I am a zooarchaeologist, which means I study animal remains from archaeological sites to try and find out more about the relationship between humans, animals and the environment in the past.
What is your project about?
My project is titled ‘Food and Networks in Early Medieval Societies: Wales and the West’ and it studies farming practices and human-animal interactions in the north Wales/Irish Sea region during the early medieval period: an important period in the creation of Welsh identity (AD 700-1100).
I am focusing on the animal remains from the site at Llanbedrgoch, Anglesey – a large, enclosed settlement that has shown lots of evidence for trade and cultural influences from Ireland, Scandinavia, northern Britain and continental Europe. I want to explore the influence of animal husbandry practices on diet, trade and the economy at Llanbedrgoch, and compare this to other early medieval sites in Wales and elsewhere.
Some of the questions I am trying to answer are:
- What was diet like in early medieval Wales?
- How did food consumption in the Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd differ to other kingdoms?
- How important were farming activities to the economy at Llanbedrgoch, in comparison to other activities like crafts?
- Were animals reared mainly for local consumption? Or were they geared towards producing a surplus for trade?
What does a typical day look like?
I began this project in January 2021, and so the project is still in its early stages! At the moment, I spend a lot of time in the Bioarchaeology lab at Cardiff University, recording the animal bone assemblage from Llanbedrgoch. This involves going through boxes of animal remains collected from the excavation and recording details about the bones such as what species they are from, whether they show evidence of things activities like butchery, and taking measurements I can use in later analyses. I am also currently researching the environment of early medieval Wales and studying other early medieval sites I can use in comparison, such as Llangorse crannog.
As COVID restrictions are starting to ease, I am excited to start planning outreach events and activities that use my research to engage local communities with archaeology. I especially want to share how food in the past and present can inform us about issues such as identity, and what this could mean for the future!
