International Journal of Osteoarcbaeology, Vol. 4: 55-57 (1 994)

Meeting Report

Seventh Meeting of the ‘Fish Remains Working Group’ of the International Council for Archaeozoology Leuuen, Belgium 6-10 September 1993

Forty-five people attended the seventh meeting of the ’Fish Remains Working Group’ of the International Council for Archaeozoology at Leuven. Although most of the participants represented European universities and institutions, it was encouraging to hear talks given by specialists from countries as geographically distant as Chile, Mexico and Israel. The low attendance of representatives of North American institutions (only three participants) undoubtedly reflected growing budgetary constraints on trans-Atlantic travel. Most of the participants were also established researchers; there were few graduate students. Central and northern Europe was the principal geographical focus, followed in rank order by the Mediterranean (Spain, southern France, Cyprus and Israel), the Americas (Chile, Panama, Mexico, the Pacific Northwest and New England), Africa (Egypt and Mali), the Middle East (Oman and Jordan) and Southern Asia (with emphasis on Pakistan).

The papers and posters addressed a surprisingly wide range of themes and ranged in time from the palaeolithic to the present day. ’Hard core‘ osteological papers referred to hyperosteosis, both general (von den Driesch) and specific (Meunier and J. Desse on Pomadasys basta), vertebral radiography (J. and N. Desse) and osteometry (Sternberg and Bartosiewicz et al., Lernau and Zohar et al.). Taphonomy and differential recovery methods were considered in detail by innovative papers by G. Falabella et al. and Lernau. They were also central to Heinrich’s comparison of fish bone samples from two German medieval castles and Huster-Plogmann’s evaluation of Neolithic lake sites near Zurich (Switzerland). Barrett attempted to broaden the applications of the ‘weight method by comparing bone-weight/meat-yield ratios of two ecologically different gadids, the ’open-sea’

cod (Gadus morbua) and ‘littoral’ saithe (Pollachius uirens).

Belcher presented the preliminary results of what promises to be a hallmark ethnoarchaeological study of butchering practices in the Indus valley. Cooke and Tapia discussed the archaeozoological implications of the distribution of fish and sea- turtle species in a Panamanian estuary, including catch-data on an extant tidal weir. Procurement technology was also the central theme of posters by Choyke and Bartosiewicz on central European bone fish-hooks and by Wendrich and Van Neer on fishing gear from Abu Sha’ar, a Roman fort on the Red Sea coast of Egypt. Ceron-Carrasco argued that the eleventh to thirteenth century AD year-round occupants of St Boniface, Orkney (UK) resorted to several procurement strategies to provide taxa suitable for stock-fish and fish liver oil production. J. and N. Desse, on the other hand, argued for selective fishing of bonito (Eutbynnus) and groupers (Epinepbelus) in sixth millennium Crete. Zohar et al. provided an interesting postscript to their graphically excellent discussion of triggerfish utilization at seventh century BC Atlit-Yam (Israel) by remarking on this taxon‘s periodical dietary importance in modern West Africa. Studer’s well-researched talk on the piscine ingredients of Roman fish sauce (‘garum‘) at Petra (Jordan) was spiced with piquant humour.

Several participants presented informative papers that relied wholly or partially on historical sources. Hoffman argued forcefully, if controversially, that carp (Cyprinus carpio) spread into the Elbe and Odra basins long before written records indicate and warned against the a priori association of carp ponds and monastic life. Coincidences and contradictions between documentary and field archaeological data were considered by Juan-Muns and Rodriguez-Santana, who referred to excavations at the Palaci del Abat in Catalonia and by de Jong, who discussed fish remains from Eindhoven Castle in The Netherlands. Van Buyten elegantly summarized very detailed historical data on the fishing economy of Leuven in the late

CCC 1047-482X/94/010055-03 0 1994 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

56 R. Cooke

eighteenth century AD. Brinkhuizen presented a characteristically precise evaluation of stock-fish remains found on board a late sixteenth century sunken Dutch vessel and used data on the distribution of identified taxa to infer its operat ional range. Polaco and Guzman refreshingly diverted our attention from Europe in their careful ethnobiological evaluation of fish taxa reported in historical Mexican sixteenth century documents.

