scholars possess. Despite the fragmentary information it offers, this pioneering paper provides some interesting insights about fishing within a broad context: marine environment, culinary and cultural habits, maritime trade and industry, marine technological achievements. It also suggests new interpretations of vessels, social status and occupations involved in various aspects of the fishing industry. In other words, the catching, processing and consuming of fish, shellfish and other marine animals involved conscious decisions motivated by complex social, economic, culinary and cultural motives. Ruthy Gertwagen Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, University of Haifa Mount Carmel, Haifa 3498838, Israel [email protected]

9. References 9.1 Sources Al-Idrīsī, La Géographie d’Ếdrisi, translated by P.-A. Jaubert (Recueil de voyages et de mémoires publié par la Société de géographie 5–6). Paris 1836–40. Al-Idrīsī, La première géographie de l’occident, with a translation by H. Bresc, A. Nef and P.-A. Jaubert (Garnier Flammarion Series, 1069). Paris 1999. Bertrandon de la Broquière, Le Voyage d’Outremer de Bertrandon de la Broquiere, premier ecuyer tranchant et conseiller de Philippe le Bon, duc de Bourgogne, edited by C. Schefer. Paris 1892. Canon Pietro Casola’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the year 1494, edited and translated by M. M. Newett. Manchester 1907. Delehaye, H., Les saints stylites (Subsidia hagiographia 14). Paris 1923. Eustathios of Thessaloniki, De emendanda vita monachica, edited and translated by K. Metzler (Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 45). Berlin 2006. Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land made by Henry Earl of Derby (afterwards King Henry IV) in the Years 1390–1 and 1392–3. Being the Account kept by his Treasurer during Two Years, ed. by L. Toulmin Smith. London 1894, repr. New York 1965. Felix Faber, Fratris Felicis Fabri Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae, Arabiae et Egypti peregrinationem I–III, edited by C. D. Hassler. Stuttgart 1843–9. Ibn Batûta, Voyages, 1. De L’Afrique Nord à La Mecque, translated by C. Defremery and B. R. Sanguinetti, Paris 1958; new edition with introduction and notes by S. Yerasimos, Paris 1994. Ibn Hawqal, Configuration de la terre (Kitab Surat al-Ard) vol. 1, translated by J. H. Kramers and G. Wiet (Collection Unesco d’Oeuvres Représentatives, Série Arabe). Beirut 1965, repr. Paris 2001. Les Gestes des Chiprois: recueil de chroniques francaises écrites en Orient aux XIIIe et XVIe siècles (Philippe de Navarre et Gérard de Monréal), edited by G. Raynaud (Publications de la Société de l’Orient latin; Série historique 5). Genève 1887.

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de Martoni, Nicholas, Relation du pèlerinage a Jérusalem de Nicholas de Martoni notaire italien (1294– 1395), edited by L. Le Grand (Extrait de la Revue de l’Orient Latin 3). Paris 1895. Muqaddasi, M., The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions: A translation of Ahsan al-Taqasim fi Ma‘rifat al-Aqalim by A. A. Collins (Great books of Islamic civilisation). Reading 1994. Nassir Khosrau, Sefer Nameh: relation du voyage de Nassiri Khosrau célèbre poète et philosophe persan, ca. 1003–1088 A. D. en Syrie, en Palestine en Égypte, en Arabie et en Perse, pendant les années de l’Hégire 437–44 (A. D. 1045–1052), edited and translated by C. Schefer (Publications de l’École des orientales vivantes, 2e série). Paris 1881, repr. Amsterdam 1970. Pegolotti, F. B., La pratica della mercatura, edited by A. Evans (The Medieval Academy of America 24). Cambridge, MA 1936. Pero Tafur, Travels and Adventures 1435–1439, translated by M. Letts (Broadway travellers). London 1926. Theodorus Prodromos, Ptochoprodromos, edited and translated by H. Eideneier (Neograeca medii aevi 5). Cologne 1991.

9.2 Secondary literature Alfaro, C. and D. Mylona 2014. ‘Fishing for purple shellfish (Muricidae) in Ancient Greece: Acquisition technology and first steps in purple dye production’ in C. Alfaro, M. Tellenbach and J. Ortiz (eds), Production and Trade of Textiles and Dyes in the Roman Empire and Neighbouring Regions: Actas del IV Symposium Internacional sobre Textiles y Tintes del Mediterráneo en el mundo antiguo (Valencia, 5 al 6 de noviembre, 2010). Valéncia, 149–66. van Alfen, P. G. 1996. ‘New light on the 7th-c. Yassi Ada shipwreck: capacities and standard sizes of LRA1 amphoras’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 9, 189–213. Arlene, F. and O. Lernau 2008. ‘The fishing economy at Caesarea’ in K. G. Holum, J. A. Stabler and E. G. Reinhardt (eds), Caesarea Reports and Studies: Excavations 1995–2007 within the Old City and the Ancient Harbor (BAR International Series 1784). Oxford, 188–200. Ashtor, E. 1968. ‘Essai sur l’alimentation des diverses classes sociales dans l’Orient médiéval’, Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilizations 23, 1017–53. Balard, M. 1978. La Romanie Génoise (XIIe-début du XVe Siècle) (Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria 18.1 = 92.1; Bibliothèque des Écoles Francaises d’Athènes et de Rome 235). Genova. Balletto, L. 1976. ‘Il commercio del pesce nel Mar Nero sulla fine del Duecento’, Critica Storica 8:3, 10–27. Balletto, L. 1983. Genova nel duecento: Uomini nel porto e uomini sul mare (Collana Storica di Fonti e Studi 36). Genova. Balletto, L. 1986. ‘Fonti notarili genovesi del secondo Duecento per la storia del Regno latino di Gerusalemme’ in G. Airaldi and B. Z. Kedar (eds), I comuni italiani nel regno crociato di Gerusalemme: Atti del colloquio ‘The Italian Communes in the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem’. Jerusalem, May 24-May 28,1984 (Collana Storica di Fonti e Studi 48). Genova, 175–279. Barkai, O. and Y. Kahanov 2007. ‘The Tantura F Shipwreck, Israel’, IJNA 36, 21–31. Barkai, O., O. Lernau and Y. Kahanov 2013. ‘Analysis of Fish Bones from the Tantura F Shipwreck, Israel’, Archaeofauna 22, 189–99. Barkai, O., Y. Kahanov and M. Avissar 2010. ‘The Tantura F Shipwreck: The Ceramic Material’, Levant 42, 88–101. Bass, G. F., S. Matthews, J. R. Steffy et al. 2004. Serçe Limani: an Eleventh-Century Shipwreck, 1. The Ship and its Anchorage, Crew and Passengers. College Station, TX. Bekker-Nielsen, T. 2008. ‘Lo studio della fauna antica del Mar Nero (fino al 1200 D. C.): Aspetti quantitativi e qualitativi’ in R. Gertwagen, S. Raicevich, T. Fortibuoni et al. (eds), Il mare. Com’ era: Le interazioni tra uomo ed ambiente nel Mediterraneo dall’Epoca Romana al XIX secolo: una visione storica ed ecologica delle attività di pesca (Atti del II Workshop Internazionale HMAP del Mediterraneo e Mar Nero, Chioggia, 27–29 settembre 2006). Rome, 78–93.

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Berindei, M. and G. Veinstein 1976. ‘La Tana-Azaq, de la présence italienne a l’emprise ottomane (fin XIIIe – milieu XVIe siècle)’ Turcica 8:2, 110–201. Cardon, D. 2003. Le monde des teintures naturelles. Paris. Chrone-Vakalopoulos, M. and A. Vakalopoulos 2008. ‘Fishes and other aquatic species in Byzantine literature. Classification, terminology and scientific names’, Byzantina Symmeikta 18, 123–57. Cooksey, C. J. 2001. ‘Tyrian Purple: 6,6’-Dibromoindigo and Related Compounds’, Molecules 6, 736–69. Dagron, G. 1995. ‘Poissons, pêcheurs et poissonniers de Constantinople’ in C. Mango and G. Dagron (eds), Constantinople and its Hinterland: Papers from the Twenty-seventh Spring Sumposium of Byzantine Studies, Oxford, April 1993 (Publications of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies 3). Oxford, 57–76. Dagron, G. 2002. ‘The Economy, Seventh-Twelfth Centuries’ in A. E. Laiou (ed.), The Economic history of Byzantium from the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, (Dumbarton Oaks Studies 39). Washington, DC 393–461. Dalby, A. 2003. Flavours of Byzantium. Totnes. De Nicolò, M. L. 2011. Il Mediterraneo nel Cinquecento tra antiche e nuove maniere di pescare (Rerum maritimarum 7). Pesaro. Ellenblum, R. 2012. The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean: Climate Change and the Decline of the East, 950–1072. Cambridge. Fagan, B. M. 2002. The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300–1850. New York. Fradkin A. and O. Lernau 2006. ‘The Fish Bone Remains’ in R. Stieglitz (ed.) 211–22. Frenkel, M. 2006. ‘The Compassionate and Benevolent’: The Leading Elite in the Jewish Community of Alexandria in the Middle Ages [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem. Galili, E. and B. Rosen 2008. ‘Fishing Gear from a 7th-Century Shipwreck off Dor, Israel’, IJNA 37, 67–76. Galili E., B. Rosen and J. Sharvit 2002. ‘Fishing-gear sinkers recovered from an underwater wreckage site off the Carmel coast, Israel’, IJNA 31, 182–201. Galili, E., A. Zemer and B. Rosen 2013. ‘Ancient Fishing Gear and Associated Artifacts from Underwater Explorations in Israel: A Comparative Study’, Archaeofauna 22, 145–66. Gertwagen, R. 1996. ‘The Crusader Port of Acre: Layout and Problems of Maintenance’ in Michel Balard (ed.), Autour de la Première Croisade: Actes du Colloque de la Society of the Crusades and the Latin East (Byzantina Sorbonensia 14). Paris, 553–81. Gertwagen, R. 2008. ‘Serçe Limani, An Eleventh-Century Shipwreck, Volume 1’. Byzantinische Zeitschrift 101, 233–7. Gertwagen, R. 2013. ‘Is there a typology of piratical crews and ships across the Byzantine and Medieval Mediterranean?’ in N. Jaspert and N. Colditz (eds), Endangered Connectivity: Piracy in the Mediterranean. Munich, 67–82. Gertwagen, R. 2014. ‘Nautical Technology’ in P. Horden and S. Kinoshita (eds), A Companion to Mediterranean History (Blackwell Companions to World History). Oxford, 154–69. Glantz, M. H. (ed.) 1992. Climate Variability, Climate Change and Fisheries. Cambridge. Goitein, S. D. 1967. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 1. Economic Foundations. Berkeley. Goitein, S. D. 1973. Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders. Princeton. Grabar, O. 1987. The Formation of Islamic Art. New Haven. Haldon, J., N. Roberts, A. Izdebski et al. 2014. ‘The Climate and Environment of Byzantine Anatolia: Integrating Science, History and Archaeology’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 45, 113–61. Hoffmann, R. 2000. ‘Medieval Fishing’ in P. Squatriti (ed.), Working with Water in Medieval Europe: Technology and Resource Use. Leiden, 331–93. Imber, C. 1990. The Ottoman Empire 1300–1481. Istanbul. Imber, C. 2002. The Ottoman Empire 1300–1650: The structure of power. London. Jackson, R. P. 1989. ‘From Profit-Sailing to Wage-Sailing: Mediterranean Owner-Captains and their Crews during the Medieval Commercial Revolution’, Journal of European Economic History 18, 605–28.

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Jacoby, D. 2005a. ‘Aspects of Everyday Life in Frankish Acre’, Crusades 4, 73–105. Jacoby, D. 2005b. ‘The production of Silk Textiles in Latin Greece’ in D. Jacoby, Commercial Exchange Across the Mediterranean, Byzantium, the Crusade Levant, Egypt and Italy (Collected Studies Series 836). Farnham. Jacoby, D. 2009. ‘Caviar Trading in Byzantium’ in R. Shukurov (ed.), Mare et Litora: Essays Presented to Sergei Karpov for his 60th Birthday. Moscow, 349–64. Jensen, L. B. 1963. ‘Royal Purple of Tyre’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 22, 104–18. Johns, J. and E. Savage-Smith 2003. ‘The Book of Curiosities: A Newly Discovered Series of Islamic Maps’, Imago Mundi 55, 7–24. Kennedy, H. 1988. The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century (History of the Near East). London. Kingsley, S. A. and K. Raveh 1996. The ancient harbour and anchorage at Dor, Israel: Results of the underwater surveys 1976–1991. The Dor Maritime Archaeology Project (BAR International Series 626). Oxford. Kuniholm, P. I. 1982. ‘The Fishing Gear’ in G. F. Bass and F. H. van Doorninck Jr. (eds), Yassi Ada 1. A Seventh Century Byzantine Shipwreck (Nautical Archaeology Series 1). College Station, TX, 296– 310. Laiou, A. E. 2002. ‘Exchange and Trade, Seventh-Twelfth Centuries’ in A. E. Laiou (ed.), The Economic History of Byzantium: From the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century (Dumbarton Oaks Studies 39). Washington, DC, 697–770. Laiou, A. E. and C. Morrison 2007. The Byzantine Economy (Cambridge Medieval Textbooks). Cambridge. Lane, F. C. 1974. Venice, a Maritime Republic. Baltimore. Maniatis, G. C. 2000. ‘The Organizational Setup and Functioning of the Fish Market in Tenth-Century Constantinople’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 54, 13–42. McCormick, M., U. Büntgen, M. A. Cane et al. 2012. ‘Climate Change during and after the Roman Empire: Reconstructing the Past from Scientific and Historical Evidence’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 43, 169–220. Roesti, R. 1966. ‘The Declining Economic Role of the Mediterranean Tuna Fishery’, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology 25, 77–90. Schatzmiller, M. 1994. Labour in the Medieval Islamic World (Islamic history and civilization 4). Leiden. Spanier, E. (ed.) 1987. The Royal Purple and the biblical blue: Argaman and Tekhelet, the Study of Chief Rabbi Dr. Isaac Herzog on the Dye Industries in Ancient Israel and recent Scientific Contributions. Jerusalem. Steffy, R. 1982. ‘Reconstructing the Hull’ in G. F. Bass and F. H. van Doorninck Jr. (eds), Yassi Ada 1. A Seventh Century Byzantine Shipwreck (Nautical Archaeology Series 1). College Station, TX, 65– 86. Stieglitz, R. (ed.) 2006. Tel Tanninim Excavations at Krokodeilon Polis 1996–1999 (American Schools of Oriental Research 10). Boston. Szulc-Kajak, A. 2010. ‘Fishing gear from Jiyeh (Porphyreon): Preliminary Report’, Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean 22, 334–40. Smail, R. C. 1973. The Crusaders in Syria and the Holy Land (Ancient peoples and places 82). London. Talbot, A.-M. 2007. ‘Mealtime in Monasteries: The Culture of the Byzantine Refectory’ in L. Brubaker and K. Linardou (eds), Eat, Drink, and Be Merry (Luke 12:19): Food and wine in Byzantium. Papers of the 37th Annual Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, in Honour of Professor A. A. M. Bryer (Publications of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies 13). Aldershot, 109–26. Tucci, U. 1987. ‘L’alimentazione a bordo delle navi veneziane’ Studi Veneziani 13, 103–45. Tzavara, A. 2004. ‘À propos du commerce vénitien des “schienali” (schinalia) (première moitié du XVe siècle)’ in D. Coulon, C. Otten-Froux, P. Pagés et al. (eds), Chemins d’outre-mer: Études d’histoire sur la Méditerranée médiévale offertes à Michel Balard (Byzantina Sorbonensia 20). Paris, 813–26.

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Van Neer, W. and A. Ervynck 2002. ‘Remains of Traded Fish in Archaeological Sites: Indicators of Status, or Bulk Food?’ in S. O’Day, W. Van Neer and A. Ervynck (eds), Behaviour Behind Bones: The Zooarchaeology of Ritual, Religion, Status and Identity. Oxford, 203–14. Whitcomb, D. 1995. ‘Toward a Common Denominator: An Archaeological Response to M. Morony on Pottery and Urban Identities’ in I. A. Bierman, M. G. Morony and D. Whitcomb (eds), Identity and Material Culture in the Early Islamic World (UCLA Near East Center Colloquium Series). Los Angeles, 47–68.

Sabine Florence Fabijanec

Fishing and the fish trade on the Dalmatian coast in the late Middle Ages

1. Introduction The eastern Adriatic coast extends from Istria to Albania (fig. 12.1) and is 2,488 km long. Between the estuary of the Soča and that of the Bojana there is a total of 66 inhabited islands, 659 uninhabited and small islands, 496 rocks and 82 shelves above sea level.1 From Ižola in Istria to the Gulf of Kotor, the east coast is primarily marked by steep cliffs, interspersed with many gulfs and bays, and by a series of archipelagos from the island of Lošinj to Dubrovnik; the seabed is more irregular than flat.2 This topography and the local climate have contributed to the creation of an abundant and diversified marine fauna which, in turn, has supported the development of fishing and the fish trade. Indeed, fishing was a very well developed activity across Dalmatian territory in the Middle Ages, both in the urban communes of the coast and on the islands, and the first reference to fishing activity by Croats dates to 995.3 At the end of the Middle Ages, Dalmatia was dominated by Venice. Unlike other economic activities, however, fishing was not under direct Venetian control.4 This explains why fishing became one of the most important branches of the local economy throughout all the Dalmatian communes.5 The fact that many churches of the province were consecrated to Saint Nicholas, protector of fishermen and sailors, is also revealing.

2. Fishing zones In the Adriatic, the most common fish species are sardine (Sardina pilchardus), mackerel (Scomber scombrus), bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) and other pelagic fish. The most common fish in the shallows are hake (Merluccius merluccius) and picarel (Spicara smaris). Fishing for such species is a seasonal occupation, and thus the income to be derived from it is fluctuating and unstable. In fact, the distribution of the habitats and the migration patterns of these fish, particularly of sardines, are still unknown.6 1 2 3 4 5 6

Pomorska enciklopedija 1956: 525. Pomorska enciklopedija 1956: 558. Peričić 1999: 29. Raukar 1982: 65. Raukar 1977: 213. Pomorska enciklopedija 1960: 601.

