Food is often one of the most distinctive expressions of social, religious, cultural or ethnic groups. However, the archaeological identification of specific religious dietary practices, including the Jewish tradition of keeping kosher, associated with ritual food practices and taboos, is very rare. This is arguably one of the oldest known diets across the world and, for an observant Jew, maintaining dietary laws (known as Kashruth) is a fundamental part of everyday life. Recent excavations in the early medieval Oxford Jewish quarter yielded a remarkable assemblage of animal bones, marked by a complete absence of pig specimens and a dominance of kosher (permitted) birds, domestic fowl and goose. To our knowledge, this is the first identification of a Jewish dietary signature in British zooarchaeology, which contrasted markedly with the previous Saxon phase where pig bones were present in quantity and bird bones were barely seen. Lipid residue analysis of pottery from St Aldates showed that vessels from the possible Jewish houses were solely used to process ruminant carcass products, with an avoidance of pig product processing, correlating well with the faunal data. In contrast, lipid analysis of pottery from comparative assemblages from the previous Saxon phase at the site and a contemporaneous site in the city, The Queen’s College, shows that the majority of these vessels appear to have been used to process mixtures of both ruminant and non-ruminant (pig) products. Here, the combination of organic residue analysis, site excavation and animal and fish bone evidence was consistent with the presence of Jewish houses in eleventh- and twelfth-century St Aldates, Oxford, hitherto only suspected through documentary information. This is the first identification of specific religious dietary practices using lipid residue analysis, verifying that, at least 800 years ago, medieval Jewish Oxford communities practised dietary laws known as Kashruth.

食物通常是社会，宗教，文化或种族群体最鲜明的表现形式之一。但是，很少有特定宗教饮食习惯的考古学鉴定，包括犹太人保持犹太洁食的传统以及与饮食习惯和禁忌有关的东西。这可以说是世界上最古老的饮食之一，对于一个虔诚的犹太人来说，保持饮食规律（被称为Kashruth）是日常生活的基本组成部分。中世纪早期牛津犹太区的最近发掘产生了令人瞩目的动物骨头组合，其特征是完全没有猪标本，并且具有犹太教的统治地位（允许的）鸟类，家禽和鹅。据我们所知，这是英国动物考古学中首次发现犹太人的饮食特征，这与之前的撒克逊人时期形成鲜明对比，当时的撒克逊人时期大量存在猪骨头，几乎看不到鸟骨头。对圣阿勒达特人的陶器的脂质残留物分析表明，可能的犹太房屋中的船只仅用于加工反刍动物的products体产品，避免了猪产品的加工，因此与动物数据具有很好的相关性。相比之下，对女王/王后学院旧址和同一时期萨克森时期前期的比较组合中的陶器进行的脂质分析表明，这些容器中的大多数似乎已用于处理反刍动物和非反刍动物的混合物。反刍动物（猪）产品。这里，有机残留物分析，现场挖掘以及动物和鱼骨证据的结合与迄今仅通过文献资料才怀疑的在牛津的11世纪和12世纪的St Aldates的犹太房屋的存在是一致的。这是首次使用脂质残留物分析方法来确定特定的宗教饮食习惯，这证明至少在800年前，中世纪的牛津犹太人社区实行了被称为Kashruth的饮食规律。