Page 38 - Maryland Historical Trust - Archaeology Colonial MD

to the fact that St. John’s was a wealthy house- hold and a man called “Indian Peter” is known to have worked for John Lewger as a hunter. The large quantities of Sheepshead fish bones (and scales) indicate they were once not only abundant in the Chesapeake, but also quite popular with the colonists. A traveler in 1676 noted this and commented that when fishing for Sheepshead “A Planter does oftentimes take a dozen or fourteen in an hour’s time with hook and line.”15 That is a remarkable quantity of fish for the time invested. Disappearance of the Sheepshead in the Chesa- peake is probably due to several factors includ- ing a change in the bottom conditions, siltation, anoxia and perhaps overfishing. Work at St. John’s and other sites indicates that the Sheepshead fish is a powerful indicator species for the health of the estuarine benthic environment.
The early colonial diet differed from En- gland in three ways. One was the sudden change from wheat and barley to maize as the principal grain. Both period accounts and household in- ventories show that “Indian corn” was the crop grown almost universally in the early decades of settlement. Second is the quantity of food from
wild sources. While fish was eaten in England, wild animals made up a tiny portion of the diet. This was especially the case with venison. Deer were typically only found in deer parks owned by the royalty and aristocracy and consumed by the upper classes. Indeed, a haunch of venison was a special Christmas gift provided by the King to his favorites, including George Calvert. But in Maryland, deer were abundant and virtually every colonist, even indentured servants, had the opportunity to consume this royal meat.
Third, the traditional English meat diet was a mix of beef, lamb or mutton and pork. Sheep, then and now, are common over much of En- gland. In contrast, the bone samples from Mary- land have only a small quantity of sheep in them. Their scarcity is likely due to two major environ- mental factors. The first is that the lands of the Chesapeake were covered with a primary forest of massive trees. Only in the few areas where native peoples had cleared some acres for farm- ing was there open land. Such nearly continuous tree cover hampered the growth of grass and oth- er ground plants, meaning there was not much food for the grass loving sheep. Proof of this has
figure 23
Comparison of ceramic vessels over time at St. John’s.
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