A New Survey of Plant Foods in Post-medieval Ireland: Evidence from Archaeobotany

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "FoodCult: Food, Culture and Identity in Ireland, c.1550-1650", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This paper will explore the nature and meaning of foodways in post-medieval Ireland, based upon a new survey of archaeobotanical remains from more than 50 excavations across the island. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a period of increasingly globalised trade when new foods arrived in Ireland, some of which, such as the potato, eventually became dietary staples. Irish food cultures were also influenced by neighbouring Britain, which ruled over Ireland at the time, as well as Europe, but some food choices seem to reflect more local traditions. Hundreds of archaeological excavations have unearthed food-related materials dating to the 16th and 17th centuries, including archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological remains, and artefacts, such as cooking and eating utensils. The paper will focus on the newly collated archaeobotanical dataset from the FoodCult project, exploring key trends in plant use in the context of wider archaeological and historical evidence.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• FoodCult: Food, Culture and Identity in Ireland, c.1550-1650

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow