The globalization of naval provisioning: ancient DNA and stable isotope analyses of stored cod from the wreck of the Mary Rose, AD 1545.

A comparison of ancient DNA (single-nucleotide polymorphisms) and carbon and nitrogen stable isotope evidence suggests that stored cod provisions recovered from the wreck of the Tudor warship Mary Rose, which sank in the Solent, southern England, in 1545, had been caught in northern and transatlantic waters such as the northern North Sea and the fishing grounds of Iceland and Newfoundland. This discovery, underpinned by control data from archaeological samples of cod bones from potential source regions, illuminates the role of naval provisioning in the early development of extensive sea fisheries, with their long-term economic and ecological impacts.

Stable isotope evidence for late medieval (14th-15th C) origins of the eastern Baltic cod (Gadus morhua) fishery.

Although recent historical ecology studies have extended quantitative knowledge of eastern Baltic cod (Gadus morhua) exploitation back as far as the 16th century, the historical origin of the modern fishery remains obscure. Widespread archaeological evidence for cod consumption around the eastern Baltic littoral emerges around the 13th century, three centuries before systematic documentation, but it is not clear whether this represents (1) development of a substantial eastern Baltic cod fishery, or (2) large-scale importation of preserved cod from elsewhere. To distinguish between these hypotheses we use stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis to determine likely catch regions of 74 cod vertebrae and cleithra from 19 Baltic archaeological sites dated from the 8th to the 16th centuries. δ(13)C and δ(15)N signatures for six possible catch regions were established using a larger sample of archaeological cod cranial bones (n = 249). The data strongly support the second hypothesis, revealing widespread importation of cod during the 13th to 14th centuries, most of it probably from Arctic Norway. By the 15th century, however, eastern Baltic cod dominate within our sample, indicating the development of a substantial late medieval fishery. Potential human impact on cod stocks in the eastern Baltic must thus be taken into account for at least the last 600 years.