TY - JOUR
T1 - Early Medieval Shellfish Gathering at the Sands of Forvie, Aberdeenshire
T2 - Feast or Famine?
AU - Noble, Gordon
AU - Turner, Joe R
AU - Hamilton, Derek
AU - Hastie, Lee
AU - Knecht, Rick
AU - Sveinbjarnarson, Oskar
AU - Upex, B R
AU - Milek, Karen B
AU - Stirling, Lindsey
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - From 2010 to 2014, extensive shell middens were excavated at the Sands of Forvie, Aberdeenshire, and the wider landscape explored through a programme of soil and geophysical survey. The middens were dated to the 1st millennium ad and appear to represent intensive gathering and cooking of shellfish, particularly mussels. To date, few middens of the scale of the Forvie examples have been identified in Scotland, but the middens share some parallels with similar examples found in a broader North Sea context. This article reports on the findings of the excavations, provides an outline of the chronology of the middens, including Bayesian modelling of dates, and a brief review of the growing evidence for shellfish gathering in 1st-millennium ad Scotland and the wider north-west European context.
AB - From 2010 to 2014, extensive shell middens were excavated at the Sands of Forvie, Aberdeenshire, and the wider landscape explored through a programme of soil and geophysical survey. The middens were dated to the 1st millennium ad and appear to represent intensive gathering and cooking of shellfish, particularly mussels. To date, few middens of the scale of the Forvie examples have been identified in Scotland, but the middens share some parallels with similar examples found in a broader North Sea context. This article reports on the findings of the excavations, provides an outline of the chronology of the middens, including Bayesian modelling of dates, and a brief review of the growing evidence for shellfish gathering in 1st-millennium ad Scotland and the wider north-west European context.
U2 - 10.9750/PSAS.146.1214
DO - 10.9750/PSAS.146.1214
M3 - Article
SN - 0081-1564
VL - 146
SP - 121
EP - 152
JO - Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
JF - Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
ER -