Acta Zoologica Cracoviensia, 45(special issue) 2002

Issue:

VOL 45(special issue) 2002

Keywords:

Birds, Medieval, Post-medieval, Poland, morphology, environment

Download PDF

Share this article:

Bird remains of Medieval and Post-Medieval coastal sites at the Southern Baltic Sea, Poland

• Daniel MAKOWIECKI
• Anne Birgitte GOTFREDSEN

Abstract:

Rescue excavations in Gdańsk and Kołobrzeg starting in the early 1990’s provided new hand collected bird remains. The present paper deals with the results of bird remains analyses of three sites from Gdańsk (12^th -18^th century) and one site from Kołobrzeg (10^th-12^th century). The most frequent bird species was domestic fowl, followed by goose, and ducks both in Gdańsk and Kołobrzeg. The list of wild species contains White-tailed Eagle, Crane and Capercaillie most frequently. Introduced species are documented from Gdańsk in the form of one bone of peafowl and several turkey remains. The Gdañsk material exhibits a decrease in the relative frequency of domestic fowl and an increase in the relative frequency of goose over time, reflecting a gradual increase in goose breeding starting in Late Medieval time. A metric analyses showed a general increase in body size of domestic fowl over time.