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Up to one nautical mile off-shore the waters are shallow, with a maximum depth of 80 m. This maritime area is rich in nutrients and carbon, and thus highly conducive to fish production.7 Thanks to these off-shore resources, small-scale fishing quickly developed around Dalmatian communal waters. The archipelago of Zadar comprises very productive basins; among them, the basin of the island of Kornati, approximately 320 km long, is the most significant. The most fertile bays are those of Sakarun and Telašćica on Dugi otok and of Molaščica on Molat, which were famous, according to records from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, for their small, dark-fleshed fish (for example mackerel, sardine and other oily fish). These bays were systematically exploited from 1440 to 1501. Fishermen of the islands and surrounding settlements (Silba, Olib, Premude, Skard, Ist, Solin, Polja, Božave, Brbinja, Savra, Sestrunja, Zverinca and Iž) would fish together in these two zones around Dugi otok and Molat, but a quarrel prompted by the usurpation of fishing rights broke out in 1501. To catch the darkfleshed fish, fishermen would travel up to 15–18 nautical miles from the coast on a summer night, and spend nearly twenty days at sea. Sixteen small settlements worked 200 beach seines on the islands; the island of Iž alone had nine.8 Taking into account the production in the bay of Novigrad and on the islands of Rab and Pag, it was possible to catch nearly 30,000 Venetian pounds (14,310 kg) of tuna per year.9 As for the district of Šibenik, with its 40 islands and islets, a testimony from 1487 states that it was a zone ‘rich in fish’, especially the strait. It contained oysters, dentex (Dentex dentex), striped mullet (Mugil cephalus), bogue (Boops salpa), red scorpionfish (Scorpanea scrofa), red mullet (Mullus barbatus), sea bass (Dicenthrarchus labrax), black goby (Gobinus jozo), gilthead bream (Sparus aurata), common sea bream (Pagrus pagrus), squid (Loligo vulgaris), mackerel, picarel and annular bream (Sargus annularis), and conditions were ideal in many bays for tuna. The immediate hinterland of Šibenik constituted another fishing zone with freshwater fish and eels found in the Krka river. These fisheries in particular were leased out by the commune or by private owners.10 In the 1470s, fishing was developed in the area of Šibenik and on nearby islands (Zlarin and Prvić). Catches were sufficient to provide the city with a surplus that was exported to the Marches of Ancona, on the Italian side of the Adriatic, and their hinterland. At the end of the fifteenth century, fishing for dark-fleshed fish was extended into the widest insular zones. This is particularly true for the zone of Žirje (peschiera di Zuri) which, from the very beginning of the sixteenth century, became the main centre for the salting and export of dark-fleshed fish. In the second half of the sixteenth century, dark-fleshed fish were the most commonly exported commodity from Šibenik.11 The city of Dubrovnik drew its supply of fish from the islands of Lastovo and Trpanj, which were the centres of fishing in the Gulf of Ston. The catches supplied the local market and also sustained an active export trade in salted fish. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, in particular, Venice made efforts to organise fishing off the small island of Sušac, to recover part of the rich fishery zone of Lastovo for the benefit of the islanders of Hvar, Vis and Korčula.12 7 8 9 10 11 12

Dulčić, Soldo and Jardas 2005: 23. Starešina 1971: 11. Piasevoli 1964: 40–1. Kolanović 1995: 228–30. Kolanović 1995: 229. Stulli 1989: 70.

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Fig. 12.1: The Adriatic sea, with sites mentioned in text. (Richard Szydlak). On the island of Rab, which covers an area of 93 km²,13 and adjacent islands, fishing locations were much more diverse than elsewhere, depending on the targeted species. Areas of marine grasses, coastal shelves and the hollows generally sheltered common pandora (Pagellus erythrinus), black bream (Spondyliosoma cantharus) and scorpionfish (Scorpaenidae). 13

Kos 1987: 251, n. 3.

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On the coast, along the headlands, dentex was a well-known speciality of the fisheries of Rab. Populations of conger eel (Conger vulgaris), eel (Anguilla vulgaris) and common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) were hidden deep in the sea. In the sandy and muddy shore waters off Lopar, Supetar and Kampor there were schools of striped mullet, European sea bass and gilthead bream. In the bays of all the islands, in particular in the hollows of the headlands of Luna and Kalifronta, one could fish for all types of picarel. In the muddy and sandy waters there were common hake (Merluccius merluccius), whiting (Merlangius merlangus) and blue whiting (Micromesistius poutassou).14 The richness of the fishing off the eastern Adriatic coast quickly led to the establishment of special privileges for some categories of persons and institutions. In 995, for instance, since they could not agree amongst themselves who could go fishing, the notables of the commune of Zadar decided to donate the fishing-grounds (piscationes) around the islands of Molat and Dugi otok to the Benedictine monastery of Saint Krševan in Zadar.15 Later, the presence of defined fishing-grounds for tuna in the zone of Rijeka, in Preluka (Prelucha), can be noted from 1438 onwards. Any fisherman of the city and its surroundings was entitled to set a net in the basin, provided that nobody else had done so before him. Twenty years later, tuna fishing was authorised even on Sundays and holidays, in order to exploit every opportunity to fish.16

3. Fishing techniques The earliest known documentation concerning the fishing techniques of the Croatian eastern Adriatic is recorded in the Statute of Skradin which dates from the beginning of the fourteenth century. This statute mentions three techniques: trident fishing, fishing with a gill net and fishing by frightening the fish. ‘From the old times’, according to the statute, fishermen went night fishing and donated the biggest fish of the catch to the communal officials. They took along nets, pobuks (hollow-ended sticks) and fire (cum rectibus in nocte cum pobuc, et igne). They beat the water with pobuks to frighten the fish and direct them to an illuminated area where gill-nets had been placed.17 In the waters of the Zadar archipelago a similar technique called ‘roasting’ (svaržale, sparžiti) was practised. ‘Roasting’ took place on nights with calm seas and no moonlight. Burning branches of blackcurrant bushes, in the shape of a torch, were tied to iron axes. Fishermen carried these on their shoulders along the coast, moving from rock to rock. The fish were attracted by the light and subsequently caught. The term ‘roasting’ was also used to refer to the technique of placing burning blackcurrant branches or dry vines (lamparo) on an iron lattice close to the poop of a boat and holding them in place by two iron bars. This technique was used to catch dark-fleshed fish.18 From the second half of the fifteenth century a new fishing technique emerged. In Šibenik, the inventory of a fisherman dated to 1460 lists ‘due tragine da pischar de passa 60’ (two driftnets for fishing 60 paces long). The technique soon spread further afield: in 1464 14 15 16 17 18

Basioli 1987: 269. Kostrenčić 1967: doc. 34, 49–50. Basioli 1969: 107. Birin 2002: 83, 197. Starešina 1971: 12.

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the specialised driftnet fisherman (piscator tratte) Marin Živković agreed with another man from Šibenik that they would fish for four months off the island of Krk with these nets. By the end of the fifteenth century all the fishermen from the islands around Šibenik (Žirje, Zlarina and Prvić) were familiar with driftnet fishing. Thanks to this new fishing gear, it became easier to catch dark-fleshed fish. Its introduction had a significant impact on the development of fishing and the growth of the fish export trade.19 For example, when in 1524 a patrician from Zadar, Simon Kresula de Cedolini, introduced a driftnet (mostly referred to as tracta in the documents of the sixteenth century) to fish for sardines, it was immediately clear that it was a much more efficient way to fish than traditional methods. As a consequence, he requested that the Venetian government forbid fishermen who did not work for him from using this technique for a period of ten years. The government granted his request and imposed a fine of 50 ducats on anyone who contravened this regulation, plus the threat of the expropriation of catches, nets and other assets.20 In the 1570s these driftnets were often owned by two or more individuals – parcenevoli – who took a proportional share of the catch. Nets were sometimes owned by just one fisherman; in 1573 the fisherman Nicolas Frančić bought eight nets at a cost of 52 pounds.21 When used for sardine fishing, each net required the use of three boats manned by four sailors each. Thus, for instance, the majority of the male population of Silba (which in 1500 had a total of 120 inhabitants) was engaged in fishing.22 In addition to the tracta, there were two other techniques used: the rete (first mentioned in 1540), a gill-net adapted to bonito and sardine fishing on the open sea and used to catch fish which had first been frightened; and the parangal, mentioned in a document of 1556. The parangal was a line fishing instrument: baited hooks were attached at intervals via branch lines, and a hundred or more baited hooks could hang from a single longline.23 On the island of Rab, the ‘first tuna tunera of Saint George’ is mentioned in the communal statutes at the end of the sixteenth century. This tunera was an enclosure net specialised for tuna fishing set up at a distance of 40 m from the shore and with an opening towards the northwest. It was 70 m long and rose 8 m above the muddy seabed. The schools of tuna would come from the low cape of the island of Dolina or from the channel of Barbat in the northwest. An observation point was positioned high on the top of the small island of Saint George which was located near Rab, with a chapel dedicated to the saint. From his observation point on the island, a fisherman could alert others to the arrival of a school of fish. Fishermen in boats would set out to frighten the fish in order to direct them towards where the nets were set. The most appropriate location to trap fish by this method was the port of Rab, which was closed with the arrival of a school of fish. Fishing took place only during the autumn.24 Descriptions of fishing practices can also be found in other sixteenth-century sources. Petar Hektorović, a patrician from Hvar, wrote Fishing and Fishermen’s Conversations,25 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Kolanović 1997: 323–4. Čolak 1957: 11; Hrvatski biografski leksikon, 1989: 613–4. Pederin 1993–4: 174. Starešina 1971:11–2. Pederin 1993–4: 173–4. Basioli 1987: 273; Pederin 1993–4: 174. Hektorović 1997: 38.

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in which he reported the three days he spent with two fishermen on the waters of Stari grad near the island of Hvar during the summer of 1555. Ten verses from this text, written in the old Chakavian literary language used in Dalmatia at the time, give an account of the standard fishing technique, which displays similarities to those mentioned above: And they prepared the boat with mast and sail, Equipping it with anchor, rudder, oars And fine-mashed nets with weights to sink them down To the sea’s bed, their tops upheld by floats, And also grasses from hill pastures plucked, Woven in ropes for frightening the fish, An oyster-graff, pine torches and a trident, For spearing fish along the coast at evening. Paskoy also brought his son to help, To use the plunger to scare up the fish.

Again, this is a description of a technique involving the frightening of fish. The fish were directed towards a precise predetermined zone, where it was possible to concentrate them in sufficient numbers to catch them easily – even with only the bare hands, depending on the type of fish. At the end of the sixteenth century, the first enclosed fishponds appeared when areas of the sea were portioned off for the breeding fish. The first reference to a fishpond in the records of Rab dates from 1577. The pond was owned by a certain Zacharie Benedetti, with the consent of the count and captain of the town.26 The values of the specialised fishing boats are also indicative of the evolution of fishing techniques. The common fishing boats, mostly with four oars, were called barcha peschariza, pescarese, piscaricia or cimba ad piscandum. From the end of the fourteenth to the end of the sixteenth century, the price of these fishing vessels in Zadar and Split, for example, varied greatly. According to the contracts of purchase, they were worth either fifteen ducats (1367), 55 pounds (1389–1409) or four ducats (1496).27 In the second half of the sixteenth century, in connection with the introduction of new fishing techniques, a larger fishing boat appeared: barcha maior a pescharessa. In Šibenik, a boat could fetch a price of 52–62 pounds, while a smaller vessel cost 20–26 pounds.28 On the island of Rab, the term zaupo (also copulo, zepula, zolla as well as other names) was used to describe boats of varying sizes made from a single tree trunk; these could carry up to eight people and were used by the local population for inshore fishing.29 On the island of Vis, the typical fishing boat was called a gajeta falkuša. This was the only sail-carrying fishing boat in the area that was specialised for navigation on the open sea and originated from Komiža (a small town on Vis).30 The fishermen of Komiža were well-known for being specialised in open-water fishing with driftnets across an area up to the island of Palagruža; for example, on 9 May 1593 a fleet of 74 gajeta

26 27 28 29 30

Pederin 1993–4: 174. Fabijanec 2011, I: 214–7. Kolanović 1995: 235. Kos 1987: 253. Božanić 1997: 293.

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falkuša manned by 370 fishermen, armed with a harquebus for defence against pirates, went fishing escorted by a Venetian galley.31

4. Modes of exploitation The clearest illustrations of the organisation of fishing can be found from the insular areas. Examples relate in particular to the island of Rab and its territorial waters, which had one of the first fraternities of fishermen, fraternitas piscatoris, created at the beginning of the fourteenth century, as well as to the islands in the district of Zadar. In the sixteenth century, fishing companies functioned mainly on the same principles as other forms of commercial associations (societates). In these archipelagos, bailiffs or the owners – laymen or clerics – of maritime territories (islets, islands, bays and zones off the coast considered as private property) provided the fishermen with boats, fishing tackle and fishing rights within their waters, sometimes also with the salt necessary for the preservation of the catch. In most cases, as in all compagnie, the fisherman, as a socius tractans (active business partner), was obliged to sell a share of his catch to the socius stans (passive business partner) for a price fixed by contract. This share varied from 100 % (i. e., the total catch) down, in most cases 50 %. Moreover, a fisherman was normally expected to cover the operating costs of the boat(s). He generally turned over his catch to the owner on a daily basis. The landowners may also have interacted with merchants. The latter were also sometimes owners of ships, in which case these would have been used to transport the fish collected for export. Thus, in 1529, Marin, a merchant from Šibenik, joined forces with the patrician Frano Cernota from Rab. Cernota provided Marin with a net and all the other instruments necessary for fishing for shellfish and other marine species. He also provided salt. Marin provided his ship to export the catch to the Marches; eventually he would give Cernota a portion of the profit. At the same time, Cernota joined up with several other fishermen and traded in previously caught and salted mackerel. For his part, Marin also bought salted fish in Istria and sold the cargo in the Marches. In 1525 the procurator of the chapel of Saint George, Christopher Dominis, leased out all fishing on the island and its dependencies. In 1540, John Dominis, the primicerius of Rab, leased the whole of its territory with its fishing zones to three fishermen for one ducat per year and one-tenth of the tuna catch. The fishermen had to provide a beach seine and a tuna net, and, having paid taxes to the city and its count, they had the right to sell the rest of their catch, but only after first offering it to Constantin Dominis, the procurator and nephew of primicerius John, to buy.32 The situation was similar for the territorial waters of Zadar and its islands. The fishermen thus joined up with merchants for the sale of their fish in the market of Zadar, and in the markets of Venice and Italy in general. There, they sold brined fish in barrels. The tradition lasted for at least four to five centuries; from the eleventh century the monks of Saint Krševan (Saint Chrysogonus) took a tribute (tributum) from the catch. This privilege was confirmed twice, despite protests from the producers.33 The following report of a lawsuit 31 32 33

Slobodna Dalmacija, Joško Božanić, ‘Viška gajeta falkuša – posuda kolektivne memorije’, http:// arhiv.slobodnadalmacija.hr/20010904/podlistak.htm (viewed 30 July 2015). Pederin 1993–4: 173. Piasevoli 1964: 40–1.

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of 1466 involving the producers, whose situation was definitively regulated only in 1548, is rich in information concerning the fishing techniques employed, the rich fishing zones, the working conditions and the high stakes involved, which entailed a constant struggle between the communal authorities and the fishermen.34 In 1466, representatives of the insular fishermen of Iž, Veli Rat, Dugi otok (from the village of Sali) and Pašman complained to the court that the owner of the territorial waters, the monastery of Saint Krševan, was not fulfilling its obligations towards them. According to the customary law, the monastery had to provide one round loaf of bread and one jug of wine per fisherman at the time they handed over the tribute (one-eighth of the catch). This tribute had been, since the eleventh century, part of the communal revenue. However, the monastery later appropriated it as its own income. The court rejected the claim to compensation and threatened any defrauder of the monastery with a fine of 25 pounds. The fish-rich waters of the Zaratin insular zone also attracted other Dalmatian fishermen. In 1485, people from Šibenik were accused of not having paid the tribute to the monastery, although they had fished in the communal waters and sold fish in the Zaratin market. According to the communal authority’s regulations, they also had to give one-eighth of the catch as a tribute. The defence argued that this obligation concerned only the Zaratin fishermen and fishermen from its district, not foreigners. The communal court of Zadar decided differently, and compelled the fishermen of Šibenik to pay the tribute to the monastery and to the commune. These tensions show how the commune and the monastery endeavoured to preserve their fishing privileges around Zadar and across its archipelago. Rich incomes resulting from fishing were at stake. The fishing professionals were gathered together in the brotherhood of Saint Andrew and Saint Nicolas before the sixteenth century. They were divided into two groups: owners of beach seines and those with other nets. The government supported the former; in 1487 it accused the owners of other types of nets of frightening the fish in the fishing zone reserved for beach seines.35 The struggle between the insular fishermen and the authorities – both secular and ecclesiastical – continued into the sixteenth century. In May 1500, a representative of the monastery of Saint Krševan and the authorities of Zadar petitioned the communal court to renew the obligation of the fishermen to pay the one-eighth tribute. The fishermen, with the assistance of their lawyer, a patrician of the famous family of Begna, acknowledged their obligation to pay the tribute, but only when they fished in the immediate vicinity of the city and only levied on the fish sold in the city’s market. They considered it unjust to be required to give up part of the fish caught in the open sea or around the islands and wanted to reserve these fish for their own use or for sale elsewhere. The court decided that the insular fishermen should give the monastery and the commune one-eighth of all fish caught and sold when the selling price exceeded ten pounds in total. Any acts in defiance of this decree would be punished by a fine of half a ducat. The communal court thus extended the rights of the communal authorities across the entire archipelago. When in 1524 the above-mentioned patrician Simon Kresula de Cedolini introduced the more profitable driftnet for fishing sardines, the commune of Zadar attempted to benefit from this situation by enacting new decrees. From then onwards, the fishermen were re34 35

Based on the information collected by Nikola Čolak 1957: 10–3. Čolak 1957: 10. Pomorska enciklopedija 1960: 613–4.

