Food : a brief account of its sources, constituents and uses / A. H. Church.

  • Church, A. H. (Arthur Herbert), 1834-1915.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Food : a brief account of its sources, constituents and uses / A. H. Church. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    able to obtain some acquaintance with the subject from the descrip- tive writings which are extant, and from the pictorial representa- tions of articles of food which remain on the walls of the Pompeian houses. But even in England we find relics of Romano-British food in the bones of the pig, and in the oyster, mussel, and snail shells which abound near our Roman stations. Similar evidence with regard to other ancient European peoples is afforded by the waste heaps or kitchen-middens so abundant in some parts of the Continent, in the debris of bones discovered during recent years in many caves once inhabited by man, and in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, and Denmark. In these last instances the evidence of the use of many fruits and grains has been furnished by the perfect preservation of these substances. Fish-hooks have also been found, together with other proofs of the use of animal foods. One of the most productive of all the Swiss lakes is that of Pfaffikon, in the canton of Zurich. Here remains of many kinds of food were disinterred from the peat of the lake- dwellings of Robenhausen. These lake-dwellings were built on piles, covered above with planking. In the case of some of these structures, no evidence of the use of metals by their builders has been detected; they belong to a stone age, locally anterior to those of bronze and iron. The food remains of these very early inhabitants of Europe are of high interest.