8/30/2023 0 Comments Top medieval foods![]() While dietary preference may be constrained by the local availability of foodstuffs, it is often used to express cultural and social identities such as status, ethnicity, gender, occupation and regional difference (e.g., Montanari, 1999 Super, 2002 Parker Pearson, 2003 van der Veen, 2003). The realities of religious co-existence within this pluralistic society have long been the subject of academic debate (Glick, 1992 Soifer, 2009) and food, in particular, might be expected to gain a significance that went beyond physiological need. ![]() However, it ended in the forced conversion and subsequent expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain after AD 14, respectively. This life together, or convivencia as it is termed, lent itself to some surprising cultural influences, for example the popularity of couscous among Christians and their adopted habit of dining when seated on a cushion on the floor (de Castro, 1993: 172). In brief, Christians, Muslims and Jews co-existed in the Iberian Peninsula for much of the Middle Ages, at first under Islamic political control in al-Andalus after the 8th century AD, and later under Christian rule after the ‘reconquest’ gained momentum during the 12th and 13th centuries. The study of diet using stable isotope evidence is particularly noteworthy, however, because it offers the prospect of detecting directly the dietary preferences of different faiths living side-by-side within the same community. The intermingling of faiths in medieval Spain can be explored from numerous angles, through literature, architecture, the development of science and the study of archaeological objects, to name a few (e.g., Mann et al., 1992). It is the first such study to attempt this. Responding to this challenge, this article presents data from late medieval populations from the mainland peninsula and examines the diets of Muslims and Christians living in a single locale in the Kingdom of Valencia during the 13th–16th centuries AD. A growing number of projects have now applied the technique to medieval Mediterranean populations (e.g., Salamon et al., 2008 Bourbou et al., 2011 Fuller et al., 2012 Reitsema and Vercellotti, 2012 Ciaffi et al., 2013), but major published studies from Spain remain restricted to the Balearic Islands (Fuller et al., 2010 Nehlich et al., 2012). This information needs to be properly contextualized to maximize its benefits and is best used alongside other sources of evidence such as faunal assemblages and written texts. Stable isotope analysis of archaeological bone collagen is a well-established technique that can provide direct evidence of the diet of archaeological populations down to the level of an individual (Ambrose, 1993). American Journal of physical Anthropology published by Wiley Periodicals,Inc. Isotopic values for animals were also found to vary widely, both between and within species, and this provides a window into the local livestock economy. ![]() These differences may relate to inequalities in their access to foodstuffs, particularly to C 3/C 4 grain and/or possibly terrestrial meat sources, though cultural preferences are also highlighted. Statistical differences in both δ 13C and δ 15N reveal that the diets of the two faith communities differed, despite living side-by-side. Twenty-four Christians and 20 Muslims are sampled from two adjacent and contemporaneous settlements in the township of Gandía on the Mediterranean coast, together with the remains of 24 animals. This article investigates the diets of neighboring Christians and Muslims in late medieval Spain (here 13th–16th centuries) through the analysis of the stable isotopes of carbon (δ 13C) and nitrogen (δ 15N) in adult human and animal bone collagen. ![]()
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