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quired to salt their fish in the city. Furthermore, they had to request in writing the authorisation to do so and were obliged to buy their salt from the Venetian authorities. In addition, Simon and his fishermen, who were catching sardines in the fishing zones of Kornat and Sali, were obliged to provide the citizens of Zadar with 200 barrels of salted sardines annually, at a price fixed by the commune. However, confronted with complaints from the fishermen and the possibility that the production of salt-fish would suffer, the Venetian government, by a decree of April 1532, required the commune to cease pressuring the fishermen. According to a new decree, the fishermen had to bring fish only to the island of ‘Panitula’, and there settle all the taxes and obligations to which they were subject for their fresh fish. A receipt that taxes were paid was issued to each owner of a ship, who then might freely sell the fish on the city market; he had to pay a tax of one-thirtieth (3.3 %) on salted fish only. Otherwise, the fishermen remained free to fish as they wished. The fishermen who used the newly-introduced driftnets for sardines had to continue to provide 200 barrels of salted sardines annually. However, the commune did not respect this decree, since it sold these barrels, intended for the local citizens, for a profit of 50 ducats. The Venetian government requested that the sale be cancelled and that the commune keep to the terms of the original decree.36 As time went by and other conflicts arose, the fishermen remained exposed to the arbitrary decisions of the commune. They were forced to accept the consequences of the political climate. Thus they had to serve on Venetian galleys and take part in campaigns against the Uskoks and other similar actions. This pressure caused a reduction in the number of driftnets from 60 to eighteen. However, the commune continued to require drift-netters to provide the 200 barrels of salted sardines; this led the fishermen to a shortfall of 6,000 ducats over the course of several years – according to the handwritten report of their complaint. In 1537 the Venetian government again intervened in favour of the fishermen against the auction sale of the 200 barrels, since fishing was one of the most advantageous economic activities in this area. The communal administration of Zadar then compelled the fishermen to bring the 200 barrels directly to the city under penalty of 25 pounds. Previously, the fishermen would sell their fish on the spot and the commune would come to seek its share. Under this new decree, the fishermen were compelled to come into the city with all their goods, in order to maintain contacts with fish-dealers on the spot, which resulted in additional expenses and demands on their time. The negative consequences of these permanent pressures were manifold; among others, up to half the catch might be thrown overboard due to a fall in the number of fishmongers. Moreover, the obligation to maintain a storehouse in the city required the fishermen to negotiate guaranteed loans from Jews, and they considered the interest rates on these to be exorbitant. The final consequence of these new rules was that the fishermen now operated at a loss. So, once again, they complained to the Venetian Senate. The court process, involving the fishermen and the monastery of Saint Krševan, unfolded from 1546 to 1548. In 1548, the Senate concluded that fishermen with driftnets in the archipelago of Zadar could fish freely across the territory without any obligation to pay the tributum. They were not released from other communal taxes or from the obligation to provide the city with a sufficient quantity of sardines. If they fished in bays and other locations reserved exclusively for the monastery and the commune, they were obliged to give up one-eighth of the catch.37 36 37

Čolak 1957: 11–2; Pomorska enciklopedija 1960: 613–4. Čolak 1957: 12–3.

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Another example of the difficulties encountered by fishermen concerns a ‘war of techniques’. In the sixteenth century, the owners of a beach seine from the island of Hvar resented the presence of gill-net owners from the island of Vis. By putting pressure on the authorities, they managed to have the fishing rights of the owners of the gill-nets restricted and even secured complete prohibition of the use of their sailing boat, the gajeta falkuša; drastic measures were employed against any who transgressed these restrictions. Their motive was the suppression of competition; because of their higher quality, pilchards caught by the gajeta falkuša fetched a considerably higher price than those caught near the shore. In addition, the owners of the beach seines needed a large workforce and tried to complement their crews with fishermen from Vis, who were particularly respected as experts on the sea and on pelagic fishing. Only in years when the catch was poor did the authorities allow the gajetas falkuša to be used near the large nets, but, when catches were abundant, they were forbidden to fish even around the distant island of Palagruža, where the underwater rocks and the rocky shore were totally unsuited to the use of gill-nets anyway.38 According to the report of the Venetian officer, Giovanni Battista Giustiniano, in 1553 fishermen from Vis who used the gajeta falkuša and sailed as far as Palagruža caught three million sardines in one day. For the commune, this represented 14,000 ducats of income, which equated to 20 % of all communal incomes.39

5. Market regulations The terms of the communal statute laws clearly organised the nature of the fish trade. On Korčula, the fisherman brought his fish to the fish market and had to sell it to every purchaser who came. If the fresh or salted fish that he wished to sell on the island had been caught outside Korčulan waters, the fisherman had to pay the bailiff one-tenth of the goods or the equivalent value in money as a tax.40 On Hvar, the inhabitants were forbidden from meeting the incoming boats in order to acquire fish before it was unloaded;41 had the catch been sold before unloading, the payment of tax might have been avoided. In Skradin, as soon as the fishermen returned from a fishing expedition they had to leave their equipment in the hands of the city, while in Split they were expected to sell the fish immediately upon their return and only in fish shops; moreover, they had to be present while the fish was being sold – probably in order to ensure that the sale was quick and thus the fish still fresh. In almost all the communal regulations it is stipulated that fish could not be sold before the entire catch had been unloaded from the boat, This measure was taken to avoid smuggling, since salesmen had to pay the tax for the whole catch to get the right to hold a street stall. In Šibenik, the sale of fish was organised on benches around the communal palace or around the butchery zone; in Trogir, the fish was sold in the port or in the market; in Skradin, the fish market had to be far away from the coast for the better control of the supply of fish and to avoid black-market sales as the fishing boats arrived. Only the statute law of Hvar prohibited the wearing of bonnets or caps – presumably for some hygienic reason. The statute law of Split insisted that the fish should be fresh, i. e. caught the same day, except for 38 39 40 41

Božanić 2007. Ljubić 1880: 220–2. Cvitanić (ed.) 1987: 64 chapter 101, 152 chapter 184. Rismondo (ed.) 1991: 176 chapter 31.

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the last day of Lent, when the fishermen were exceptionally authorised to sell it the following morning.42 Judging from the detailed tariffs of fish prices (table 1), the range of products was vast: eel, octopus, squid, cuttlefish, tuna, moray, ray, sea snake and black bream. On Korčula, merchants were forbidden to compete by offering the merchandise at a lower price, especially in the fish shops. The incrimination of an unfair competitor was done on the basis of a statement from the injured party and the presence of a witness.43 The most expensive fish in Rijeka were tuna and ray, and in Split the most expensive was cuttlefish. In Rijeka, the price of fish with scales was lower during Lent (from Carnival until Easter). On the contrary, in Pula, fish was more expensive during Lent.44 Table 1: Prices of fish according to the statutes (price per pound) Split (1312)

Skradin (1304–1312)

Trogir (1322)

Pula (1431)

Krk (1470)

Rijeka (1530)

Red mullet

–

5 denars

5 denars

18 denars

–

–

Eel

–

5 denars

5 denars

12 denars

Dentex

–

5 denars

Conger bream

–

5 denars

2 denars –

Mackerel Red scorpionfish Tuna Leerfish Scad

–

12 denars

–

–

–

12 denars

–

–

–

4 denars

12 denars

–

–

–

–

12 denars

–

–

3 denars

–

4 denars

12 denars

–

12 denars

–

5 denars

–

–

2 denars

–

–

–

–

4 denars

4 denars

–

–

2 denars

2 denars

–

3 denars

10 denars

12 denars

–

Sharks (cat, angel, bluntnose six gill)

–

2 denars

2 denars

6 denars

–

–

Ray

–

–

1.5 denars

6 denars

4 denars

8 denars

Blue skate

–

–

6 denars

–

6 denars

Moray

–

–

5 denars

–

–

–

Oyster

–

–

–

–

6 denars

–

Octopus

–

3 denars

3 denars

by rule of thumb

6 denars

–

Cuttlefish

8 denars

3 denars

by rule of thumb

6 denars

–

–

4 denars

Fish with scales Small fish

Squid

42 43 44

Fabijanec 2003: 44–6, 48–51. Cvitanić (ed.) 1987: 107 chapter 64. Herkov (ed.) 1948: 312; Basioli 1966: 185.

3 denars

by rule of thumb 8 bagatins

–

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According to all the communal statute laws – and testifying to the continuity of the tradition – the fishermen were expected to give the best portions of catches to representatives of the communal authority. Some of them came personally to choose their fish on the arrival of the fishermen in port. In Dubrovnik, fishermen had to give six fish out of every hundred to the count; in Skradin, after returning from a night of fishing, the fishermen gave one fish to the commune, one to the count and one to the judge; the people of Hvar gave the largest fish of the catch to the judge. In the fish shops, the fishmongers presented their wares before the vicar, who, in order to check the quality, chose a fish according to his taste.45

6. The volume of the fish trade Customs declarations, so-called contralittere, are the principal sources for the study of the fish export market. Contralittere from Split are preserved from throughout the sixteenth century,46 as are some from Šibenik and Trogir. 6.1 Split In Split, the majority of fish for trade had already been salted (pesci saladi), thus facilitating their preservation and transport. Such fish were appreciated across the whole Adriatic region. In the sixteenth century, the principal measurement used was barrels, but there were also cavi (small casks), sacheti (small bags) and miara (100 pounds). Bulk sales (a refuso) represented a good part of the trade. So, for the year 1503, fish was exported in bulk to Molise, Abruzzi and the Marches; in 1511, fish was transported to Venice; and, in 1515, ships containing bulk loads sailed towards the Marches, especially to Fermo. The registers generally specify that these shipments were of dried fish (secchi) of several kinds. Unfortunately, there is no complete and reliable record that can be used for comparison across the years. However, it is known that in both 1581 and 1582 (the two years are recorded completely), nearly 10,000 salted fish were exported. The destinations varied. The Italian ports on the eastern Adriatic coast were the principal export markets throughout the century, with a slight prevalence of the Marches at the beginning of the century, then of Venice between 1511 and 1530, and of sottovento – literally ‘downwind’, i. e. southeastern Italy – in the 1580s. The markets of the Croatian coast are recorded as taking imports only during the second decade of the century, while Istria (the city of Piran) imported fish twice in the 1580s. Throughout the sixteenth century only 25 voyages with a cargo of fish (salted or dried) were accomplished. The Venetian share of the market was 20 % of the total export, whilst the Marches and sottovento each accounted for 16 %. In addition to salted fish, we can also observe small cargoes of needlefish (called agui, belone acus in the registers) – sent even to Syracuse in 1530 – of horse mackerel (suri) and mackerel (scombri, scussi), among others, sent in the direction of Abruzzi and Apulia, and of

45 46

Fabijanec 2003: 45. Državni Arhiv u Zadru (State Archives in Zadar), Splitski Arhiv (Archives of Split), box 36, vol. 48, fasc. I (1503–4); box 41, vol. 52, fasc. 4 (1511); box 49, vol. 60, fasc. 6/II (1515–7); box 59, vol. 66, fasc. 7/IV (1523–6); box 67, vol. 74, fasc. 7/IV (1528–30); box 96, vol. 103, fasc. 17 (1557–60); box 116, vol. 122, fasc. 6 (1580–3).

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Fig. 12.2: Fish exports from Split in selected years during the sixteenth century (by full calendar year). Figures on the left axis indicate quantity in barrels; percentages indicate the proportion of sardines.

picarel (girize, zgirol), mostly as food for the crew. The export of tuna (tonina) appears in the 1530s to Apulia (especially Trani and Otranto).47 Finally, sardines (sardelle) comprised the greatest volume of traffic: on average, they represent nearly 88 % of the fish exports from Split (fig. 12.2). The majority of them were salted. Not all the sardines were caught in Split, however. The harbours of Omiš (a few barrels in 1503, then six barrels sent to Ravenna in 1583) and Makarska (50 barrels in 1558, transported to Apulia, sottovento and Venice) also supplied the Adriatic market, with their catches being exported through Split. Discounting the years 1503 and 1511, the annual average reached 450 barrels. Exports were sent from Split to various markets. In 1503, the main destinations for exported sardines were the Abruzzi and Apulia (81 %). By 1515, the destinations were rather different and the largest markets were in Apulia (Termoli) and Romagna (Ravenna) with 26 %, the Marches (in particular the town of Lanciano) at 18 %, the Levant, including Cyprus (Nicosia), at 28.5 % and the Venetian colonies in southern Greece (Monemvasia in the Peloponnese and Zakynthos). In 1516, exports were directed towards Venice (40 %) and central and southern Italy (37 %); in Dalmatia, Hvar was the main importer and a few bar47

Fabijanec 2011: vol. II: 470–1.

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rels were also exported to Candia (Crete). During 1528 the three main markets were again the Marches (40.5 %), Apulia (28 %) and the Levant (11 %, including Corfu and Zakynthos). Other fish (tuna and picarel) were exclusively exported to Apulia. In 1558, Apulia and sottovento took 85 % of the fish exported from Split. In 1559, 7 % of the sardines went to Ravenna and 93 % to Apulia. In the 1580s, the main export markets were sottovento and the Istrian city of Piran, with an annual average of 450 barrels.48 The soaring rise of the sardine export trade may have been related to technical progress, especially the fact that sardines were easier to salt and store than other fish. Also, the use of gill-nets can be more widely identified in the south of the Adriatic; a declaration from 1558 mentions that out of 384 barrels exported from Split, 50 were originally imported from Makarska,49 and in 1583 six barrels destined for Ravenna came from Omiš.50 During the 1580s, the weights of barrels were equated in terms of miara (100 Venetian pounds), and it seems that an average sardine barrel weighed 124 kg.51 6.2 Zadar Although fish abound in the maritime territory of Zadar, documentary records regarding trade, even information on the sizes of catches, are very limited. The fish mentioned in the documents are chub mackerel, mackerel and sardine. The type of ship used for fishing was exclusively the grip (gripo), a small sailing boat confined to coastal navigation in the eastern Adriatic.52 Fish gelatine was particularly highly prized. One of the production centres was the ancient village of Gazenice (Gasenizze), where fisheries and salt-works were located along the coast.53 The sixteenth-century notary acts record, for example, the export of 40 barrels of sardines from the island of Šolta, plus twelve barrels of some fish called ‘mera’ and eight barrels of eels (angusigose) and salpe, together with one barrel of oil; the whole cargo was bound for the sottovento. At the same time, trade in fish also took place with other Dalmatian cities, independently of the production of the city. Thus, in November 1516, an Italian, Lazar, from Bologna imported eleven barrels of mackerel and sardine from Split to Zadar, in a boat owned by a resident of Zadar.54 A later source, the inventory of Lazar Pontremolo dated to 1556, testifies indirectly to the interest of this merchant in sea products. It contains, among other details, a record of 1,300 barrels intended for salted fish on the island of Dugi otok. Pontremolo owned eleven nets and four ships with capacities ranging from 500 to 800 stari (a unit of measurement for grain, also used for measuring boat capacity).55 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

Fabijanec 2011: vol. II: 472–3. Fifty barrels of sardele da Makarska were exported to Apulia on 10 November: State Archives in Zadar, Archives of Split, box 96, vol. 103, fasc. 17, f. 893. Six barrels (21,900 pieces) of sardele condute d’Almissia per boleta were exported to Ravenna on 4 February 1583: State Archives in Zadar, Archives of Split, box 116, vol. 122, fasc. 6, f. 479. State Archives in Zadar, Archives of Split, box 116, vol. 122, fasc. 6, f. 458, 460, 460’, 462’, 473’, 475, 476. Čolak 1957: 13. Piasevoli 1964: 40–1. State Archives in Zadar, Archives of Split, box 49, vol. 60, fasc. 6/II, f. 480. Raukar et al. 1987: 259.

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6.3 Šibenik and Trogir From Šibenik in the years 1441–2, fish were exported fresh, dried (secchi), salted (saluni, salati) and as gelatine. The quantities were not large and they are not in relation to the production. Mackerel and scad were mainly exported from April until September, less so during the winter. The main destinations of export were the Marches and Abruzzi. The greatest quantities of salted fish were transported towards the Croatian coast (Senj, Rijeka) and Montenegro (Kotor). In the sixteenth century, Trogir exported even more fish than Split. In 1567, 742 barrels (85 % sardines and 12 % dried fish) were directed to Venice (57 %), Apulia (29 %), Zadar and Vasto. The following year, Trogir exported 1,151 barrels: 78 % sardines, 9 % mackerel and 8 % horse mackerel. Sardines were sent to the Levant (Corfu, Candia, Cyprus and Zakynthos).56 For the period of one thirteen-month period (1576–1577) it is possible to establish the volume of the export trade for both Šibenik and Trogir (Table 2). Table 2. Exports from Šibenik and Trogir from 16 June 1576 to July 1577.57 No. of barrels

Šibenik

Trogir

Sardine

3,633

2,651

4

–

Sand smelt Bonito

17

–

356

202

Scad (horse mackerd)

85

84

Tuna

Mackerel

30

1

Picarel

–

128

Brined fish

–

200

Both communes had a very prosperous fish trade. Trogir exported a total of 3,266 barrels (81 % sardine) and Šibenik 4,125 barrels (88 % sardine and almost 10 % mackerel). From Trogir, 30 % of the exports went into Venetian territory – to Chioggia, Friuli and Portugrauro – and the island of Corfu, while 70 % went to the Marches.58 The growth in fish exports did not fail to attract the attention of the Venetian authorities. As a consequence, a new tax on the sale of fish was introduced in the sixteenth century: for each miliario (1,000 libri or Venetian pounds) of sardines, the tax was 1 pound 6 pennies (1 miliario of sardines cost 9 pounds 10 pennies), for mackerel the tax was 2 pounds 6 pennies (1 miliario cost 10–16 pounds), for anchovy and scad the tax was 1 pound 14 pennies, for tuna 1 pound and for each barrel of sand smelt the tax was 12 soldi. These new taxes provided a significant income to the communal treasury. Some merchants particularly distinguished themselves in the fish export trade. Between 23 April 1575 and 21 July 1577, Zuan Antonio Paladin from Trogir exported 1,278 barrels of 56 57 58

Kolanović 1997: 325. Translated and adapted from Kolanović 1997: 325. Fabijanec 2011: 473.

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sardines, fresh and salted fish, destined for the sottovento, Venice and the Levant (Corfu and Zakynthos).59 The financial value of this trade amounted to around 7,000 ducats.

7. Conclusion The historiography and the records from the state archives are very rich in information regarding the Croatian maritime world and fishing industry, even for the (late) medieval periods. Thanks to this documentation, it is possible to reconstruct many aspects of medieval fishing: the fishing zones, techniques, guild associations, everyday life at the fish markets and, finally, trade. The statistical records from the sixteenth century largely reflect the growing importance of the fishing industry. By this time, new fishing techniques had been introduced, and, as the result of Ottoman territorial pressure, the communes preferred to source food for their populations from the sea rather than the land, since acquiring food from inland areas was more hazardous. So, the communal authorities facilitated access for fishermen and eased restrictions on the fishing zones. This opening of the fishing industry even generated a surplus. The surplus fish could be dried, salted or preserved in brine and distributed to multiple centres across the Adriatic and the Aegean, thus providing significant income to the communal coffers. This work has been supported in part by the Croatian Science Foundation under the project 6547 (Sources, manuals and studies for Croatian History from the Middle Ages to the end of the long nineteenth century). Sabine Florence Fabijanec Department of Historical Sciences, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts Strossmayerov trg 2, HR-10 000 Zagreb [email protected]

8. References 8.1 Archival sources (State Archives in Zadar) Državni Arhiv u Zadru (State Archives in Zadar), Splitski Arhiv (Archives of Split): Contralitaerre, box 36, vol. 48, fasc. I (1503–4); box 41, vol. 52, fasc. 4 (1511); box 49, vol. 60, fasc. 6/II (1515–7); box 59, vol. 66, fasc. 7/IV (1523–6); box 67, vol. 74, fasc. 7/IV (1528–30); box 96, vol. 103, fasc. 17 (1557–60); box 116, vol. 122, fasc. 6 (1580–3).

