The origins of intensive marine fishing in medieval Europe: the English evidence
The origins of intensive marine fishing in medieval Europe: the English evidence
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DOI：
10.1098/rspb.2004.2885
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发表时间：
2004-12-07
影响因子：
4.7
通讯作者：
Roberts, CM
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Barrett, JH;Locker, AM;Roberts, CM
捕捞压力对鳕鱼和鲱鱼等物种造成的灾难性影响已有详细记录。然而，对其进行密集开采的历史尚未确定。系统的渔获量统计数据仅可用于ca。100年来，但大规模的捕鱼业存在于中世纪的欧洲和鳕鱼捕捞的扩张从14世纪（首先在冰岛，然后在纽芬兰）发挥了重要作用，在欧洲殖民西北大西洋。历史已经证明了这些中世纪晚期和后中世纪渔业的规模，但只有考古学才能说明早期的做法。动物考古学证据表明，在公元600年至1600年之间，英国海洋渔业的最明显变化发生在公元1000年左右，其中包括鲱鱼和鳕鱼的捕获量大幅增加。令人惊讶的是，这场革命早于有文献记载的中世纪后英国海洋渔业的扩张，并与中世纪温暖时期相吻合，当时北海的天然鲱鱼和鳕鱼生产率可能很低。这一违反直觉的发现可以用城市化和人类对淡水生态系统影响的同时兴起来解释。因此，除了最近的渔业数据和近代早期的历史记录外，寻找海洋生态系统的“原始”基线还需要使用中世纪的古生态代用品。
The catastrophic impact of fishing pressure on species such as cod and herring is well documented. However, the antiquity of their intensive exploitation has not been established. Systematic catch statistics are only available for ca. 100 years, but large-scale fishing industries existed in medieval Europe and the expansion of cod fishing from the fourteenth century (first in Iceland, then in Newfoundland) played an important role in the European colonization of the Northwest Atlantic. History has demonstrated the scale of these late medieval and post-medieval fisheries, but only archaeology can illuminate earlier practices. Zooarchaeological evidence shows that the clearest changes in marine fishing in England between AD 600 and 1600 occurred rapidly around AD 1000 and involved large increases in catches of herring and cod. Surprisingly, this revolution predated the documented post-medieval expansion of England's sea fisheries and coincided with the Medieval Warm Period-when natural herring and cod productivity was probably low in the North Sea. This counterintuitive discovery can be explained by the concurrent rise of urbanism and human impacts on freshwater ecosystems. The search for 'pristine' baselines regarding marine ecosystems will thus need to employ medieval palaeoecological proxies in addition to recent fisheries data and early modern historical records.