![]() Oysters, barnacles, clams, shrimp and other crustaceans are the preferred food the sheepshead, and much of the St. With powerful jaws, they can grab and penetrate small oysters, clams and other shellfish. In any case, the name sheepshead was commonly used by 17th-century colonists. One story is that the fish got its name because of the resemblance of its front teeth to those of sheep, who also have prominent incisors. The Sheepshead also has stout incisors in the front that look like human incisors to some extent. You can see several of these jaw bones in the picture here.īones form the Sheepshead found in the moat of Pope’s Fort, 1645-1655. Their jaws display many small circles that once held pearl like teeth with which to crush and eat their favorite food, mollusks and crustaceans. The Sheepshead has sharp spines that look like sharpened needles and can easy draw blood even after 300 years in the ground. The Sheepshead Fish (Archosargus probatocephalus)īones of this fish make up between 29% and 45% of the total identified elements from early Maryland sites. ![]() In identifying the bones, it was surprising to find that one fish overwhelmingly predominated – the Sheepshead. The bones are identified by comparing them to modern skeletons of many different species. Johns averaged 37% fish bone, and the 1640s-1650s deposit from Pope’s Fort in the Town Center yielded 34.2% fish bone. The first surprise was how prominent were fish bones in the early samples. It was a superb “time capsule” of life at St. It was dug for daub but then filled with kitchen waste from the St. ![]() Here is one of the pits while half excavated. These came from deposits in cellars and pits that spanned the 1638 to c. John’s site produced the first animal bone samples studied from seventeenth-century Maryland. Reconstructing the diet of the settlers over the 17th and 18th centuries was the focus of my doctoral dissertation back in the last century and that yielded new insights about fishing. ![]() By identifying the thousands of animal bones found on sites, it is possible to learn about many aspects of the colonial diet including fish. Was this also the case in the seventeenth century? If so, what fish were popular and how did people catch them? History provides only a few clues in answering these questions so we must turn to that other sources of evidence, the archaeological record. Fishing is a very popular activity for Marylanders today, enjoying the bounty found in the Chesapeake Bay and the rivers and streams of the state. ![]()
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