8.2 Published primary sources Birin, A. (ed.) 2002. Statut grada Skradina. Zagreb. Cvitanić, A. (ed.) 1987. Korčulansk istatut: statut grada i otoka Korčule iz 1214. godine. Zagreb. Hektorović, P. 1997. Fishing and Fishermen’s Conversations (Biblioteka bašćina 3), edited and translated by E. D. Goy. Stari Grad. Herkov, Z. (ed.) 1948. Statut grada Rijeke iz godine 1530. Zagreb. 59

Kolanović 1997: 326.

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Kostrenčić, M. (ed.) 1967. Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae I. Zagreb. Rismondo, V. (ed.) 1991. Hvarski statut. Split. Ljubić, Š. (ed.) 1880. Itinerario di Giovani Baptista Giustiniano in Commissiones et relationes Venetae III (Monumenta spectantia historiam Slavorum meridionalium 11). Zagreb.

8.3 Secondary literature Basioli, J. 1966. ‘Trgovina i raspodjela morske ribe na obalama Istre prošlosti’ in V. Bratulić (ed.), Jadranski zbornik VI. Rijeka and Pula, 165–95. Basioli, J. 1969. ‘Trgovina i raspodjela ribe u Hrvatskom primorju i kvarnerskim otocima u prošlosti’ in V. Bratulić (ed.), Jadranski zbornik VI. Rijeka and Pula, 103–45. Basioli, J. 1987. ‘Ribarstvo otoka Raba u prošlosti’ in A. Mohorovičić (ed.), Rapski zbornik. Zbornik radova sa Znanstveno gskupa o otoku Rabu održanog od 25. do 27. listopada 1984. godine. Rab, 269–78. Božanić J. 1997. ‘Milenij ribarstva na otocima viškog arhipelaga’ in B. Finka (ed.), Tisuću godina prvoga spomena ribarstva u Hrvata. Zagreb, 289–307. Božanić, J. 2007. Gajeta falkuša – Barka iz dubina vremena (DVD edition). Split. Čolak, N. 1957. ‘Ribarstvo u Zadarskom arhipelagu u 15. i 16. st.’, Morsko ribarstvo 1:11, 10–3. Dulčić J., Soldo A., Jardas I. 2005. ‘Small-scale fisheries in Croatia’, in Adriatic Sea Small-Scale Fisheries: Report of the AdriaMed Technical Consultation on Adriatic Sea Small-Scale Fisheries, Split, Croatia, 14th-15th October 2003 (AdriaMed Technical Documents 15). Termoli, 22–32. Fabijanec, S. F. 2003. ‘L’influence des pouvoirs publics sur le commerce et sur la vie des marchés urbains en Dalmatie (XIIIe-XIVe siècles)’, Medium Aevum Quotidianum 48, 37–52. Fabijanec, S. F. 2011. Le développement commercial de Split et Zadar aux XVe-XVIe siècles. Un commerce transitaire entre l’Europe Centrale et la Méditerranée, I–II. Saarbrücken. Hrvatski biografski leksikon 1989. Zagreb. Kolanović, J. 1995. Šibenik u kasnom srednjem vijeku. Zagreb. Kolanović, J. 1997. ‘Izvoz ribe na drugu obalu Jadrana u XV. i XVI. stoljeću’ in F. Božidar (ed.), Tisuću godina prvoga spomena ribarstva u Hrvata: zbornik radova istoimenoga znanstvenoga skupa održanoga u Zagrebu, Zadru-Salima i Splitu od 10. do 18. listopada 1995. godine. Zagreb, 319–30. Kos, L. 1987. ‘Pomorstvo Raba: nekad i danas’ in A. Mohorovičić (ed.), Rapski zbornik. Zbornik radova sa Znanstvenog skupa o otoku Rabu održanog od 25. do 27. listopada 1984. godine. Rab, 251– 67. Mirković, M. 1958. Ekonomska historija Jugoslavije (Biblioteka Ekonomskog Pregleda 6). Zagreb. Pederin, I. 1993–4. ‘Rapska trgovina, pomorstvo, brodogradnja, ribarstvo, materijalna kultura i novčarstvo u XVI. st.’, Vjesnik povijesnog arhiva Rijeke 35–6, 157–83. Peričić, Š. 1999. Razvitak gospodarstva Zadra i okolice u prošlosti (Djela 13). Zagreb. Piasevoli, A. 1964. ‘Fragmenti iz ekonomskog života Zadra od XIII. do XVIIIst.’, Zbornik: geografija, ekonomija, saobraćaj, povijest, kultura Zadra 38, 23–47. Pomorska enciklopedija 1956, vol. 3. Zagreb. Pomorska enciklopedija,1960, vol. 6. Zagreb. Raukar, T. 1977. ‘Venecija i ekonomski razvoj Dalmacije u XV. i XVI. stoljeću’, Radovi instituta za Hrvatsku povijest 10, 203–25. Raukar, T. 1982. ‘Komunalna društva u Dalmaciji u XV. i u prvoj polovici XVI. stoljeća’, Historijski zbornik 25, 43–118. Raukar, T., I. Petricioli, F. Švelec et al. 1987. Zadar pod mletačkom upravom 1409–1797 (Prošlost Zadra 3). Zadar. Starešina, P. 1971. Pomorstvo Silbe (Djela 4). Zadar. Stulli, B. 1989. Povijest dubrovačke Republike. Dubrovnik.

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8.4 Internet link Slobodna dalmacija, J. Božanić, ‘Viška gajeta falkuša – posuda kolektivne memorije’, http://arhiv.slobodnadalmacija.hr/20010904/podlistak.htm last seen 30 July 2015.

Ferdinando Boero

Mediterranean Scenarios

1. Human impact and ecosystem change The planet’s human population amounts to more than seven billion. Every species uses natural resources and the human species, due to our heterotrophic nature (we eat other living beings), relies on the availability of other species to satisfy our needs. This interaction might be reduced to a game with two players: us against the rest of nature. The success of a species is measured by the number of its representatives. All species tend to increase in numbers. But the infinite growth of the population of any species is simply impossible, since our world is finite. It is a natural rule, furthermore, that if something increases, then something else decreases. The growth of our species (both in number of human beings and in economic capital) is balanced by the ‘de-growth’ of the rest of nature (the natural capital). The growth of our species can continue until a breaking point is reached: when the rest of nature cannot sustain our number. This means that the resources to maintain our numbers will not be available any more (not to speak about the modification of the air we breathe). This will result in a reduction that may take place in three main ways: famine, disease or war. When our population pressure on the rest of nature decreases, nature has the possibility of restoring its features. The decrease in numbers of the overly successful species can continue to the point of total extinction as an outcome, or simply to a stabilizatuion at a level which is in greater harmony with the rest of nature. The first symptom of human impact is habitat destruction. Agriculture requires habitat destruction. With agriculture, we eradicate all species and then concentrate our attention on one: the species that is useful to us. We use pesticides to prevent other species from taking the resources that we want to canalize to the target species. On land, we do not draw resources from natural populations: all the biological products we use derive from agriculture. This means that we have altered natural systems so much that they cannot of themselves provide products anymore, simply because they have been destroyed. In the sea, we still draw resources from natural populations (fisheries) but we are shifting to aquaculture because the natural populations have been overexploited. Having destroyed terrestrial systems, we are now in the process of destroying marine ones as well. In doing so, we eradicate the diversity of life and replace it with just a few species. Natural systems cannot function just with the species that we cultivate. Our rush towards growth is natural, but it is also natural that this growth is terminated by the lack of sustainability: infinite growth is impossible in a finite world. The condition of marine systems is measured by the possibility of continuing to exploit natural marine populations.

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Fisheries are the measure of the well-being of the sea. The growth of aquaculture is an alarm, a warning about the overexploitation of the marine ecosystem.1

2. The ecosystem approach Ecology, for a very long time, tried to deal with Nature as if humans either did not exist, or were intruders into natural systems. Studies either searched for ‘pristine’ conditions, in undisturbed habitats, or focused on our impact on ‘natural ecosystems’. In both cases, ecologists perceived humans as aliens in natural ecosystems. The ecosystem approach calls for including humans as natural components of ecosystems. This has profound ecological implications that change our perspectives on the way we interact with the rest of the environment. Everything humans do is ‘natural’ since we are a product of organic evolution, but this may lead to the belief that, then, there can be nothing wrong in what we do. This reinforces the conviction that the changes we are witnessing are part of natural variability and not due to our action. Speaking against a belief held in the majority of the world’s institutions, ecologists have for a very long time been almost alone in underlining our responsibilities for the state of the planet.

3. 2015 The year 2015 signalled a historical shift. For the first time, two important institutions converged with the ecologists in delivering a clear message: we are abusing nature and must change our approach if we want to survive. First, Pope Francis published Laudato Sì,2 an Encyclical dedicated to the environment and to the care we must dedicate to it. Then the leaders of 198 countries, assmbled at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) held in Paris in 2015, agreed that humans, as a collective entity, must reduce their impact on the planet, since in an increasing number of cases, the conditions for our survival are not being met – first of all in terms of availability of breathable air. We must change the way we interact with the environment, most importantly by reducing the use of fossil fuels, so as to reverse the tendency towards global warming due to an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Probably, however, this novel awareness of the importance of ecological issues will not be enough. The economic sector does not really care much about the environment and will probably resist a change that all other sectors are now acknowledging as no longer delayable.

4. The Mediterranean proxy The ocean masses play a crucial role in determining the conditions that are conducive to our well-being, in terms of climate and of resource availability. It is, therefore, extremely important to understand our impact on marine ecosystems and to try to protect it from our misbehaviour. 1

2

The present contribution expands on Boero 2015, developing approaches that are not only ecological, and that pertain also to the social and economic sciences, proposing possible outcomes of the impact of our activities on the structure and functioning of marine ecosystems. Bergoglio 2015.

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Fig. 13.1: The Oceanic Conveyor Belt. (After Tillinger 2011). Bianchi and Morri (2000), Lejeusne et al. (2010) and Coll et al. (2010) have suggested that on the basis of its oceanographic and biogeographic features, the Mediterranean Sea can be considered as an ocean en miniature: what is happening in the Mediterranean Sea provides a hint about what will happen in the rest of the world oceans in the future. The Mediterranean Sea, thus, is a test case for detecting impact and attempting remedies with management options. There are no other seas that might be used for this purpose: the Mediterranean offers a unique opportunity for ecological insight! The resemblance between the oceanic water circulation and that in the Mediterranean is impressive. The Great Ocean Conveyor Belt is driven by the ‘cold engine’ (i. e., site of deep water formation near the surface) in the Sea of Norway (fig. 13.1). The warm water flowing north becomes cooler and denser when it reaches the high latitudes and, due to its greater density, sinks to the depths of the Atlantic ocean. The engine of the conveyor belt is just this cooling of the warm surface waters flowing northwards: the cold waters, having sunk to a lower level in the cold engine area, flow south, pass the equator and meet the warmer waters of the sub-Antarctic (the Anctarctic Convergence). The coupling of this North-South current with the Antarctic Circumpolar Current leads to a northwards flow of deep water in the Pacific that, in its turn, generates a current which crosses the Pacific and the Indian Ocean to enter the Atlantic, so closing the circle.3 The circulation of the Mediterranean Sea is a replica of the oceanic conveyor belt (fig. 13.2). Riverine inputs in the basin do not compensate for the evaporation of Mediterranean waters; this causes a salinity increase and draws Atlantic waters in through the Straits of Gibraltar. The Gibraltar Current enters the Mediterranean at the surface, reaches the east3

Broecker 1991.

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Fig. 13.2: The circulation in the Mediterranean Sea. The Gibraltar Current enters from the surface, flows to the easternmost part of the Mediterranean basin and returns as the Intermediate Levantine Current. The cold engines in the Gulf of Lions, the Northern Adriatic and the Northern Aegean cause surface waters to cascade through canyons (A) triggering offshore upwellings. In the canyons not affected by cascading phenomena, the currents parallel to the coast trigger inshore upwellings, bringing deep waters towards the coast. Gyres (C) are other important features of ocean circulation. (Artwork by Alberto Gennari after Boero 2015). ernmost part of the Mediterranean basin and flows back at about 500 m depth to exit the Mediterranean back into the Atlantic. The average depth of the Mediterranean basin is about 1.500 m, hence the 500 m layer renewed by the Gibraltar current is insufficient to provide oxygen to the deep sea. That life persists below 500 m is due to the presence of ‘cold engines’ that have similar effects to those of the oceanic cold engine of the northern hemisphere. Cold-water formation occurs in the Golfe de Lion, in the northern Adriatic and in the northern Aegean due to a complex sequence of events based on the prevalence of strong cold winds that cool well-oxygenated surface waters; these sink into the deepest parts of the basin, pushing the deep, nutrient-rich but de-oxygenated waters upwards. So, just as with the Ocean conveyor belt, in the Mediterranean there is a horizontal current that runs from west to east (similar to the Antarctic current) and a series of vertical currents that flow from north to south, triggered by the cold engines (similar to the current generated by the cold engine of the Norwegian Sea). Other circulation patterns are generated by canyons, with the formation of upwellings; and by capes and straits, with the formation of gyres (cf. fig. 13.2). No other inland sea has such an extraordinary resemblance to the great oceanic belt, and this makes the Mediterranean Sea a perfect replica of the world’s oceanic system, to be used as an experimental basin where we can foresee the future of the ocean. The three cold engines in the northern part of the Mediterranean Sea replicate the cold engine of the Norwegian Sea. The Gibraltar Current and the Intermediate Levantine Current resemble the Antarctic current, but have a different origin and are not ‘functionally’ linked

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with the cold engines. These differences are to be considered when comparisons are made, but the resemblances between the two current patterns are still significant.

5. The Mediterranean: very sensitive to global warming It could be hypothesised that global warming might impair the cold engine of the Norwegian Sea, leading to a change in deep water formation patterns, since this already happened in 1995 when the Eastern Mediterranean Transient (EMT) occurred, with profound implications on ecosystem functioning.4 During the EMT, the cold engine of the Northern Adriatic failed to trigger deep water exchanges in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin, and the Northern Aegean engine took over this role. The Mediterranean Sea has ‘spare’ cold engines which can provide a supplement during periods when deep water formation by one of the three engines is impaired.5 This seems less probable for the oceanic conveyor belt, since its functioning is based on a single cold engine. Rising water temperatures are a phenomenon on the global scale, and they are occurring faster in the relatively small volume of the Mediterranean Sea than in the whole volume of oceanic waters. Their consequences will have great impact both on the biodiversity and the ecosystem functioning of the Mediterranean basin and are an anticipation of the response of the biota of the oceanic system of the whole planet. In winter, the temperature of the Mediterranean Sea is homogenous from the surface to the deep sea, with an average of 12 °C or even less, especially in the cold engines, but during the summer months its surface almost tropical and can reach 28 or even 30 °C. The surface layer of water where temperature changes are great is featured by a sharp seasonality, and the species which inhabit it are divided into two main categories: cold water species, thriving in the winter, and warm water species, thriving in the summer. Seasonal variations have been studied in detail for the Hydrozoa, a group of sessile animals that are sensitive to seasonal changes and that, in the Mediterranean Sea, show markedly seasonal activities. In a study of the Hydrozoa of Portofino (Ligurian Sea), the recent species composition and phenology were compared with those of the early 1980s.6 The study revealed that, in recent times, species typical of cold water restricted their depth ranges of occurrence to deeper levels and throve for shorter periods than in the past; on the other hand, warm-water species are now present throughout the year and have a longer reproductive period than before, whereas previously this was restricted to the summer. The number of species is roughly the same as before, but the species are different. This fraction of biodiversity is now showing many features different from those of three decades ago, with a clear trend towards a dominance of species of warm-water affinity and a corresponding retreat of species of cold-water affinity. The increases of sea surface temperatures that characterize the recent decades also disturbed other components of the benthic communities besides the Hydrozoa. Cold water species, in fact, repeatedly showed clear signs of distress, with mass mortalities of benthic populations over very large coastal areas. Due to higher sea surface temperatures the thickness of the warmer layer that is formed during the summer tends to increase, exposing 4 5 6

Danovaro, Dell’Anno and Fabiano 2001. Boero et al. 2008. Puce et al. 2009.

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benthic species to temperatures which exceed their tolerance limits. The mass mortalities of cnidarians and sponges that have occurred in the northern part of the basin are all related to an expansion of the warm water layer during the summer.7 The indigenous species that live in the Mediterranean below the layer of water that is heated during the summer months are in distress, and find a refuge at greater depths than usual. In places where they cannot find deeper refuges, they are in danger of extinction, as suggested by Boero, Carlton et al. (2013). Non-indigenous species in the Mediterranean Sea are almost invariably of tropical origin and these are changing the functioning of the ecosystems in radical ways. Biological invasions are currently perceived as a serious threat to biodiversity, and the Mediterranean Sea is without doubt the most ‘invaded’ sea of the planet.8 The new thermal conditions of the Mediterranean Sea, while disfavouring cold water species, open new possibilities for many tropical species that are, indeed, invading the basin by the hundreds, an invasion trend that may even increase after the doubling of the Suez Canal.9

6. From a fish-dominated to a jellyfish-dominated Mediterranean Global change is not the sole factor responsible for the impoverishment of the indigenous contingent: the Mediterranean Sea is also characterized by overfishing, with the consequent depletion of most commercial species.10 Britten et al. (2014) have demonstrated trophic degradation of fish stocks in the Ligurian Sea, with a sharp decrease of top predator species and a new dominance of species situated at intermediate levels in the trophic networks. Nature does not like voids, so the place of the fish is being taken by jellyfish,11 a trend that is becoming so evident worldwide that jellyfish are increasingly seen as a possible target for a focused fisheries activity, a potential solution that must be considered with the greatest caution.12 The Adriatic Sea well illustrates the changes that affect the entire Mediterranean Sea. This sub-basin of the Mediterranean benefits from significant nutrient inputs from the Po river, and has for centuries been among the most productive areas of the whole Mediterranean Sea. The ecological history of the Adriatic (fig. 13.3) starts with a situation dominated by fish, but the outbreaks of the scyphozoan jellyfish Pelagia noctiluca that affected the Mediterranean in the early 1980s were particularly intense in the Adriatic Sea: Pelagia almost instantly clogged the nets of the fishermen within minutes and catches were much reduced for about three years.13 The first interpretation of these events was that fish were not caught because the jellyfish had clogged the fishing gear, impairing its efficiency. It is more likely, however, that the reduced catches had a different cause: the jellyfish ate the fish eggs, larvae and juveniles, 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Rivetti et al. 2014. Galil et al. 2014. Galil et al. 2014; 2015. Coll et al. 2010. Boero 2013. Gibbons, Boero and Brotz 2015. Boero and Bonsdorff 2007.

