The inland town of Aalst is located on the banks of the River Dender, which is part of the Scheldt basin that drains the major part of Flanders, the northern part of Belgium. In an attempt to look for diachronic trends in fish consumption, ichthyological remains from 34 stratigraphic units, derived from seven different sites within the town, are compared, spanning the period from the twelfth to the end of the eighteenth century AD. It was hypothesised that for the medieval and postmedieval periods, the relative frequencies of the various taxa would reflect the historically established development of marine fish consumption and the gradual decline of freshwater fish exploitation due to overfishing and pollution of local freshwater habitats. While it was taken into account that factors such as social position and purchasing power will have influenced the spectrum of fish consumed, the results show that there is an unexpected large inter- and even intra-site variation, even within a restricted time period, patterns difficult to explain and hampering most interpretations. Considering diachronic comparison of the fish assemblages, this inevitably raises the question whether new insights will be easier to gain from wider generalisation or from going into greater interpretational detail.

内陆城镇阿尔斯特位于丹德尔河岸边，丹德尔河是斯海尔德盆地的一部分，该盆地为比利时北部法兰德斯的主要地区排水。为了寻找鱼类消费的历时趋势，对来自该镇七个不同地点的 34 个地层单位的鱼类遗骸进行了比较，时间跨度从公元 12 世纪到 18 世纪末。假设在中世纪和后中世纪时期，各种分类群的相对频率将反映历史上确立的海洋鱼类消费发展以及由于过度捕捞和当地淡水栖息地污染导致淡水鱼开发逐渐减少。虽然考虑到社会地位和购买力等因素会影响食用鱼类的范围，但结果表明，即使在有限的时间段内，也存在意外的大的站点间甚至站点内的变化，模式难以解释并妨碍大多数解释。考虑到鱼类组合的历时比较，这不可避免地提出了一个问题，新的见解是否更容易从更广泛的概括或更深入的解释细节中获得。