Cod bones - tracing trade

Dem bones

A new study shows that cod were exploited in the Middle Ages from many, often distant, fishing grounds, with an international trade in dried stockfish. Some fish eaten in a Yorkshire village may have been some from off the coast of Sweden, while merchants in what is now northern Germany ate cod from Arctic Norway.

"Although fisheries farther afield, such as the later Basque exploitation of those off Labrador in northeastern Canada, are not included in the present project, it may help to rewrite the history of North Atlantic as well as North Sea commerce in the second millennium."

[edit on 16/4/08 by Hanslune]