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Fig. 13.3: Top: Circulation patterns in the Adriatic Sea. Below: The regime shifts that have characterized Adriatic ‘ecological history’ from the ’70s to present (from right to left): Fish and benthic molluscs are abundant, sustained by high plankton production; the jellyfish Pelagia noctiluca swarms the basin and depletes food webs in the water column; unicellular dinoflagellates dominate the system and also impact on benthic populations, which are also impacted by the use of hydraulic dredges; dominance of bacteria, leading to mucilage formation; present conditions, with increased dominance of gelatinous organisms. (Artwork by Alberto Gennari). depleting the fish stocks. Pelagia also fed on the crustaceans that are the main diet of fish larvae and juveniles. This is what happened in the Black Sea, when the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leydyi, another voracious gelatinous plankter, brought Black Sea fisheries to their knees. In this case, Mnemiopsis did not clog the nets and it was apparent that the fish were not caught because they had been eaten by the ctenophore. When the Pelagia years came to an end, however, the situation in the Adriatic Sea did not return to normal. Dinoflagellates, unicellular organisms that are part of phytoplankton, replaced the jellyfish, giving rise to abnormally large populations (red tides) that spread over the northern and central part of the Adriatic Sea. The blame for these events was placed on nutrients, and numerous actions were taken to reduce their inputs. After a series of years characterised by red tides, in the mid-1980s, marine scums termed ‘mucilages’ replaced the dinoflagellate harmful algal blooms!14 The causal factor behind the mucilages was iden14

Conversi et al. 2010.

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Fig. 13.4: The Fish-Jellyfish transition, with a tendency towards the prevalence of jellyfish-eating species. (Artwork by Alberto Gennari). tified as intense bacterial metabolism due to high carbon availability. Apparently, these dystrophic events do not take place when thaliaceans (gelatinous planktonic organisms that feed on microbes) become dominant in the water column; the reason might be that they remove all the microrganisms, so preventing their proliferation. This, however, is not well documented since, due to their irregular appearance, studies on thaliaceans are sparse: their dramatic blooms are seen, but the organisms themselves remain unstudied.15 The Adriatic Sea of today is much different from that of thirty years ago: the difference is due to physical changes, to biotic changes and to human impacts, all acting together. The same is true for the whole Mediterranean,16 where jellyfish are becoming increasingly abundant, both in the case of indigenous species such as Pelagia17 and the increasing number of reports of tropical species entering the basin from the Suez Canal.18 The regime shift from fish to jellyfish seems to affect all oceans and what is being recorded in the Mediterranean is probably going to happen at a world scale (fig. 13.4).19

15 16 17 18 19

Boero, Belmonte et al. 2013. Boero, 2015. Canepa et al. 2014. Boero, 2013. Brotz et al. 2012.

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Based on an assessment of the present state of the Mediterranean Sea,20 in a period of rapid change it would be useful to attempt to predict future scenarios, in order to be prepared to face new conditions. The insights gained from the analysis of the Mediterranean situation will aid researchers attempting to predict for the future condition of the global oceanic system. Acting as historians, we can compare what we now know about the distant and more recent past of the Mediterranean Sea with our knowledge of the present and recognize the patterns; thus identification of the drivers of past recent, and present change provides insights into the underlying causal processes, enabling us to draw some inferences about future trends.

7. What will be the future of the Mediterranean Sea? The Mediterranean is undergoing important changes that strongly affect the biota. Based on Boero (2015) the main issues regarding the future of the Mediterranean-Black Sea Ecosystem can be summarized as follows. Tropicalisation. The prevalence of species of warm-water affinity (either tropical nonindigenous species or indigenous species whoch normally thrive in the summer, or in the southern portions of the basin) is radically changing the biota. This is already very evident at species level, and the chances are high that these species will start forming new communities and will change the functioning of the ecosystems. It is difficult to predict, however, how the species will aggregate to form new communities. The ongoing changes in the distribution of species requires careful monitoring at the areas where different biogeographic regions meet. The success of warm water species is paralleled by the distress of cold water species. These will move northwards and/or to deeper levels, in search of favourable environmental conditions where the high surface temperatures do not have the devastating effects which have already caused mass mortalities in the Mediterranean Sea. Impairment of cold-water engines. The Eastern Mediterranean Transient showed that the cold engines can cease to generate deep waters near the surface. In a period of global warming, a worst-case scenario envisages the onset of permanent stratification due to the impairment of the cold engines, with widespread anoxia in the deeper portions of the whole Mediterranean basin. If this should happen also for the cold engine that drives the Great Oceanic Conveyor Belt, dramatic consequences are probable for the global climate and for marine life in general. Changes in the phenology of species. Changes in physical factors are modifying the phenology of species, with greater opportunities for species of warm-water affinity and fewer opportunities for species of cold-water affinity. This might also select genotypes that allow cold water species to face the new conditions; this may be happening for Fucus virsoides, a northern Adriatic endemic alga which, instead of disappearing as a consequence of the higher temperatures, is now particularly abundant.21 Extinction of cold-water species. The species endemic to the areas of the ‘cold engines’ will be forced into deeper waters or, where this is not possible (e. g., in the northern Adri20 21

Coll et al. 2010; Boero 2015. Boero et al. 2008.

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atic), they will become extinct.22 This prediction, however, might not be fulfilled if some species evolve and adapt to the new conditions. Less fish, more jellyfish. The fish-jellyfish balance is shifting on a global scale, and the change is particularly dramatic in the Mediterranean, where tourism and fisheries are highly developed. Fisheries are heavily affected by jellyfish blooms, but chances are high that overfishing is among the causes of gelatinous plankton outbreaks. Since very few species are really dangerous – and jellyfish are rather beautiful – we must learn to cope with them; in other parts of the world they are considered tourist attractions (in Palau, for example) or even culinary delicacies (in China, for example) even though Gibbons et al. (2015) have warned against industrial exploitation of the jellyfish. There is an indication that organisms which feed on jellyfish, such as sunfish (Molidae) and sea turtles, are increasing (fig. 13.4), since their food is now abundant. Perhaps they will reduce the prevalence of jellyfish, so creating space for other fish species and releasing them from jellyfish competition and predation on their larvae. Habitat destruction. The growth of human populations has an increasingly high impact on both terrestrial and marine ecosystems. At current rates of resource consumption, our well-being is maintained at the expense of the rest of the natural world; the destruction of habitats is the most dramatic outcome of this trend. If the curve of economic production increases (growth), inevitably the curve of environmental integrity will decrease. It is among the duties of the scientific community to warn decision-makers about the dangers of ignoring the laws of nature while enforcing human laws (the laws of economy). The growth of economic and financial capital usually has the erosion of natural capital as its consequence.

8. Conclusion The potential scenarios that lie ahead of us are not comforting; we are currently experiencing warnings that our presence on the planet is too demanding and that all that we take for ourselves is being taken from the rest of the natural world. The so-called ‘laws of economy’ do not take the ‘laws of nature’ into account; we unwisely expect the laws of economy to be stronger than the laws of nature, and we are already paying a very high price (in terms of the natural world, but also from an economic point of view) for our lack of wisdom. That price will increase with time, because the pressure we exert will inevitably force the systems that sustain our well-being to breaking point, and it is not to be taken for granted that the resulting, new situation will be as favourable to us as the present one (and especially past ones). It is difficult to predict what will happen and when it will happen. We might become wiser and decide to live differently, with different lifestyles. If we allow nature to prevail over economy (which it will do ultimately anyway, even if we do not encourage it to, or even want it to) and change our way of life, the opportunity of a bright future for the human race will exist. But we must stop our insane rush towards growth. Otherwise the pressure we impose on nature will become too great, and we will no longer benefit from the sustaining goods and services that we have taken for granted since the beginning of human history. The Mediterranean Sea is affected by global threats that cannot be unilaterally removed (for example global warming or ocean acidification), but there are many other pressures that can be relieved more easily. We might stop rearing carnivores to be fed on wild animals 22

Boero and Bonsdorff 2007.

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(as is taking place in aquaculture), we might stop developing coastlines with new urban and industrial installations, we might consider environmental costs when assessing the costs and benefits of any human enterprise (with both ecologists and economists doing the accounting). Finally, the populations of the so-called First World might choose to live in a simpler way; they should be the first to make sacrifices, since they have profited the most at the expense of nature. These issues are well expressed in the recent Papal Encyclical Laudato Sì. Scientists must warn decision makers about the situations facing humanity in the future. We must be honest, and admit that accurately predicting the future is not in our power; yet we have gathered sufficient knowledge and insights about the state of the environment to show that our present way of life is not compatible with the well-being of ecosystems, and that our well-being depends on their well-being. The trend towards unsustainability is clear and has to be reversed by means of proper policies, based on a more rational use of natural resources. The Mediterranean Sea is a small-scale ocean and its recent history dramatically demonstrates the consequences of our direct and indirect pressures on ecosystems; consequences which call for novel ways to tackle the complex problems regarding the interaction between the physical and the biological domains of marine environments. I have profited from discussion and collaboration with many friends and colleagues; their names are linked to mine in many of the publications cited in this chapter. Financial support for my research has come from the European Union, through the Integrated Project SESAME, the Network of Excellence on Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning; the projects Jason, Vectors of Change, CoCoNet and Perseus, of the Seventh Framework Programme of the EU. The Italian Ministry of Instruction, Universities and Research (MIUR,) provided support through the project COFIN, 2008, 2013. This work is also a contribution to the Jellywatch and Tropical Signals projects of the Mediterranean Science Commission (CIESM); the Commissions deserves further thanks for having contributed to the creation of a true spirit of research collaboration throughout the whole Mediterranean and Black Sea region.

Ferdinando Boero DiSTeBA, University of Salento I-73100 Lecce CNR-ISMAR [email protected]

8. References Bergoglio, J. 2015. Laudato Sì. The Holy See, Vatican City, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/ encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html Bianchi, C. N. and C. Morri 2000. ‘Marine biodiversity of the Mediterranean Sea: situation, problems and prospects for future research’, Marine Pollution Bulletin 40, 367–76. Boero, F. 2013. Review of jellyfish blooms in the Mediterranean and Black Sea (GFCM Studies and Reviews 92). Rome. Boero, F. 2015. ‘The future of the Mediterranean Sea ecosystem: towards a different tomorrow’, Rendiconti Lincei 26, 3–12. Boero, F., G. Belmonte, R. Bracale et al. 2013. ‘A salp bloom (Tunicata, Thaliacea) along the Apulian coast and in the Otranto Channel between March-May 2013’,  F1000Research 2:181 (doi:10.12688/ f1000research.2–181.v1).

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Boero, F. and E. Bonsdorff 2007. ‘A conceptual framework for marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning’, Marine Ecology – An Evolutionary Perspective 28.1, 134–45. Boero, F., J. Carlton, F. Briand et al. 2013. ‘Marine Extinctions. Patterns and Processes’, CIESM Workshop Monographs 45, 5–19. Boero, F., J. P. Féral, E. Azzurro et al. 2008. ‘Executive summary of CIESM workshop: climate warming and related changes’ in F. Briand (ed.), Climate Warming and Related Changes in Mediterranean Marine Biota. Helgoland (Germany), 27–31 May 2008 (CIESM Workshop Monograph 35). Monaco, 5–21. Britten, G. L., M. Dowd, C. Minto et al. 2014. ‘Predator decline leads to decreased stability in a coastal fish community’, Ecology Letters 17, 1518–25. Broecker, W. S. 1991. ‘The great ocean conveyor’, Oceanography 4.2, 79–89. Brotz, L., W. W. L. Cheung, K. Kleisner et al. 2012. ‘Increasing jellyfish populations: trends in large marine Ecosystems’, Hydrobiologia 690, 3–20. Canepa, A., V. Fuentes, A. Sabatés et al. 2014. ‘Pelagia noctiluca in the Mediterranean Sea’, in K. A. Pitt and C. H. Lucas (eds), Jellyfish Blooms. Dordrecht, 237–66. Coll, M., C. Piroddi, J. Steenbeek et al. 2010. ‘The biodiversity of the Mediterranean Sea: estimates, patterns, and threats’. PLoS ONE 5.8: e11842. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0011842. Conversi, A., S. Fonda Umani, T. Peluso et al. 2010. ‘The Mediterranean Sea regime shift at the end of the 1980s, and intriguing parallelisms with other European basins’, PLoS ONE 5.5: e10633. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010633. Danovaro, R., A. Dell’Anno and M. Fabiano 2001. ‘Deep-sea ecosystem response to climate changes: the eastern Mediterranean case study’, Trends in Ecology and Evolution 16, 505–10. Galil, B. S., F. Boero, S. Fraschetti et al. 2015. ‘The Enlargement of the Suez Canal and Introduction of Non-Indigenous Species to the Mediterranean Sea’, Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin 24 (2), 41–3. Galil, B. S., A. Marchini, A. Occhipinti-Ambrogi et al. (2014). ‘International arrivals: widespread bioinvasions in European Seas’, Ethology Ecology & Evolution 26 (2–3), 152–71. Gibbons, M. J., F. Boero and L. Brotz 2015. ‘We should not assume that fishing jellyfish will solve our jellyfish problem’, ICES Journal of Marine Science. DOI: 10.1093/icesjms/fsv255. Lejeusne, C., P. Chevaldonné, C. Pergent-Martini et al. 2010. ‘Climate change effects on a miniature ocean: the highly diverse, higly impacted Mediterranean Sea’, Trends in Ecology and Evolution 25, 250–60. Puce, S., G. Bavestrello, C. G. Di Camillo et al. 2009. ‘Long-term changes in hydroid (Cnidaria Hydrozoa) assemblages: effect of Mediterranean warming?’, Marine Ecology – An Evolutionary Perspective 30, 313–26. Rivetti, I., S. Fraschetti, P. Lionello, E. Zambianchi and F. Boero 2014. ‘Global warming and mass mortalities of benthic invertebrates in the Mediterranean Sea’, PLoS ONE 9(12): e115655. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0115655.

Index of Persons Abd el-Malik 341 Agustín de Horozco 261 Alberti, T. 323, 325 Alexander the Great 142, 313, 319 Alfonso V 277 Alfonso Pérez de Guzmán 276 Andrew, St 376 Andronicus 129 Annius Senecio, C. 227–8 Antipa, G. 310, 321, 333–4, 336 Antonius, M. 291 Apollo 118 Aphrodite 294, see also Venus Arcadius 149 Argatarchus 269 Aristo 271 Armillatus 125 Arnaud, P. 215 Atinius Crescens, A. 229 Augustus 146, 225, 227, 244 Aurelius Ctemulus, L. 220 Avius Lysimachus, P. 270 Baksici, P. 323 Bandini, M. 328 Bargrave, R. 323 Barsi, N. 323, 328 Bayezid II 320 Bela IV 319 Benedetti, Z. 374 Bergoglio, J. (Pope Francis) 388, 397 Caecilius Hospitalis, D. 228 Canius 126 Cernota, F. 375 Chares 108 Charles III 281 Chrysogonus, St, see Krševan Claudius 89, 223, 229 Claudius Docimus, Ti. 228 Cleopatra 291 Clodius Athenio, P. 227 Collingwood, R.G. 17 Commodus 115 Decentius 249 Diocles of Caryustus 169 Diphilus of Siphnus 167 Dominis, C. 375 Domitian 125

Dousa, G. 323, 325 Driard, C. 199 Enghoff, I.B. 36, 303–4 Ervynck, A. 363 Euthydemus 243 Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies 125 Ferdinand IV of Castile 276 Flavius Sabinus, T. 314 Florio, I. 276, 282 Francis, Pope 388, 397 Gajdukevič, V. 299 Galili, E. 355 Gallant, T.W. 16, 41, 45 George, St 373, 375 Gibbins, D. 215 Giurescu, C.C. 310 Giustiniano, G.B. 378 Glaucus 115 Grainger, S. 166 Grimal, P. 159 Gripus 108, 125 Hadrian 122 Hasebroek, J. 109 Hegesander 73 Hektorovič, P. 373 Henry IV 354 Heraclius 357 Hermon 278 Hippias 290, 301 Hippocrates 142 Hiram of Tyre 89 Homer 144, 266 Honorius 149 Horden, P. 15, 59 Iliaş 328 Iunius Festus, L. 227 Iunius Puteolanus, L. 227 Ivanova, N. 303, 305 Jason 289 Köhler, H.K.E. von 159 Kresula de Cedolini, S. 373, 376–7 Krševan, St 372, 375–7 Lacritus 290, 292 Leonidas of Tarentum 278–9 Loucas 346 Magnentius 249 Magni, C. 323

400

Index of Persons

Maurice 359 Merkelius, M. 325 Manuel I of Spain 282 Manuel I Comnenus 319, 345 Marcian 127, 271 Marcus Aurelius 115 Mars 147 de Martoni, N. 352 Medina Sidonia, Dukes of 205, 256, 261–2, 276, 279–82 Messalina, Valeria 223 Michael VII 273 Mithradates VIII 229 Monod, T. 159 al Mukhtār 349 al-Muqqadasi 342, 348 Naubates 278 Nero 17, 122 Newberie, J. 325 Nicephorus III 273 Nicholas, St 369, 376 Noah 287 Olynthus 73 Oribasius 142 Paladon, Z.A. 383 Palfurius 125 Pallavicino, C. 276, 280 Parker, A.J. 215 Pérez de Medina 261 Pérez de Messa 261, 270 Perseus 75 Petru Rares 324 de Peyssonel, C.C. 323 Philip II 142, 276 Pompey 123 Ponsich, M. 159, 187 Pontremolo, L. 382 Poseidon 75, 278 Priapus 292 Pupius Amicus, C. 151 Purcell, N. 15, 59

Purellus Ctemelus, L. 220 Pythius 126 Raicevich, I.S. 324 Rareş, P. 324 Roger I 274 Roger II 274 Rosen, B. 366 Sallares, R. 15 Salomon 89 Santibanez, J. 279 Saufeius, A. 222 Sergius Orata, C. 246 Sharvit, J. 355 Simon 269 Stephen the Great 327 Stephen Miliutin 319 Tarradell, M. 159 Tavernier, B. 323 Theagenes 293 Theodosius I 98, 149 Theris 278 Trachalio 108 Trimalchio 177 Trajan 89 Ulpian 128, 272 Umbricius Scaurus, A. 176 Valentinian I 150 Valerius Cal(e)donius, Cl. 228 Valerius Felix, M. 228 Valerius Proculus, L. 227 Valerius Suavis, M. 228 Van Neer, W. 363 Venus 147 Verhecken, A. 145 Vlaicu 320 Vrittius Revocatus, Q. 227 William II 274 Wilson, A. 15, 245 Xenocrates of Aphrodisias 168–9, 247 Yāqūt 348

