Fish as a delicacy and a staple: Social status and the daily meal at the 14th to 16th century town of Songo Mnara, Tanzania

William Marsh Rice University, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for recent doctoral graduates to obtain additional training, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond their undergraduate and graduate training. Postdoctoral fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including at foreign locations. This postdoctoral fellowship supports Dr. Erendira Quintana Morales, under the mentorship of Dr. Jeffrey Fleisher (Rice University), to investigate how daily meals serve to express and negotiate social status by comparing food remains associated with households of varying social status in the 14th-16th century town of Songo Mnara, Tanzania. The results of this archaeological study have implications for our understanding of past social diversity and inequality and the role of everyday practices, such as daily meals, as strategies for social mobility. An innovative and significant contribution of this project is demonstrating the role of fish as both a delicacy and a staple of the daily meal, providing evidence of cases where eating fish exerts both dividing and unifying power in a society where fish are ubiquitous but often understudied. This project provides valuable opportunities to transfer research skills to undergraduate students through training and experience analyzing and recording ceramic and zooarchaeological data, from which they can develop independent research projects. Students also have the opportunity to develop leadership and communications skills by participating in a community outreach program developed out of the fellow?s research. This archaeology module is designed in partnership with a local low-income school to increase the participation of underrepresented minorities in the sciences. This research examines fish bone and ceramic fragments from a selection of households representing diverse levels of social standing to explore how variation in food consumption practices is indicative of social status. Specific measures in the analysis of fish remains, such as size, taxonomic diversity, and element distribution, are compared across the samples to reveal statistically significant patterns in fish distribution. Standard methods of ceramic analysis for the Swahili region are used to determine how vessel form, size, origin, and decoration vary across households associated with different social status. The identification of lipid traces on ceramic fragments serves to reconstruct what food was cooked in specific vessels, which is a pioneering application of this method in the study of fish consumption and in this region. Together, these three research components -- fish remains analysis, ceramic analysis, and lipid analysis -- indicate how different modes of eating and cooking were combined with different foods on a daily basis. A unique, town-level perspective emerges from the spatial patterning of daily consumption practices during the short occupation at Songo Mnara. This research highlights how a detailed investigation of regularly consumed food, such as fish in coastal communities, reveals the social interactions and constructions of meaning associated with past daily practices that form the fabric of a society. The project has significant international collaboration, therefore it is jointly funded by the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering, and the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.