Page 40 - Maryland Historical Trust - Archaeology Colonial MD

figure 26
Sheep burial
found in the backyard of the St. John’s House.
special interest. In 1641, St. John’s owner John Lewger wrote to Lord Baltimore explaining that the previous winter, he had lost four sheep “Killed by Wolves.” That seems the most likely explana- tion for the condition of the ewe. Only after an active program of hunting wolves with bounties on their heads were the colonists able to gradu- ally reduce this threat. Furthermore, land clearing allowed more grass, some of English origin, to be established and pastures for both horses and sheep appeared. Due to this, the number of sheep remains seen archaeologically and in household probate inventories increase toward the end of the 17th century. Nevertheless, lamb and mutton never matched their popularity in British homes.
Bone samples from late 17th-century depos- its at St. John’s display a much different character. About two thirds of the meat came from cattle, one fifth from swine and less than 10% from wild
sources. Domestic meats totally predominate in the colonial diet. This reduced usage of wild ani- mals was initially hypothesized to be due to over- harvesting of the local populations, forcing more reliance upon domestic species. While this may be the case for deer and some small mammals, it would not have influenced migratory water- fowl or fish in the Chesapeake Bay. Analysis of samples from throughout the tidewater region show that this trend toward domestics occurred everywhere in the late 1600s and early 1700s, not just at St. John’s. Why wild food became little more than variety meat is uncertain, but it may be related to the sheer abundance of domestic an- imals that thrived in the early Chesapeake envi- ronment. Cattle, for example, grew larger in this region than in Britain and like the swine, required little care from the planters. Without doubt, meat was a larger element of the colonial diet than in England, and this nutritional difference may be a reason that militia in the colonies were taller than their British counterparts by the 18th century.17
One other aspect of the work at St. John’s regarding food and the environment is of note — oysters. This species had been consumed for thousands of years by Chesapeake Indians, and English colonists continued eating them. But ar- chaeologists had given little attention to the shells, other than to record their presence and note that the people ate oysters. Shells were routinely dis- carded during excavations. Several archaeologists at St. John’s in 1973, including Michael Smolek and myself, approached the director, Garry Stone, with the suggestion that the shells might have some analytic value in the future and samples
figure 27
Meat estimates for major animals by time period for the St. John’s site.
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