Index of Places A Lanzada 198 Aboukir Bay 97 Abruzzi 380–1, 383 Acheloos 97 Acre (Akko) 351–2 Adamclisi 317 Adrianople (Edirne) 328 Adriatic 16, 43, 141, 147, 222, 239, 247–9, 300, 328, 369–84, 390–95 Aegean 16, 18, 44, 57–78, 110, 141, 148, 258, 268, 289–90, 295, 300–2, 305, 342, 347–8, 353–5, 364, 384, 390–1 Aeolian islands 216 Africa 128, 149–50, 159–60, 167, 196, 201, 216, 244, 272, 300, 304, 342, 351, 358–60 Africa Proconsularis 196, 201, 244 Agios Petros 65 Aguilas 221 Aila Aqaba 179 Akko 88 Akraiphia 72 Akrotiri 67–8, 74–5 Alba Longa 125 Albania 369 Albania 369 Albenga 230 Alboran Sea 258 Albufereta, Bay of 217, 230 Alcazarseguer 196 Alepotrypa 43 Alexandria 85, 97, 99, 101, 288, 349–52, 354 Algeciras, see Traducta Algiers 16 Aliakmon valley 65 Alicante 208 Amarna 86 Amastris (Amasra) 291, 301 Amathous 88 Ancona 125 Andalusia 147, 255–6, 270, 276–7, 280–2 Andriake 122 Andros 354 Antarctic 389–90 Anthedon 115–6 Antiochia (Antakya) 341 Antiparos 65 Antipolis (Antibes) 230 Aphrodisias 168

Apollonia 43 Apulia 380–3 Aqaba, Gulf of 90–1 Aquileia 150 Arabian Sea 87 Aragon 276 Archondiko 65 Arene Candide 43 Argolid 61, 72, 111 Ariana 222 Arles 225, 229–30 Armenia 327 Arsinoë 119 Asia Minor 142, 341–2, 351, 355, 357 Askelon Marina 50 Athens 72–3, 76, 108–11, 114, 116–8, 122, 243, 278, 289–90, 301, 354 Athos 111 Atlantic 61, 73, 75, 113, 138, 147, 169, 187–8, 192–5, 199, 203, 207, 245–6, 257–8, 262, 266, 271, 276–7, 280, 300, 358, 389–90 Atlit-Yam 35, 41, 50, 87–8 Attica 18, 61, 65, 289 Austria-Hungary 332 Ayamonte 261 Ayn Soukhna 87 Azov, Sea of 16, 289, 291, 294, 296, 300, 303, 347 Badalona 224 Baelo Claudia 189, 193, 195–200, 203, 206, 240, 242 Baetica 149, 174, 189, 195, 201, 209, 219–20, 222–5, 228–9, 299 Baghdad 349 Bajondillo cave 29 Baleares 149, 216, 224–5, 258 Balkans 342 Balkans 359 Baltic 61 Barbat 373 Barbate 262 Bargylia 112 Barqa 350 Beetgum 123 Beirut 85, 149 Ben-Afelí 217 Benalua 222 Berezan 303 Besik Yassitepe 51

402

Index of Places

Bessarabia 328 Bisericuţa 315 Bistriţa 325 Black Sea 16, 19, 25, 58, 73, 117, 159–60, 187–8, 210, 244, 258–9, 287–305, 309–10, 328, 333–4, 342, 346–7, 354 Boeotia 72, 139 Bojana 369 Bologna 382 Bonagia 264–5, 275 Bonifacio, Strait of 216, 224 Borcea branch 320 Borcea pond 309, 323 Bordella 274 Borduşani 312 Bosphoran Kingdom 170, 229 Bosphorus, Cimmerian (Strait of Kerč) 119, 129, 164, 273, 290, 298, 300 Bosphorus, Thracian 58, 109, 117, 119–20, 258, 287, 294, 304, 343, 346 Botria 128, 272 Bou-Ferrer 225, 230 Boulogne 188 Božave 370 Brăila pond 309, 323 Braşov 325–7 Brbinja 370 Brindisi 222 Britain 176 Brochtorff Circle 43 Bucharest 324, 328–30, 333 Bug 314 Bulgaria 301, 323, 332, 357–8 Burgundy 347 Bursa 347 Byblos 97 Byzacena 222 Byzantium 73–4, 109, 119–20, 258, 274, 294, 349 see also Constantinople; Istanbul Cabo de la Nao 216, 224 Cádiz 141, 150, 176, 188–9, 191–4, 196–7, 201, 257, 260, 277, 281 Cádiz, Bay of 25, 150, 240 Caesarea Maritima 85, 100, 351, 358, 361–3 Cairo 17, 20, 288, 349–51 Cala Minnola 239–40 Cala Rossano 223, 227 Calabria 192 Calymna 116 Cambodia 171, 175 Campania 125, 220, 246–7 Can Pedrerol 224 Can Tintorer 224

Cap Bon 216 Cap de Creus 223 Cap de Vol 220 Cap-Béar 224 Cape Andreas Kastros 35, 37, 39, 42–3, 50, 53 Cape of Good Hope 289 Capena 127 Capidava 317 Capua 150 Caria 139 Carmel 356 Carpathians 309 Carpathians 310, 319 Carteia (San Roque) 198 Carthage 39, 42, 51, 54, 88–9, 110, 128, 257, 272 Carystus 169, 354 Carystus 354 Căscioarele 313 Castellamare del Golfo 274 Castile 276–7 Castillo de Doña Blanca 189 Castro Marim 32–3 Catalonia 219–20, 224, 282 Caucasus 347 Caunus 122 ‘Cave of the Cyclops’ 35, 41, 50, 53, 55, 61–3 Céfalu 274 Cendres 39, 50, 53, 55 Cerro del Villar 25 Červar 242 Cetara 171 Ceuta, see Septem Fratres Chalcedon 346 Chalcis (Negroponte) 348, 352–3 Chaleion 111 Chanca de Conil 205, 207 Chania 148 Channel, English 301 Charkov 293 Chersonesus (Sevastopol) 167, 292–4, 298–9, 301 Chiclana 263 Chiessi 222 China 86, 163, 396 Chioggia 383 Chios 115 Colophon 116 Columbretes 222 Conil 205, 260, 262–3, 266, 270, 276, 281 Constantinople 20, 269, 288, 319, 323, 328, 335, 342–8, 354, 358, see also Byzantium; Istanbul Coral Island 89–91

Index of Places Córdoba 150 Corfu 354, 382–4 Corinth 16, 73, 75, 89, 91, 100, 109, 146, 167, 243 Corsica 224 Cos 117–8, 120, 290 Cosa 217, 246 Coslogeni 312 Cotta 128, 195 Cozia monastery 320 Crete 57, 65–70, 72–3, 86, 110–1, 142, 148, 382–3 Crimea 289–90, 298–9, 301, 304 Croatia 43, 242, 369–84 Cueva de Nerja 30, 32–3, 35–6, 41–3, 50, 53, 55 Cumae (Cuma) 97, 141, 167, 247, 249 Cumans 319 Cyclades 61, 65, 142 Cyprus 39, 51, 62–3, 86, 88, 95, 100, 149, 354, 381, 383 Cyrenaica 129, 170 Cyrene 129 Cyzicus (Aydıncık) 120, 170, 258, 269, 278 Dacia 309, 315 Dalmatia 20, 369–84 Damietta 349 Danube 20, 61, 73, 302, 309–36 Dardanelles 149, 258, 287, 348 Delos 116–7, 142, 150, 222, 243 Demnitzikos (Zimnicea) 319 Denia 227 Dikilia Taş 65 Dimitra 65 Dinogeţia 315–7 Djerba 150 Dniester 314 Dnjepr 302–3, 314 Dobrudja 319, 323, 328–30 Dolina 373 Don 295–6, 347 Dor (Tantura) 88, 356–61 Dramont 221 Dubrovnik 328, 369–70, 380 Dugi otok 370, 372, 376, 382 Dumbrăveni 317 Ebussus 152 Écija 228 Egadian Islands 276 Egypt 44, 66, 73, 86, 89, 107, 112, 161, 169–70, 174, 191, 201, 203, 209, 227–8, 288, 292, 301, 313, 341–2, 348–51, 357–9, 361–2 El Collado 43 El Wad 50

403

Elba 222 Elea 247 Eleusis 71, 117 Elizavetovka 295–6, 305 El-Markha 87 Empúries 218 Ephesus 100, 122 Epidaurus 119 Erdemli 303 Eretria 110–1 Escolletes 225 Espinho 267 Etruria 144, 217, 246–7 Euboea 115, 348, 354 Euboea, Strait of (Euripus) 110, 139 Euhesperides 141–2 Euripus 354 Famagusta 354 Faventia (Faenza) 150 Favignana 257, 276, 280, 282 Fermo 380 Fimi 274 Flanders 347 Formentera 149 Formiae 127 Formica 276, 280, 282 Fos-sur-Mer 170, 228 France 29, 51–2, 141, 149, 160, 170–1, 196, 216, 222–6 Franchthi cave 25–6, 31–2, 37, 42–3, 61–2, 64, 74 Fréjus 97–8, 100 Frisia 123 Friuli 383 Fuengirola 227 Gades/Gadir, see Cádiz Galaţi 323–5, 328–30, 333 Galilee, Sea of 278, 361–2 Gallipoli 270, 342 Gandolfo 225 Gaul 227, 300–1 Gayaros 354 Gaza 100 Gazenice 382 Genoa 20, 276, 282, 320, 335, 342, 352 Georgia 287 Germany 176, 353 Gesher Benot Ya’akov 29 Giannutri 247–8 Gibraltar, Strait of 16, 73, 149–50, 188, 191, 205, 210, 216, 240, 257–9, 262, 274, 276–7, 281, 347, 389–90 Giglio 247

404

Index of Places

Giza 86 Golfe de Lion 225, 390 Gorham cave 29 Grado 219 Granada 276–7 Greece 51–2, 57–78, 86, 267, 295, 323, 328, 335, 342, 347, 381 Greenland 288 Greenwich 287 Gronea 313 Grotta dei Moscarini 29 Grotta dell’Uzzo 35, 39, 42–3, 50, 53, 55 Guadalquivir 223 Guadiconi 276 Guétary 195, 198 Hadrumentum 128, 272 Haifa 149 Haifa 351, 355–6, 360 Haifa 351–2 Hala Sultan Tekke 51 Halae 115 Halicarnassus 118, 290, 301 Halieis 109, 116 Hârşova 312–3, 317 Hayonim Cave 43 Helike 100 Hellespont 58, 119–20, 258, 270, 291–2 Heraclea (Ereğli) 291, 301 Herculaneum 192, 202–3, 228 Hermione 142 Hierapytna 110 Hipponion 242 Hispania (Iberian peninsula) 187, 191–3, 201, 244, 270–1, 278, 300, 304, 358 see also Spain Histria 122, 301–2, 314–5 Huelva 281 Hungary 319, 323, 325, 335 Hvar 370, 374, 378, 380–1 Iasos 112–3 Iberia, see Hispania; Spain Ibiza 141, 148–9, 152, 188, 225 Ilerda 223 India 161 Indian Ocean 389 Indus 86 Ionia 100 Ionian Sea 97, 258, 347, 354 Iron Gates 309–10, 320, 324 Isaccea 312, 317 Isla Grosa 225 Ismail 328–9 Isola delle Femmine 274

Isola Sacra 43 Israel 87–8, 140–1, 351, 353, 355, 358–63 Ist 370 Istanbul 85, 99, 268 (see also Byzantium, Constantinople) Istria 242, 375, 380, 382 Italy 29, 43, 51–2, 92–4, 149, 163, 171, 178, 187, 237–50, 258, 264, 274, 375, 381 Ithanos 41, 51, 54 Iž 370, 376 Ižola 369 Jaffa 353–4 Japan 163 Jezirat Fara’un, see Coral Island Jordan river 263 Jurilovca 329 Kalaureia 75–6 Kalifronta 372 Kampor 372 Kea 354 Kefallinia 30 Keos 65 Kerč, Strait of (Cimmerian Bosphorus) 119, 129, 164 Kerlaz 199 Khirokitia 50 Kilia 320–3, 325, 328–9 Kilia branch (Danube) 310 Kitsos cave 65 Komiža 374 Kommos 66, 73 Korčula 370, 378 Kornati 370, 377 Kotor 369, 383 Kouphonissi 142 Krk 370, 373 Kryoneri 65 Kuban 303, 347 Kythnos 61, 64 La Chrétienne 224, 230 La Fonteta 39, 51, 54–5, 204–5 Lake Hula 29 Lake Kopais 72–3, 77 Lake Razelm 330 Lake Vîlkov 329 Lanciano 381 Lanévry 199 Las Redes 1923 Lastiovo 370 Latamné 29 Latium 220 Lattes 39, 51, 54 Lavezzi 224–5, 229

Index of Places Lazaret 29 Lebanon 351 Lechaion 89, 91 Lectum 139 Leptis Magna 141 Les Catalans 226, 229 Levant 20, 51, 66, 300, 341–2, 350–2, 355, 359, 381–4 Levantine current 390 Levanzo 240, 250, 276 Libya 86, 141–2, 350 Liguria 216 Ligurian sea 391–2 Limenaria 65 Limenas 51 ‘Little Sea’ 112–3 Lixus (Larache) 169, 189, 195 Lo Copa 347 Locris 115 Loma del Puerco 263 London 230 Lopar 372 Lošinj 369 Lucrine Lake 246 Lugdunum (Lyon) 150, 227 Luna 372 Luncaviţa 312 Lusitania 220, 222–3, 225, 299 Lvov 325, 327 Lycia 120 Lyon, see Lugdunum Macedon 142 Madrague de Giens 230 Madrid 250 Maghreb 341 Mahdia 89, 351 Mainz 228 Makarska 381–2 Makrygialos 65 Malaca (Málaga) 16, 195, 205, 227 Malaysia 161 Mallorca 149, 225 Malpe 161 Marches 370, 375, 381–3 Margherita di Savoia 239 Marina di Pulsano 243 Marmara, Sea of 16, 58, 117, 120, 139, 258, 269–70, 287, 343, 346, 357–8 Maroulas 61–4, 74 Marseille 85–6, 91, 97–8, 101, 226, 342 Masada 179 Mauretania 128, 169, 189, 195, 220, 244, 299 Mazarrön 221–2

Meander 92 Mecca 351 Megara 108 Melos 40 Memphis 86 Meninx 141, 148 Mérida 223 Mersa Gawasis 88 Mesopotamia 86, 89 Methana 119 Metrouna (Tetúan) 195, 197–8 Mila 23 329 Milazzo 245 Miletus 100, 289 Minorca 149 Minturnae 222 Missolonghi 267 Mochlos 66 Modon 354 Moesia 314 Molašćica 370 Molat 370, 372 Moldavia 320–1, 323, 325–9 Molise 380 Monemvasia 381 Monreale 274 Mons Claudianus 169 Monte Cassino 274 Morocco 73 Morro de Mezquitilla 205 Mozia 148 Mursia 35, 37, 50, 55 Myconus 117 Mylasa 112 Myos Hormos (Quseir) 169 Myrmecium 299 Mytilene 109 Nabeul 196 Nahal Hemar 140 Naples 91, 94, 277 Naples, Bay of 92, 98, 125, 191–2, 203, 246 Narbo (Narbonne) 86, 149–50, 224 Nautileon 118 Naxos 65 Nestos 59 New Carthage (Cartagena) 176, 179 New Ferry 267 Newfoundland 257 Niebla 276 Nile 17, 44, 86, 100, 313, 348–50, 358, 361–2 Noheda 192 Norway, Sea of 389–90 Novigrad 370

405

406 Novorossijsk 16 Nymphaeum (Geroevka) 164, 293–4 Ohalo 33 Oianthea 111 Oiniadai 97 Olbia, Black Sea 292, 303 Olbia, Sardinia 167 Olib 370 Oltina 317 Omiš 382 Orontes 341 Orşova 324 Ostia 216, 222, 227, 239 Ostrobul Corbului-Botul Cliuciului 311 Otranto 381 Ottoman Empire 332 Pachaea 111 Pachino 245 Pacific 389 Păcuiul lui Soare 317–9 Padova 188 Pag 370 Palagruža 374, 378 Palaikastro 51, 66, 142 Palau 396 Palermo 250, 274 Palestine 86, 149, 359 Pampelonne, Bay of 225 Pamphylian Sea 16 Panticapaeum (Kerč) 290, 293–4, 299 Papadiokambos 66–9 Parium (Kemer) 258, 266, 270, 278, 291–2 Parma 150–1 Pašman 376 Pecio Gandolfo 168, 220, 228 Pedheios 100 Peloponnese 61, 72, 76, 109, 342, 354, 381 Pelusium 348 Peproioi 112 Persia 87, 110, 341, 351, 357, 359 Peuce 314 Pevkakia 42, 50, 65 Phaleron, Bay of 71, 77 Pharnacia 291 Philippines 163, 171, 176 Phoenicia 25, 51, 73, 87–9, 93, 107, 140–1, 148–9, 189, 203–5, 207, 240, 280, 350 Phylacopi 40 Piereia 65 Piraeus 71, 95, 111, 117, 290 Piran 380, 382 Pisa 342, 352 Piua Petrii 317

Index of Places Planier 226, 229 Playazo de Rodalquilar 217 Plaza de Asdrúbal 193 Plomarc’h 170 Podolia 328 Pointe de la Lucque 222 Poland 323, 327, 335 Polja 370 Pompeii 144, 147, 152, 160, 173, 175–6, 178, 191–2, 196, 220, 228–9, 247 Pontus et Bithynia 229 Ponza 222 Poros 75 Porphyrion (Haifa) 352 Portezuelo de los Baños 217 Port-la-Nautique 228 Portofino 391 Portograuro 383 Portopalo 240–1, 245, 249 Portugal 267, 276, 282, 298 see also Lusitania Portus 89, 95 Port-Vendres 219, 223–4, 227, 230 Poti 287 Pou des Lleó 141 Pozzuoli, see Puteoli Praesus 110 Preluka 372 Premude 370 Priene 100 Propontis (Sea of Marmara) 269–70 Provence 216, 219 Prvić 370, 373 Pseira 51, 54, 66 Puerto de Cabrera 225 Puerto de Santa Maria 188, 194 Pula 379 Punta Camarinal 209 Punta de Gavilanes 51 Punta Entinas 225 Puteoli (Pozzuoli) 92, 98, 216 Qayrawān 350 Rab 370–5 Ragusa, see Dubrovnik Ravenna 381–2 Red Sea 86–9, 169 Rhine 222 Rhodes 109–10, 224, 278, 354–5, 357 Rhône 222, 225 Rijeka 372, 379, 383 Riuets 51, 54 Romania 309–336 Rome 43, 110, 120, 124, 141, 148, 188, 207, 219–20, 222, 224, 227–30, 270

