[...]... Field Crops in Late Medieval England d j stone It is hard to avoid platitudes when describing the place of grain in medieval diet, for in both absolute and relative terms it towered over any other foodstuff This may not have been the case in every part of medieval Britain, as Gerald of Wales informs us in his Description of Wales of c.1200,1 but for the vast majority of people in England grain provided... the study of food, diet, consumption, and health in the past The different disciplines not only bring different kinds of data, but also different approaches and styles of scholarship and presentation A combination of these is now a virtue essential to the achievement of a holistic view of this subject Introduction 3 The study of medieval food and diet Food has been perennially of interest in the study... presence in the collections of recipes and descriptions of banquets, prominent in the works of eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury antiquaries, is markedly different in emphasis from its place in the discussion of living standards, prices, and wages of twentieth-century social and economic history and in the great regional studies of the 1950s and 1960s that considered the nutrition, calorific intake, and. .. sites in medieval Britain 5.1 Numbers of assemblages for each period and site type analysed in Figs 5.1–5.7 5.2 Average percentage contributions of cattle and sheep remains to vertebrate assemblages 5.3 Inter-period and inter-site variation in the ages of (a) cattle and (b) sheep 6.1 Number of identified specimens (NISP) of pig and sheep/goat at twenty-one multi-period Saxon and medieval sites in England. .. to starvation In England, the survival of large numbers of documents for the administration of landed estates (or manors) from the thirteenth century onwards has led to a concentration on production in medieval agriculture, rather than the consumption of food; but in the last two decades there has been a significant change in perspective Outlines of diet in late medieval England were succinctly mapped... disciplines involved In order to cover this breadth, a group of contributors has been required, and the book has had to focus closely on diet and nutrition The volume is divided into two parts The first surveys foodstuffs, combining both historical and archaeological evidence, to give an up-to-date synthesis across a wide range of materials The second section contains a series of short studies examining... The marine fish, cetaceans, shellfish, and crustaceans eaten in two great households 8.7 The freshwater fish eaten in two great households 8.8 Minimum calorific value for the fish content of the meals of the household of Bishop Mitford of Salisbury 9.1 Birds from medieval sites in southern England and recorded in medieval documents 11.1 Numbers of assemblages considered for information about hunting 18.1... human isotope data from Britain 16.3 Later medieval humans from St Giles, Warrington, and Towton in comparison with contemporaneous fauna from northern England 16.4 Box -and- whisker plot of ␦15N ratios for Warrington, Hereford, and Wharram Percy 18.1 Cumulative percentage distribution of heights of male skeletons from within the church and in the lay cemetery at the Old Mint site, London xi 136 139 140... calorific intake It has been estimated that at the start of the fourteenth century grain accounted for up to 80 per cent of a harvest worker’s calories and 78 per cent of a soldier’s; even among the lay nobility of medieval England, grain provided 65–70 per cent of their energy intake.2 Medieval people consumed grain in three main ways: as bread, as ale, and among the poorer sections of society in pottage,... other grains and its yields were often considerably higher than those of other crops: on the demesne of Hinderclay (also in Blackbourne Hundred) net barley yields before the Black Death were 31 per cent higher than wheat yields.45 The significance of these points extends beyond our understanding of diet and farming Most historians agree that the population of medieval England peaked at between five and six . h0" alt="" Medieval History and Archaeology General Editors JOHN BLAIR HELENA HAMEROW Food in Medieval England This page intentionally left blank FOOD IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND Diet and Nutrition Edited. Birds in Late Medieval England 148 d. j. stone 11. The Impact of the Normans on Hunting Practices in England 162 n. j. sykes 12. Procuring, Preparing, and Serving Venison in Late Medieval England. STUDIES IN DIET AND NUTRITION 13. Group Diets in Late Medieval England 191 c. m. woolgar 14. Seasonal Patterns in Food Consumption in the Later Middle Ages 201 c. c. dyer 15. Monastic Pittances in