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The aim of this paper is to present a short overview of the production and trade in marine resources in Italy and Sicily during Antiquity. As the results of this research have already been published in detail elsewhere, the aim of this short contribution is to summarise the most important data and to highlight some of the research questions that re...
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... A separate discussion would be that of the observation, fishing, and processing facilities for tuna,largely celebrated by Archestratuswhich became rather popular in Sicily starting from the Hellenistic-Early Republican period (Botte, 2018). Important examples of such facilities, whose use continued until the last centuries of the Roman empire, are located in the territory of Syracuse, like that of Ognina (Purpura, 1989), Portopalo (Lena, Basile, & Di Stefano, 1988), Vendicari (Purpura, 1989), and Pachino (Felici, 2012). ...
Fish and fish products are considered important sources of nutrition due to their high protein, fat, and fat-soluble vitamin content. These food items have been extensively discussed and celebrated in various genres of Greek literature. However, there is a discrepancy between the rich textual evidence of fish cooking and consumption and the limited archaeological evidence of fishing gear, especially with respect to Greek Sicily. Such scarcity of evidence is particularly evident in the Archaic period. To address the issue of fish consumption in Greek Sicily and to determine the role of fish in the local communities’ diet, this study focuses on the new data that have emerged from stable isotopes analysis on skeletal remains from a recently discovered Archaic period necropolis in Syracuse. The study analyzes the dietary habits of the individuals buried in the necropolis and establishes possible connections between burial practices and diet. Additionally, the study compares the dietary patterns with the social status of the individuals, as demonstrated by the funerary context. The comparison of the new evidence with similar contexts will allow for a critical review of the literary sources and the reinterpretation of the archaeological record. Through this, the study aims to establish the role of fish in the diet of the Greeks of Sicily and their significance at the dining table.
... In terms of material remains of fishing equipment, hooks, weights, harpoons, and tridents recovered throughout Italy attest to a variety of fishing techniques (Gianfrotta 1987;Giulierini 2010). Certainly by the 4 th century BC fishing had grown into an industry requiring significant installations for fish processing, at least in Sicily, and later in the 1 st century BC fish factories expanded to the Tyrrhenian coast of peninsular Italy (Botte 2009(Botte , 2018. In contrast to the abundant evidence for a fishing industry in the Roman period (Marzano 2013), evidence for fishing and fish consumption in proto-historic Italy is relatively sparse. ...
... 6,7 The final steps in the process of fish preservation relate to the storage and transport of the final products in containers. Storage containers could have been made in various materials, including some that would not have survived archaeologically (Carusi 2016;Curtis 2016;Wilson 2006;Lytle 2018;Botte 2018). The prehistoric archaeological record provides examples of processed fish in clay vessels (see discussion above). ...
This article addresses the question of the production of locally processed and imported marine products in the Aegean through time, utilising zooarchaeological evidence combined with various other records when available. What is clear from this overview is that Aegean populations were familiar with processing techniques from as early as the Mesolithic period. Despite evidence for more intensive exploitation and preservation of marine resources at specific times and in specific areas, aimed at maximising the returns from seasonally abundant catches, in general preserved marine products seem to have been of limited significance to Aegean communities and they probably never constituted a significant part of the Aegean diet.
... Also, often cited as problematic is the lack of archaeological evidence for Black Sea saltfish even as an item of trade before the Roman period, including most notably an absence of local amphora types that can be associated specifically with the transport of salted fish or fish sauces (Lund and Gabrielsen 2005; for a similar problem in pre-Roman Sicily see Botte 2018). The archaeological record would seem to stand in apparent contradiction to literary evidence from the Classical period attesting the transport of certain types of Black Sea saltfish specifically in ceramic jars (see, for example, Demosthenes 35.34, Murray 1936: 300-301, with additional discussion in Curtis 1991Braund 1995;Dumont 1976). ...
Despite a dearth of literary and archaeological evidence for the commercial production of salted fish or fish sauces in the Aegean during the Classical and Hellenistic periods it has been argued, based on a variety of proximate data, that such production must have been common. This paper suggests those arguments are probably wrong. It argues first that the absence of archaeological evidence for regional Aegean production and trade is itself not necessarily meaningful since a similar absence exists for the Black Sea region during the Classical and Hellenistic periods when commercial production and trade is otherwise well attested; in the Black Sea the most common varieties of saltfish were produced without the use of permanent installations such as salting vats and shipped not in amphoras but in large baskets, thereby leaving little trace in the archaeological record. Evidence for regional Aegean production is also, however, largely absent from the literary and epigraphic sources where a number of key pieces of evidence have been misinterpreted. The evidence suggests instead that commercial catches even of species well suited for preservation would have been marketed fresh. This can be explained in part by the fact that in the Aegean different environmental constraints obtained. More importantly, institutional factors often would have made the commercial production and trade of salted fish and fish sauces uneconomical. Even where local conditions of glut periodically prevailed the possibility of household production may have prevented the development of commercial production on any meaningful scale.