Index of Places Rosas 196 Rosette (Rashid) 350 Rucăr 325 Russia 328, 331–2 Rutuli 144 Sagalassos 44 Saharan shoal 250 Sahel 222 Saint George branch (Danube) 310 Saint Petersburg 159 Saint-Gervais 219–20, 228–9 Saint-Raphaël 224 Saint-Romain-en-Gal 228 Saintes 169 Sakarun 370 Sali 377 Saliaggos 65 Samos 118 Samothrace 75 San Pedro del Pinatar 217 San Roque 198, 228 San Vito lo Capo 239 Sancti Petri 267 Santa Maria di Boico 274 Santa Maria Lavezzi 35, 41, 51, 54 Santorini 40 Saône 227 Sardinia 167, 258, 276 Sarepta 149 Sarı Çay 112 Sarichioi 329 Savra 370 Scopello 274 Scyros 109 Scythians 314 Secca dei Mettoni 222 Senj 383 Septem Fratres (Ceuta) 196, 198, 209, 258 Serbia 332 Serçe Limani 357–9 Sestrunja 370 Seville 16, 196, 216, 227 Sexi (Almuñecar) 168, 195 Shillourokambos 39, 50 Šibenik 370, 372–6, 378, 380, 383 Sibiu 325, 327 Sicily 20, 77, 118, 126, 148, 152, 160, 187, 192, 226, 237–50, 256–8, 270, 272, 274–7, 280–2 Sicily, Sea of 16 Sidon 37, 41, 50–51, 88, 91, 101, 149 Sigeum 139 Silba 370, 373 Silistra 321, 323–4

407

Sinope 118, 294, 301–2 Siphnus 161, 167 Siteia 68 Skard 370 Skradin 378, 380 Slava Rusă 317 Smyrna (Izmir) 16 Soča 369 Solin 370 Šolta 382 Southeast Asia 159–60, 163, 171, 178, 180 Spain 29, 36, 51–2, 141, 159–60, 165, 167–8, 174, 179, 187–210, 216–231, 239, 242, 255–9, 274–7, 347, see also Hispania Sparta 77, 108 Split 374, 378–83 St. Gheorghe 329 Stabiae 202–3 Stalae 110, 116 Stari grad 374 Ston, Gulf of 370 Strymon 73 Suceava 327 Sud Perduto 167, 225 Suez Canal 16, 392, 394 Sulina 329 Sulina branch (Danube) 310 Sullectum (Salakta) 222 Supetar 372 Sušac 370 Syracuse 126–7, 149, 380 Syria 86, 88, 149, 294, 351 Tabbat al-Hammam 88 Taman Peninsula 273 Tana 347 Tanais 296, 300 Taninim river 358, 363 Tarentum (Taranto) 141, 149, 243, 278 Tarraconensis 224 Tegea 72 Tel Siqmona 149 Tel Taninim 360–3 Telašćica 370 Tell Katif 43 Termoli 381 Thailand 171 Thasos 111 Thebes 354 Theodosia (Feodosia) 290 Thera 57, 68–9, 75, 293 Thessaly 65, 77 Thrace 71, 111, 341 Tingis 169

408

Index of Places

Tinnis 348–9, 351 Tion 291 Tiryns 39, 51, 54, 116 Toledo 192 Tombolo della Feniglia 247 Tomi (Constanţa) 292 Torre la Sal 217 Toscanos 51 Toulon 149 Tour-Sainte-Marie 224 Traducta (Algeciras) 198, 201, 206, 258 Trani 381 Transylvania 324–5, 328 Trapani 239, 250, 264–5, 275 Trapezous (Trabzon) 291 Trikardo 97 Troad 139, see also Troy Troezen 119 Trogir 378, 380, 383 Troía 32, 51, 54–5, 298 Troy 33, 39, 42, 100 Trpanj 370 Tunisia 51, 141, 148, 191, 222, 226, 229, 267, 272, 350–1 Turkey 44, 51, 268–70, 357 Two Sicilies 276 Tyre 91, 95, 144, 149, 351, 358 Tyritake 164, 170, 297–300 Tyrrhenian coast 192, 218, 222, 258 Ubeidiya 29 Ugarit 140–1 Ukraine 309, 328 Valencia 224, 282 Vallonet 29

Vanguard cave 29 Varna 301 Vasto 383 Vega Baja 192 Veli Rat 376 Vendicari 240–1, 245 Venice 16, 20, 192, 325, 328, 335, 342, 353–4, 370, 373, 375, 377–8, 380–1, 383–4 Ventotene 223–4, 226 Vidin 321, 324 Vidra 313 Vietnam 163, 171 Vila Joiosa 225 Vindolanda 219 Viogo 239 Vis 370, 374, 378 Vodiţa monastery 320 Wadi el-Jarf 88 Wallachia 320–1, 323–4, 326–7, 329 Yannitsa 65 Yassi Ada 205, 355, 357, 359 Yavne-Yam 88 Yenikapı 99 Youra 61–2, 64, 74–5 Zadar 370, 372, 374–7, 382–8 Zakynthos 30, 381–34 Zaragoza 220 Zas cave 65 Ziqim 50 Zire 88 Žirje 370, 373 Zlarina 370, 373 Zverinca 370

Index of Sources Archival sources State Archives in Zadar, Archives of Split, Contralittere 380, 382, Papyri POxy 14.1657 171 49.3495 292 Literary texts Achilles Tatius Leucippe and Clitophon 2.17 116 Aelian On the Nature of Animals 13.16 118 14.25 314 15.5 118, 256, 266, 270, 277, 291 15.6 278 Aeschines On the False Embassy 2.71 109 Aetius 3.83 179 Al-Idrīsī 350, 352 Alciphron Letters 1.1 116 1.2 126, 278 1.4 115 1.5 278 1.6–8 116 1.9 116, 126 1.10 114 1.12 115 1.13 126

1.14 115 1.20 115 Ambrose Hexaemeron 5.10.27 127 Andocides On the Peace 19 108 Antiphanes Fr. 188 108 Anthologia Palatina 4.295 278–9 Apicius 178 1.7 177 4.2.17 177 7.16.14 174 Archestratus of Gela Fr. 22 77 Fr. 35 118–9 Aristophanes Lysistrata 1140 140 Aristotle History of Animals 75 5.537a19 118 5.547a15 139, 141 Politics 1.1256a–b 116 7.1327b 116 [Aristotle] Oeconomica 1346b20 119 On Marvellous Things Heard 136a 257 Arrian Anabasis of Alexander 1.3 313, 319

Athenaeus Deipnosophistae 291 3.67e 179 3.116a–121e 167, 177 3.116c 243 3.116e 166 3.117a 168 3.118e 166 3.118f 168 3.119 314 3.120d 168 3.120e 169 3.121b 168 3.121c 161 7.285e–286a 77 7.301c 243 7.301f 242 7.311 314 7.315d–e 167 7.319 243 7.327c 243 8.354e 108 9.366c 179 Balducci Pegolotti, F. Pratica 344, 347 Bertrandon de la Broquière Voyage d’Outremer 347 Book of the Eparch 17 345 Caelius Aurelianus On Chronic Diseases 2.1.40 175–6 Cato On Agriculture 58 174–5 162 165 Celsus On Medicine 1.2 177 2.29 180

410 Chariton Callirhoe 112 Cicero De provinciis consularibus 12.31 123 Letters to Friends 9.16 177 On Duties 3.14.58–60 126–7 On the Agrarian Law 2.40 122 Columella On Agriculture 8.16 127, 278 8.17 177 10.135–6 247 12.55 165

Index of Sources 43.14.1 122 47.9.1–12 121 47.10.13.7 121–2, 127 47.10.14 127 50.15.4.6 122 50.16.96 121 50.16.112 121–2 Dio Chrysostom Orations 7.2–3 115 Diodorus of Sicily History 5.16 152 Dioscorides De materia medica 2.4–7 143

Crates FGrHist 362 F2 118

Edict of Diocletian 3.6–7 175–6

Demosthenes Orations 7.14–5 109 17.19 109 19.273 110 35.33 290 35.35 302

Ephorus FGrHist 70 F 56 116

[Demosthenes] Against Theocrines 58.55 111 Digest 1.8.2.1 121 1.8.3–6 121–2, 127 1.8.10 123, 127 7.4.10.3 122 8.4.13 128, 272 18.1.51 127 33.7.12.1 271 33.7.17.1 271 33.7.25.1 271 33.9.3 165 41.1.1–3 121–2 41.1.30 127 41.1.50 127 41.2.1 121 41.2.3.14 122 43.8.3.pr 123 43.8.3.1 127

Eustathius of Thessalonike De emendanda vita monachica 66 347 Evliya Çelebi 322 Expeditions to Russia and the Holy Land 354 Felix Faber Evagatorium 353 Galen On the Properties of Foodstuffs 178–9 1.1.42 (477–8 Kühn) 176 3.31 (728–9 Kühn) 291–2 3.40 168 (747 Kühn) On the Thinning Diet 11 180 [Galen] De remediis parabilibus 2.37 (487 Kühn) 144 [Gargilius Martialis] 62 172–4, 178–9

Geoponica 20.46 172–4, 179 Gestes des Chiprois 352 Heracleides Criticus On the Cities of Greece 1.23–4 115–6 Hermippus Fr. 63 289–90 Herodotus 15 History 3.42 116 7.137 116 Hesychius 1.330 166 1.416 178 [Hippocrates] Hippocratic Regimen 2 48 71 Historia Augusta: Elagabalus 29.5 178 Horace Satires 2.8 17 Ibn Batûta 351 Ibn Hawqal 267, 349–51 Isidore of Seville 16 Etymologies 14.8.39–40 216 20.3.19–20 172 Isocrates On the Peace 20 109 Juvenal Satires 4.46–52 125 Justinian Institutes 2.1.1–7 121–2

411

Index of Sources Leo VI Basilica 343–4 Novels 129 56–7 120–1, 268, 272 102–4 268, 272

3.620–49 118, 256, 266, 277 4.593–616 141

Luke 5.1–11 26

Oribasius Collectionum Medicarum Reliqiuae 2.58.133–5 169 2.58.133–52 167–8, 170, 247

Lycurgus Against Leocrates 73 110

Ovid Sea Fishing 292

Macrobius Saturnalia 3.16.3 278

Palladius Opus Agriculturae 3.25.12 179

Manilius 173 Astronomica 5.656–66 161 5.664–72 167 5.670 162 5.670–74 172

Paul of Aleppo Travels of Macarius 2.240 322

Martial Epigrams 3.50 178 3.77.7 167 5.78 167, 177 6.93.6 177 10.48 177 11.52.7 170 13.82 177–8 13.102 177 Muqaddasi The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions 342 Nāşir Khusrau 351 Sefer Nameh 351 Nicholas de Martoni Relation 353 Olaus Magnus Historia de gentibus septentrionalium 93 Oppian On Fishing 291 1.9–55 114–5 1.56–72 124 2.664–88 115

Paulus Opinions 3.6.41 272 Pausanias 15 Description of Greece 3.21.6 140 Pero Tafur Travels 344–5, 347 Petar Hektorović Fishing and Fishermen’s Conversations 373–4 Petronius Satyricon 36 178–9 70 177–8 119 246 Philostratus Imagines 1.13 118, 266, 277 Phoenicides Fr. 5 108 Photius 118 Pietro Casola 353

Plato Critias 111b 18 Laws 7.404d 116 7.824b–c 114 Plautus Captivi 851 167 Poenulus 240–4 177 Rudens 108 Pliny the Elder Natural History 291 9.18 225 9.48 167 9.62–3 125 9.66 175 9.80 143 9.92–3 278 9.124 144 9.126 147 9.133 139, 141 9.145 314 15.18 169 19.29 267 30.44 180 31.83 165 31.87–8 177 31.90 177 31.93–5 172, 176–7, 179, 247 32.68 143 32.78 143 32.82–9 143, 165 32.95–8 143 32.106 143 32.108 143 32.125 143 32.127 143 32.129 143 32.151 167 Polybius History 6.17.2 122 Plutarch Alexander 36 142 Antony 29.4 291

412 Cimon 8 109 Moralia 298c 118 Pericles 17 109 Sulla 26.3–4 116 Pollux Onomasticon 6.48–9 167 Polybius 3.2.3 109 3.24.3–13 110 4.47–52 109 Posidippus Epigrams 14.2 290 Procopius History of the Wars 4.14 288 ‘Ptochoprodromos’ 4.93 345 4.325–6 345 Quintilian The Orator’s Education 8.2.3 165 [Rufius Festus] Breviarium 23 172, 174 Scholia on Nicander, Theriaca 179 Seneca De beneficiis 7.6.3 124 Letters 95.15 177 95.25 278 Servius Commentaries on Virgil ad Georgica 2.161 122

Index of Sources Sidonius Apollinaris Letters 9.13.4 179 Strabo Geography 4.1.13 122 5.2.8 247 5.4.6 246 6.6.1 247 7.6.2 120, 291 8.6.10 116 11.2.4 119 12.3.11 118 14.1.24 91 14.2.21 113 Suetonius Caligula 46 278 Claudius 17 278 Suda 118 Synesius Letters 57 129 148 170 Tacitus Annals 6.1 278 12.21 229 16.23.1 91 Theocritus Idylls 21 114 Theodore Metochites 319 Theodosius Codex Theodosianus 7.20.10 150 10.20 150 Theophanes Confessor Chronicle 288 Theophilus Protospatharius 4.29.13 268

Thucydides 108 4.118.5 110 Varro On Agriculture 3.2.17 127 On the Latin Language 5.77 167 Virgil Aeneid 9.161–3 144 Vitruvius De architectura 5.12.1–2 216 Xenophon Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 11.3 140 Hellenica 5.2.23 117 Inscriptions Ager, Interstate Arbitrations (1996) 138 119 AE 1981, 518 228 BE 1973, 419 112 Chaniotis, Die Verträge zwischen kretischen Poleis (1996) 64 117 64.B.10–22 110 CIL 2.1474 2.1944 2.1971 2.5962 4.2569 4.2588 4.2596 4.2609 4.4733

228 227 227 227 179 175 196 179 176

413

Index of Sources 4.4741 176 4.5605 176 4.5607 176 4.5609–13 176 4.5611–21 228 4.5621 196 4.5630 228 4.5640 176 4.5644–6 176 4.5650 229 4.5660–2 179 4.5705 175 4.5711 175 4.5716 175 4.5726 174 4.5764–5 228 4.7110 174 4.9415 175 6.1625b 228 6.9677 227 6.9767 228 6.9854 122 6.17902 227 13.8830 123 14.4687–8 227 15.469b 219 15.3639–41 227, 229 15.3668 227 15.4045 227 15.4687–8 220 15.4700–2 229 15.4724 196 15.4730 220 15.4746 220 15.4757 228 15.4782 167 Dittenberger, Sylloge3 46 118 307 112

524 110, 117 581 110 953 117 1000 118 1024 117 Hicks, Manual of Greel Historical Inscriptions (1882) 132 112

IK 1.17 112 11.1 20 25.5–6 118, 120, 270, 292 28.30 112 28.34 113 ILS 1461 123

ICret III 6.7 117

IMT 1539 120, 269

ICret III.6 7 110

IOSPE I2 32 292

IG I3 61 110 63 110 67 109 75 109 116 110

IRPCádiz 93 228

IG II2 1103 117, 122 IG IV 752 119 IG IV2.1 76–7 119 IG IX.12 717.A.3–4 111 IG XI.2 287.9–10 117 IG XII.9 1273–4 111 Suppl. 347 111

IScM 1.76–8 122 Rhodes and Osborne, Greek Historical Inscriptions, 404–323 BC (2003) 90 112 SEG 14.638 122 24.1108–9 122 39.1180 122 41.725 111 48.994 129, 273 50.766.27–9 117 Segre, ‘Tituli Calymnii’ (1944– 45) 79.B.9 116

Index of Species amberjack (Seriola dumerili) 166, 361 anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus) 32, 37, 162, 166, 171, 196, 225, 302–3, 310, 383 asp (Aspius aspius) 317 barbel (Barbus sp.) 310, 362 barracuda (Sphyraenidae) 37 – barracuda (Sphyraena sphyraena) 66 bass (Perca fluviatilis) 312 bivalves 198, see also individual species bleak (Alburnus alburnus) 332 blue whiting (Micromesistius poutassou) 372 bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix) 37, 117, 197, 310, 362 bogue (Boops sp.) 66, 370 bolti 166–8 bonito (Sarda sarda) 117, 197, 257, 259, 281, 291, 344, 346, 373, 383 carp (Cyprinidae) 169, 303, 312, 315, 317, 321, 325, 327, 332–3, 362 – bream (Abramis sp.) 312, 325, 327, 332–3 – crucian carp (Carassius carassius) 317, 329, 332 – white bream (Blicca bjoerkna) 317 carpet shells 198 cartilaginous fish 19, 71–2, 344, 361, see also ray; shark; skate catfish 44, 362, see also sheatfish cephalopods 205, 258, 294, see also individual species cerith (Cerithium vulgatum) 66 chub (Leuciscus cephalus) 312, 315, 382 clupeiforms (Clupeiformes) 32–3, 38, 44, see also anchovy; herring; sardine – clupeids 38, 196 cnidarians 392, see also jellyfish; sea anemones cockles (Cerastoderma sp.) 41, 198, 345 cod 36, 41 comber (Serranidae) 61, 66 conger eel (Conger conger) 372 crab 66, 68, 76, 345 crayfish 345 cuttlefish 66, 345, 354, 357, 379 damsel fish (Chromis chromis) 66 Danube bleak, Caspian shemaya (Alburnus chalcoides) 73 dog-cockle (Glycymeris pilosa) 226 dogfish 72, 77, 344, 353

dolphin (Delphinus sp.) 66, 69–70, 294, 314–5, 349, 353 dolphinfish (Coryphaena sp.) 37–40, 75 – common dolphinfish (Coryphaena hippurus) 40, 75 drumfish (Sciaenidae) 357 eel (Anguilla anguilla) 28, 39, 59, 73, 77, 173, 310, 354, 370, 372, 379 eelpout 321 fatback 332 flatfish (Pleuronectiformes) 25, 39, see also flounder; sole; turbot flying-fish (Exocoetidae) 37, 40 flounder 333 Fucus virsoides 395 goby (Gobius sp.; Neogobius sp.) 310, 370 grey mullet (Mugilidae) 25, 28, 39, 44, 59, 77, 166, 168–9, 332–3, 344–6, 348–9, 355, 362, 370, 372 – striped mullet (Mugil cephalus) 370, 372 grouper (Epinephelus sp.) 28, 39, 56, 59, 66, 197 – black tip grouper (Epinephelus alexandrinus) 197 – dusky grouper (Epinephelus marginatus) 197, 360 – golden grouper (Epinephelus costae) 360 grunt (Haemulidae) 36 guitar-fish 344 hake (Merluccius merluccius) 369, 372 herring 162, 169, 171, 173, 362 horse mackerel, scad (Trachurus sp.) 166, 197, 225, 355, 362, 379–80, 383 hydrozoa 391 ide 310 jack (Carangidae) 36–7, 56 jellyfish 392–4, 396 – Pelagia noctiluca 392–4 John Dory (Zeus faber) 197 langoustine 225 leerfish 379 limpet (Patella sp.) 61, 66, 68, 76, 197 lobster 325, 344 louvar (Luvarus imperialis) 39 mackerel (Scomber scombrus) 28, 38, 117, 162, 165–6, 171, 177, 179, 224–5, 281, 290, 344–6, 354–5, 369–70, 379–80, 382–3 – Spanish mackerel (Scomber japonicus) 165–7, 197, 224

