Cod Salted, an Essential Commodity of the French Sugar Colonies in the Colonial Period: Zooarchaeological Reality.

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Sal, Bacalhau e Açúcar : Trade, Mobility, Circular Navigation and Foodways in the Atlantic World", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Cod salted fish occupy a privileged place in the diet in the French West Indies and Reunion: accras, féroce, "chiquetaille", or "rougail morue" who has not heard of, if not tasted, these traditional dishes of the French Creole gastronomy? Native to the northern waters of the globe, cod cannot be fished near the Caribbean or Reunion coasts and has been exported on a massive scale since the 17th century from the northwestern coasts of the Atlantic to supply the French sugar colonies. However, among the forty colonial sites that have benefited from an archaeozoological study over the last 10 years, only 14 sites spread over the islands of Saint-Barthélemy, Martinique, Guadeloupe and Reunion have yielded cod bones, and only in very small quantities. This presentation attempts to better understand and explain the absence of this essential colonial commodity in the ultramarine archaeological record.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Sal, Bacalhau e Açúcar : Trade, Mobility, Circular Navigation and Foodways in the Atlantic World

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow