Beyond Stockfish: Migratory and Freshwater Fisheries during the Rise of Early Modern Trading Companies

During the 13th-17th centuries CE, Northern Europe was increasingly under the political and economic control of a powerful merchant class, responsible for the development and centralization of economic and political power throughout the region. Merchant trading companies coordinated the management of maritime-based trade in goods like wool, agricultural products, and, perhaps most importantly, preserved fish.
Archaeological fish remains provide a useful lens for examining the consolidation of economic power by these trading networks. They offer perspectives on influence over regional market preferences, trade patterns, and technological change. However, research into the late-medieval/early-modern fish trade has primarily focused on the stockfish (cod and similar species) and herring industries, with the role of migratory and freshwater species remaining understudied.
The primary goal of Beyond Stockfish is to investigate the trade in fish other than herring and stockfish, using archaeological material from two major industrial trading centres in Germany and England– Lübeck and Exeter. The fish bone assemblages from these two locations will be studied through the integration of several methods, including comparative skeletal analysis, collagen peptide mass fingerprinting (ZooMS), and geometric morphometrics (GMM). These analysis methods are focused on the study of both the physical form and chemical properties of archaeological fish bones, and can be used to identify individual fish bones to taxonomic groups including genus and species. While identification and quantification methods have already been developed for some of the most commonly exploited fish species (e.g. cod, herring), this project will focus on establishing new collagen peptide barcodes and morphometrics-derived length/weight regression estimate models for understudied fish species.
Armed with detailed information about species of fish exploited, this study will explore the role that Lübeck and Exeter played in North Atlantic and Baltic trading networks. Beyond Stockfish will reconstruct regional differences in species frequency, contextualise the archaeological record with documentary research into the fish trade, and explore the historical ecology of key species such as Northern pike, zander, and whitefish. Both the modern and archaeological material used in this project will create new tools for identification and quantification of fish bones from a variety of scientific contexts, and their publication will benefit researchers from fields ranging from ecology to food science and economics. This research will explore the role that fish played in defining the power of mediaeval trading companies and provide a deep-time baseline for understanding the economic, cultural and political origins of modern commercial fisheries.