“To the Land or to the Sea”: Diet and Mobility in Early Medieval Frisia

ABSTRACT

This study investigated palaeodiet and population mobility in early medieval Frisia through the stable isotope analysis of individuals buried in the fifth–eighth century AD cemetery of Oosterbeintum, a terp site on the northern coast of the Netherlands. The results cast new light on the role of the northern Netherlands in trade and migration in the early medieval period, and have significance for the study of interaction and movement throughout the wider North Sea region. Bone collagen and tooth enamel from humans and animals were analyzed using carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and strontium isotopes. δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N results indicated that the population had a terrestrial, C₃-based diet. High δ¹⁵N values were observed in humans and fauna, which are probably related to the terp's salt-marsh location. The δ¹⁸O and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr data revealed a high proportion of non-locals buried at Oosterbeintum, some of whom had probably migrated from regions as distant and varied as Scandinavia and southern England. It is suggested that this immigration may be associated with Frisian maritime trading activities. New data are also presented from a small number of contemporaneous European sites.

Keywords:

• Frisia
• stable isotopes
• migration
• palaeodiet
• terp

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank the following people for making samples available: Ernst Taayke from the Archaeological Depot of the Northern Netherlands (NAD), Nuis; The British Museum, London; Armelle Alduc-Le Bagousse, Centre Michel de Boüard, Caen; and Babette Ludowici, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Hannover. Thanks also go to Andy Gledhill at the University of Bradford for his supervision and assistance in the preparation and measurement of the Oosterbeintum samples for carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis, and to two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and advice in improving this article. E.M. was supported by a NERC Ph.D. studentship at the University of Aberdeen during the preparation of this paper, which is based upon research for her M.Sc. dissertation at the University of Bradford.