Evidence for the influence of climatic change on past fish distributions, to which Brinkhuizen‘s and Morales and Rosello’s papers alluded, was also considered by Crockfords comparison of archaeological and documentary data for the giant bluefin tuna (Tbunnus thymus) in the North American Pacific Northwest. Rather surprisingly, Le Gall inferred from culturally deposited ichthyofaunas that few changes occurred in the distribution of freshwater fish taxa in southern France from cold Riss (Vaufrey) to warm early neolithic times, arguing that the relevant fish taxa were adaptively more flexible than previously thought. Seasonality was considered in Belcher and Sanger’s poster, which proposed on the basis of archaeological fish distributions that different habitats in Penobscot Bay, Maine (USA) were occupied either per- manently or only during the summer months, as well as in Van Neer, Augustynen and Linkowski’s study of incremental growth rings in Tilapia sagittae, which suggested that specimens at late palaeolithic Makhadma (Egypt) were caught at the end of the flood season. MacDonald and Van Neer used data on fishing in the ‘dead delta‘ of the Niger valley (Mali) between ca. 4500 and 800 years BP to infer climate change and subsistence specialization. Cartwright’s preliminary report on Ra‘s al-Hadd, Oman, also speculated about seasonal fishing activities.

Human impact on anadromous marine fish species was the central theme of N. Desse’s informative summary of sturgeon in France, which combined archaeological, historical and allometric data in a masterly fashion.

Bgdker Enghoffs paper effectively summarized painstaking long-term research into Ertebglle period fishing in Denmark. She compared diachronic changes in fish distributions, site locations and inferred fishing ranges. Differential habitat use in space and time was also the central theme of

Morales and Rosell6’s paper on the late palaeolithic and neolithic Cueva de Nerja (Spain).

Evening activities included formal discussions about forthcoming venues (probably Madrid in 1995 and Panama in 1997 or 1998) and the publication of an ‘lchthyoarchaeology Manual’, whose scope and content still have to be clarified. A reception was offered at the ‘Royal Museum of Central Africa’, Tervuren, whose director, Thys van den Audenaerde, gave a delightful summary of the museum’s history.

An apposite postscript to the meeting’s papers was the excellent summary of the history of Belgian fishing presented by Van Neer and Ervynck, itself a prelude to a visit to the ‘Fishery Museum’ at Oostduinkerke. This correspondent was most impressed by the didactic acumen of the retired fisherman who accompanied him on the museum tour and also by the didactic excellence of the ‘Fish and Archaeology’ exhibition. Accustomed to tropical biological diversity, he was unimpressed by the meagre number of species that are regularly consumed by North European households, but was overwhelmed by the almost unbelievable orderliness and cleanliness of the fish market at Nieuwpoort. Remarkable, also, was the identification of incoming fish by a Flemish fisherman who spoke English with a Yorkshire accent worthy of cricket match commentators of yore.

It is hoped that future conferences will attract ichthyologists from a wider geographical range and from a broader academic spectrum. A prominent hazard of these kinds of international meetings is still the dialectal variability of English, and the speed with which some participants speak this language and French. At Leuven discussions were often loud and protracted, but never acrimonious. This situation was surely promoted by the relaxed atmosphere that resulted from Wim Van Neer‘s (to this correspondent) novel idea of simply listing each session’s speakers, without allotting times to each paper. All the talks finished on time.

The multidisciplinart; focus of most of the papers was striking. This correspondent came away from the meeting conscious of his own research‘s deficiencies in taphonomy and allometry, which were underlined by some excellent treatments of these themes. H e also concluded that Holocene changes in natural fish

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distributions, which appear to be evident everywhere, require careful documentation and collation with other relevant data sets (a theme for discussion at the next meeting?). In many cases, 'seasonality' is still a guess, rather than an inference or deduction; more archaeologists should resort to incremental growth-ring analyses, ecological studies of important food fish taxa and statistically sound comparisons of inferred fish sizes and species clusters in order to evaluate accurately this important aspect of human food procurement behaviour. Palaeogeographical studies are an underdeveloped b u t i m p o r t a n t facet of multidisciplinary research into prehistoric fishing.

The fact that the gentlemen who were supposed to give us a demonstration of traditional shrimping

technology were on strike was clearly outside Wim Van Neer's control! His organization of the meeting, in its academic, social and culinary aspects, was superb. T h e innate hospitality of the Flemish people was epitomized by the farewell lunch given a t t h e ' Inst i tuut v o o r he t Archaeologisch Patrimonium' by the director, C. de Boe.

T h e organizers and participants gratefully acknowledge the sponsorship of the Bank Brussel Lambert.

Richard Cooke Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (Panama),

Archaeology La &oratory, Nuos lsland