The Fish Bone from the Swan, a 17 Th Century Shipwreck off Duart Point, Mull: 2000-2003 Excavations the Fish Bone from the Swan, a 17 Th Century Shipwreck off Duart Point, Mull: 2000- 2003 Excavations

Disclaimer: this report is one of a series produced by staff and colleagues of Fishlab, in the Centre for Human Palaeoecology, Department of Archaeology, University of York. It contains material that may eventually be intended for publication and, as such, may represent only an interim statement. When quoting this report, please refer to it in this way: Postlethwaite, A.C. and Mudge, B.E. (2003). Technical Report: Plant and animal remains from a muddy hole somewhere in Yorkshire. Reports from the Centre for Human Palaeoecology, University of York 2003/03, 6pp. + 10 pp. Appendix. Introduction Underwater excavation of the Swan, a Cromwellian shipwreck of 1653 off Duart Point, Mull, Scotland, produced a small assemblage of 789 fish bones. The excavation was directed by Dr. Colin Martin of St. Andrew's University and the fish bone derived from the 2000, 2002 and 2003 field seasons. In 2000, a very small quantity of fish bone (49 fragments, of which only a few ling bones were identifiable) was hand collected from the ship's bilge. These were recovered along with more abundant mammal bone (Martin pers comm.), but given the tiny sample and the biases inherent in hand recovery (Jones 1982; Vale & Gargett 2002) little can be said about them. In contrast, a slightly larger deposit of concentrated fish bone (743 specimens) was identified at the base of the ship's stern in 2002. Some of this material was hand collected that year, but in 2003 a bulk sample of 5 litres of this sediment was removed and sieved on land using a 1.5mm mesh (Martin pers comm.). Fragments of barrels were also found, but the location of the fish bone deposit is inappropriate for storage and human bone (probably all belonging to one individual) was also scattered across the area. Thus the base of the stern presumably acted as a 'trap' for waterborne flotsam within the wreck until the material was immobilised by sediment. The material must therefore be interpreted in terms of both human and natural accumulation processes. Although the number of bones from the stern deposit is modest, it does show a very narrow species diversity and an unusual element distribution, both of which can be interpreted in terms of cured (probably dried and salted) fish. The assemblage thus adds to the story of early modern maritime provisioning emerging from other broadly contemporary wreck sites (e. Methods The assemblage was recorded following the York …