Index of Species marlin (Istiophoridae) 37, 344 meagre (Argyrosomus regius) 37, 56, 197, 360–2 – brown meagre (Scianea umbra) 360–2 mollusc 43, 66–7 monodont (Monodonta sp.) 61, 66–7, 76 monkfish 344 moray eel (Gymnothorax unicolor) 36, 354, 379 mullet, see grey mullet; red mullet murex (Muricidae) 115–7, 122, 137–53, 195–8, 351, 354, 361, see also purple snail; red-mouthed rockshell; spiny dye murex mussels (Mytillus sp.) 61, 198, 345 nautilus 70 needlefish (Belone sp.) 36–7, 380 Nile catfish (Clarias gariepinus) 73, 361–2 Nile perch (Lates niloticus) 362 octopus 70, 203, 345, 356–7, 372, 379 oilfish (Ruvettus pretiosus) 39 opah (Lampris guttatus) 39 oyster 174, 198, 345, 369, 374, 379 – spiny oyster (Spondylus gaederopus) 66 pandora (Pagellus erythrinus) 179, 371 parrotfish (Sparispoma cretense) 41, 66, 361 pen shell (Pinna nobilis) 66 perch 44, 317, 332–3 – Nile perch (Lates niloticus) 44 picarel (Spicara sp.) 41, 66, 68, 166, 369–70, 381–3 pike (Esox lucius) 303, 312, 315, 317, 321, 323, 325, 327, 329, 332 pikeperch (Stizostedion lucioperca) 310, 312, 317, 325, 327, 334 pilchard 166, 168 pilotfish (Naucrates ductor) 37, 41, 75 pipefish 303–4 plaice 344 porpoise 25 prawn 345 purple snail (Hexaplex trunculus) 66–7, 69, 138, 141, 144–5, 148, 351, 361 ray 25, 361, 379 – electric ray 344 – sting ray (Dasyatidae) 66, 71, 344 razor shells 198 red mullet (Mullus barbatus) 71, 174, 370, 379 red porgy, see sea bream red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) 344 red-mouthed rockshell (Stramonita haemastoma) 138, 143, 351, 361 roach (Rutilus rutilus) 315, 317, 329, 333 rudd (Scardinius erythrophthalmus) 310 St Peter’s fish (Tilapia zillii) 358, 360, 362 salmon 36, 173, 347

415

sardine (Sardina pilchardus) 32, 45, 162–3, 165–6, 168, 171, 173, 196, 345, 369–70, 373, 376–7, 381–3 sardinella (Sardinella sp.) 32, 166 scad, see horse mackerel scallop 345 scombrids (Scombridae) 28, 56, 62, 75, see also bonito; mackerel; tuna scorpionfish (Scorpaenidae) 61, 66, 370–1, 379 sea anemones 174 sea bass (Dicentrarchus sp.) 25, 28, 39, 259, 362, 370, 372 sea bream (Sparidae) 25, 28, 56, 61, 66, 68, 166, 197, 303, 360 – annular bream (Sargus annularis) 370 – black bream (Spondyliosoma cantharus) 197, 371, 379 – common dentex (Dentex dentex) 68, 197, 370, 372, 379 – gilthead (Sparus aurata) 25, 28, 39, 44, 73, 360, 362, 370, 372 – large-eyed dentex (Dentex macrophthalmus) 70 – pink dentex (Dentex gibbosus) 197 – red porgy (Pagrus pagrus) 68, 197, 362, 370 – saddled sea bream (Oblada melanura) 41 – striped sea bream (Lithognathus mormyrus) 360 – white sea bream (Diplodus sargus) 166, 197 sea snake 379 sea urchin 174 shad (Alosa sp.) 59, 173, 310, 327, 332–3 – Black Sea shad 333 – Danube shad 333 shark 25, 37, 56, 66, 71–2, 353, 361, 379 – great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) 37 – hammerhead shark (Sphyrna zygaena) 41 – peregrine shark (Cetorhinus maximus) 37 – thresher (Alopias sp.) 37 sheatfish (Silurus glanis) 301, 311–4, 317, 321, 327, 332 shrimp 345 skate 344, 379 smelt 71, 383 smolt 329 snapper (Lutjanus sp.) 362 sole (Solea vulgaris) 25, 39, 344 spearfish (Tetrapturus pfluegeri) 344 spiny dye murex (Bolinus brandaris) 138, 141, 145, 148, 351, 361 sponge 356, 392 sprat 165, 310

416

Index of Species

squid 77, 370, 379 sturgeon (Acipenseridae) 41, 59, 167, 294, 303, 310, 312, 314–5, 317, 322, 325, 328, 344, 347–8, 354 – beluga (Huso huso) 312, 315, 321–5, 327–8, 332–3 – common sturgeon (Acipenser sturio) 315, 324, 332–3 – Danube sturgeon (Acipenser güldenstaedti) 312, 323 – starred sturgeon (Acipenser stellatus) 333 – sterlet (Acipenser ruthenus) 312, 315, 321, 332–3 sunfish (Molidae) 396 swordfish (Xiphias gladius) 37, 40, 344–5 tench (Tinca tinca) 310, 312, 332 top shells (Trochidae) 68 tope (Galeorhinus galeus) 179 triggerfish (Balistes carolinensis) 41, 362 triton (Charonia sp.) 66–7, 69 trout 310, 332 tub gurnard 357 tuna 24, 38, 44–5, 66, 68, 71, 73–5, 117, 119–20, 123, 128–9, 161–3, 166–9, 179, 191, 194, 196, 206, 243, 247, 255–82, 291–2, 344–6, 348, 350, 357, 370, 373, 379, 381–3

albacore (Thunnus alalunga) 33–5, 197, 257, 259, 281, 344 – big-eyed tuna (Thunnus obesus) 35 – bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) 28, 33–5, 62, 65, 117, 166, 197, 227, 255, 257–8, 260, 274, 281, 291, 294, 369 – bullet tuna (Auxis rochei) 75, 197, 257, 281 – little tunny (Euthynnus alletteratus) 75, 166, 168, 257 – true tuna (Thunnus sp.) 75 – yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) 35 turbot (Scophthalmus maximus) 39 – Black Sea turbot (Scophthalmus maeoticus) 310, 333 turtle 25, 353, 396 whale 20, 45, 166, 198–201, 258 – baleen whale 198 – killer whale 37, 258 – sperm whale 198 whiting (Merlangius merlangus) 310, 372 whitebait 77 winkle 345 wrasse (Labrus sp.) 41, 166 wreckfish (Polyprion americanus) 197 ziege (Pelecus cultratus) 317 –

Index of Subjects allec (hallex) 166, 172, 174–6, 178, 193, 196, 220, 225, 358 almadraba 255–282 amino acids 177, 180 amphorae 32, 38, 73, 150, 152, 160, 165–70, 174, 176–9, 188, 192, 196, 198, 201, 209, 215–30, 237, 243–4, 247, 250, 300–2, 305, 358, 361 aquaculture 122–3, 160, 387–8, 397, see also fishponds aquatio 126 Arabs 288, 341–2, 348, 351, 354, 359 Archaic period 109, 142, 305 bacteria 162, 164, 169, 171, 177, 393–4 bagoong 163, 171, 176 barrels 164–5, 170–1, 219, 250, 280, 301, 305, 320–1, 347, 353, 375, 377, 380–3 bears 45 birds 25, 64, 121 boats 41, 61, 69–70, 86, 88, 91, 113, 117, 150, 152, 202–3, 217, 239, 257, 260, 262–6, 270–1, 274, 278, 280, 291–3, 295, 313, 319, 322–3, 346, 352, 372–5, 378, 382 bone collagen isotope 43 bones 24, 29, 31–3, 35, 40, 42–3, 57, 62, 65–9, 73, 76, 86, 166, 175, 193, 196, 198, 201, 206, 209, 217, 220, 223–6, 230, 295, 301–3, 311–2, 314, 353, 357–8, 361–2 boyars 320 bronze 145, 203–6, 223, 249, 280, 315, 355, 357 Bronze Age 23, 37, 44, 50–1, 54–8, 65–70, 74–8, 86, 88–9, 93, 98, 100, 140, 205, 313, 355 Byzantine 51, 91, 98, 119–21, 148–9, 172, 268, 272–4, 315, 317–20, 335, 339–49, 354–63 canning 334 cartilaginous fish 19, 71–2, 344, 361 caviar 161, 314, 323, 325–8, 332, 335, 344, 346–8, 354 Chalcolithic 43, 312–3 church, churches 120, 273–5,282, 320, 357, 359–60, 369, 372, 376, see also monasteries cisterns (for salting), see vats Classical period (Greece) 54–5, 58, 70–5, 77–8, 98, 107–10, 119, 124, 140, 142, 215, 269, 294, 300, 305, 313 climatic variation 17, 215, 287–8, 363, 388, 395 coins 189, 191, 223, 249, 280, 294, 302, 315, 320, 325, 341, 355–6 colatura di alici 163, 171

containers, see amphorae; barrels; pithoi Copts 342, 348–9 coral 351, 356 creels 244 Crimean War 328 Crusaders, Crusades 87, 342, 352, 354, 360, 362 deforestation 18, 97 demersal fish 27–8 diet 15, 17, 29, 43, 65–7, 71, 78, 142, 159–60, 171, 179–81, 278, 312–3, 317, 336, 341, 343, 348, 353–4, 393 divers 141, 216, 230 DNA 25, 35, 44–5, 192, 363 dredging 91–5 drying fish 44, 68, 160–5, 170–1, 197, 296, 301, 332, 334, 345–6, 380, 383–4 dye 19, 67, 69, 122, 137–53, 198, 350–1, 354, 361 ecosystem 15, 19–20, 23, 41, 58–9, 138, 140, 257, 302, 387–8, 391–2, 395–7 equifinality 24, 203 euryhaline fish 27, 62, 310 eutrophic waters 58–9, 66, 72, 74 fasting 328. 336, 345 fermentation 162, 171–4, 278 feudalism 274–7, 280, 328 fishing rights 18, 107–29, 256, 270, 273–80, 282, 314, 320, 323, 330, 334, 370, 375, 378 fishmongers 72, 350, 377, 380, see also market; merchants fishponds 77, 124–5, 127, 237, 361, 374 garum 19, 128, 159–60, 172–80, 187–98, 209, 215, 220–5, 229, 247, 278, 298–302, 304–5, 346–7, 358, 361 Geniza 350–2, 363 Gibraltar current 389–90 glue 324, 329 hallex, see allec Hallstatt 313–4 harbour 19, 68, 73, 85–101, 110–2, 114, 116–7, 161, 216–9, 223, 229, 274, 279, 381 harpoon 312–3, 315–7, 346, 356 Hellenistic period 54, 58, 70–8, 88, 94, 97, 107–12, 116–20, 124, 148, 269–70, 278, 292–3, 300, 305 Holocene 31, 61, 64 hooks 24–5, 61, 68, 191, 201–5, 265, 294–6, 304, 313–5, 317, 331, 353, 355–6, 361, 373 hospodars 320–1, 325

418

Index of Subjects

Iron Age 87–9, 91, 96, 100, 314 Jews 179, 350–1, 377 La Tène 314 lagoons 39, 58–9, 62, 66, 76, 89, 98, 112, 114–5, 122, 142, 266–7, 346, 349, 356, 360 laws, legislation 107–29, 149, 256, 272–4, 310, 333–4, 344–5, 359, 375–6, 378, 380, 396 lead 101, 142, 196, 201, 203, 223–5, 229, 291, 294, 355–7 leister 39 Lent 345, 354, 379 liquamen 172, 174–5, 179, 193, 220, 222, 225, 230, 247, 346 long lining 202–3 longue durée 16, 20, 85, 114, 128, 355 lymphatum 175–6, 193, 224, 228 madrague 37, 117, 128, 239, 267 Magdalenian 31, 41–2, 50–1, 55–6 Mamluks 342 mare liberum 107, 109 market 19–20, 37, 58, 70–6, 111, 116–7, 126–7, 142, 150, 160, 170, 176, 192, 196, 216, 218, 244, 271, 279, 282, 289–90, 292–3, 299, 305, 323–30, 335, 343, 345–7, 349, 362, 370, 375–8, 380–2, 384 marshlands 59, 98, 112, 114, 291 medicinal properties (of seafood) 142–3, 176–7, 179–80 melandrya 167 merchants 111, 129, 227–9, 250, 274–5, 280, 282, 320, 323–8, 330, 335, 345, 351, 359–60, 375, 379, 383 Mesolithic 31, 43, 50–1, 53, 55, 57, 61–5, 74–7, 311 migration 62, 73–4, 258, 277, 279, 292, 303, 314, 345–7, 369 Minoan 40, 65, 67–70, 75, 350 MNI 24, 42, 144, 201 monasteries 120, 273–4, 320, 345, 348, 372, 376–7 Mousterian 29–30 Natufian 30–1, 43, 50 Neanderthal 29–31 Neolithic 28, 32, 37, 39, 42–4, 50–1, 53, 55, 61–5, 76, 85–6, 97, 100, 312 net fishing 19, 24–5, 33, 37, 39, 62, 66, 68, 75, 113, 117, 120, 125,152, 161, 201, 203, 205–7, 239, 255, 260–74, 278–80, 291–2, 294–6, 303–4, 313, 315–6, 320, 322, 324, 329, 334, 346, 352, 355–7, 359–61, 372–8, 382, 392–3 net weights (sinkers) 201, 203, 205–7, 294–5, 313, 315–5, 355–7 Nilometer 288

Noah’s Flood 287 nuoc-mam 159, 162, 175 nutrients 58, 258, 370, 393 oligotrophic waters 58–9 opsopolis 293 Ottomans; Ottoman Empire 320–4, 328–9, 335, 342–3, 346–7, 357, 384 Paleolithic 31, 50–1, 53, 56, 137 partners; partnerships 127, 269–70, 279, 291, 352, 375 pearls 67, 145 pelagic fish 27, 32–3, 35, 37, 39–40, 56, 162, 166, 170, 173, 258–9, 355, 369 pickling fish 164, 171, 198, 201, 345, 348, 350, 358 pirates; piracy 108–9, 113, 116, 277, 279–80, 359–60, 375 pissala 171 pithoi 68, 244 pork 165, 176, 178, 201, 314 post-glacial sea level rise 85, 97–8, 287 Punic 51, 73, 88–9, 148–9, 189, 193–4, 198, 207, 224, 239–40, 243–4 purple 19, 67, 69, 75, 137–53, 198, 351–2, 354, 361 purpurarius 151 Reconquista 280 rituals 73, 76 rivers 58–9, 62, 72–3, 86, 96–8, 112, 114, 122, 150, 160, 206, 216, 222, 225, 227, 295, 309–14, 322–4, 328–31, 334, 336, 341, 346–7, 351, 357–8, 361–3, 370, 389, 392 roe 161, 321, 323–4, 327–9, 332–3, 346–50, see also caviar salinity 58, 62, 72, 74, 165, 258, 287, 302, 310, 363, 389 salsamenta 165–6, 189, 196, 198, 228, 358, 361 salt extraction 44, 74, 112, 119–20, 122, 142, 164, 209, 237, 239, 257, 271, 277, 296, 324, 375, 377, 382 salting fish 19, 32, 38, 43–4, 68, 73–4, 113, 120, 128, 147, 159–81, 187, 192–201, 219–20, 225, 237, 240–50, 271, 277, 280, 289–92, 296, 298–302, 304–5, 314, 316, 319, 323–4, 326, 328–9, 332–3, 335–6, 344–50, 353–4, 370, 375, 377–8, 380–4 sanctuaries 75–6, 117 sea level change 19, 28, 30–1, 95–101, 298 sediments 32–3, 58, 85, 87–8, 91–8, 100–1, 193, 303, 356 seine 24, 177, 260–1, 266, 278, 281, 295, 321–2, 352, 356, 370, 375–6, 378 shellfish 29, 57, 61, 63–70, 74–6, 127, 137–48,

Index of Subjects 152–3, 189, 198, 226, 313–4, 345–6, 350–52, 361, 364, 375 sieving 26, 32–3, 193, 302 silting 19, 91, 298, 302, 331 smoking fish 160, 162, 164–5, 196 smuggling 111, 378 snails, land 30, 180 snails, sea 66–7, 144–5, 149, 351–2 Solutrean 30–1, 41–2, 50–1, 55 status, legal 107–29, 272–3 status, social 76–7, 145, 148, 246, 256, 364 symbols 78, 115, 137, 191, 280, 294, 301 tarichos 166–69, 290–1, 298–9, 301, 304–5 taxation 18, 20, 116–7, 120, 122, 271, 274, 320, 324–5, 327, 348, 375, 377–8, 383 tituli picti 160, 167, 169–70, 175, 193, 196, 209, 219–20, 223–5, 227–30, 247, 249

419

tonnara 37, 239, 257, 264–5, 274–5, 292 transport 19, 26, 31, 43–4, 72–3, 86, 113, 125, 143, 150, 152, 160, 165, 169, 171, 176, 180, 189, 192, 196, 219, 243–4, 247, 280–2, 305, 324, 326, 328–9, 358, 375, 380–1, 383 trident 293–4, 31, 317, 346, 357, 374 trophic chain 44, 309, 392 tsunamis 97–100 vats (for salting) 32, 38, 141, 147, 152–3, 160, 165, 168 170–1, 192, 195–6, 222, 239–45, 249–50, 297–300 weir 303, 313, 315, 320, 322–3 wool 69, 138, 145, 150, 152, 301, 313, 351 World War I 309–10 wrecks 108, 121, 160, 166–8, 192, 215–7, 219–30, 244, 355, 357, 359; for individual wrecks, see Index of Places

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The shores of the Mediterranean / Black Sea basin were home to some of the earliest urban communities and some of the earliest literate cultures. Their complex history and rich archaeological heritage have been studied by generations of scholars, to a degree of detail comparable to no other macro-region of our planet. Its waters, too, have been the object of intense and systematic investigation, motivated not only by scientific curiosity but also by increasing concern for the wellbeing of their marine life. Yet until recently, there have been few attempts at integrating

the results of different scientific approaches in order to write the ecohistory of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. In this volume, eighteen scholars from eleven different countries and representing a wide range of scientific disciplines address the question of how humans have interacted with the Mediterranean / Black Sea ecosystem from the dawn of prehistory until the twentieth century; how they have exploited its resources; what consequences this has had for life in the sea – and what, based on past experience, the future may hold in store.

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