Anglo-Saxon rulers ate mostly vegetarian diets until the arrival of the Vikings, according to a new study.
And a nursing study published in the April 20 issue of the journal Anglo-Saxon suggests that villagers will organize lavish feasts of heavy meat for the elite instead of paying them with food as a labor tax.
The discoveries, according to researchers, overturned the main prejudices about medieval English history and had “major political consequences”.
In the first study, Cambridge University bioarchaeologist Sam Legett analyzed chemical traces of diets preserved in the bones of 2,023 individuals buried in 5th-11th-century England.
She then compared them with indicators of social rank, such as grave goods, body position and orientation in the grave, and found no link between high-protein diets and social status.
With so many medieval texts and historical research showing that Anglo-Saxon aristocrats ate a lot of meat, the findings surprised Cambridge University historian Tom Lambert.
So the two collaborated to compile historical royal food lists and uncovered comparable portion patterns, such as a modest amount of bread, a large amount of meat, a reasonable but not excessive amount of ale and no mention of vegetables, although some were almost certainly provided .
But the total amount of food listed was much greater than any small dinner could eat.
“These food lists show that even if you allow a huge appetite, 300 or more people must have been present,” Lambert said in a press release on April 21.
“The scale and proportions of these food lists strongly suggest that they were provisions for occasional major holidays, not common food supplies that support royal households on a daily basis. These are not projects for daily elite diets, as historians suggest.
This new evidence, combined with Legett’s findings from a previous study, suggests that the large amounts of meat mentioned in these historical food lists may have been eaten only on special occasions.
“I found no evidence that people ate anything like animal protein on a regular basis. If they were, we would find isotopic evidence of excess protein and signs of diseases such as bone gout. But we just don’t find that, “Leget added.
Even royalty, researchers suggest, would eat a cereal-based diet, and these rare feasts – cases found in the east of the UK in the UK – would also be a pleasure for them.
“This means that many ordinary farmers must have been there, and this has major political implications,” Lambert said.
“We see kings traveling to huge barbecues organized by free peasants, people who own their own farms and sometimes slaves to work on them.
This interpretation could have far-reaching consequences for the Middle Ages and English political history in general.
Prior to this study, it was widely believed that peasants paid food or taxes on the food of kings and the upper class. But now Lambert suggests that the term refers to a holiday attended by both peasants and kings, rather than a primitive form of taxation.
“You can compare it to a modern dinner for the US presidential campaign,” Lambert said. It was a crucial form of political commitment. “
Food has long influenced the ideas of the origins of English royalty and the policy of patronage of the land, and they remain at the heart of ongoing discussions about how the once free peasants in England were subjected.
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