Who’s eating pork? Investigating pig breeding and consumption in Byzantine, Islamic and Norman/Aragonese Sicily (7^th-14^th c. AD)

Highlights

• Zooarchaeology of the Roman/Byzantine – Arab transition in Sicily.

• Zooarchaeology of the Arab – Norman/Aragonese transition in Sicily.

• Results from species frequencies, ageing, and biometry are contextualised.

• Impact of Islamic food prohibitions and dietary habits on local communities.

• A focused analysis on pork consumption in urban and rural sites is provided.

Abstract

This paper investigates the culture of pork consumption in Sicily by examining a number of archaeological faunal assemblages dated to chronological phases spanning from the Byzantine to the Norman/Aragonese period (7^th-14^th c. AD). Zooarchaeological analyses reveal substantial diachronic changes in the use of the main domesticates, particularly concerning pig frequencies. In the Islamic period (9^th-11^th c. AD), pig is poorly represented at urban sites; this is likely to reflect a socio-cultural acceptance of the Islamic religious precepts forbidding pork consumption. By contrast, and in continuity with the Roman and Byzantine periods, pigs are well-represented in rural settlements, thus indicating a more resilient attitude of these communities toward newly imported religious traditions. In the later Norman/Aragonese period, the frequency of pig increases at some urban sites, reflecting the fact that that pork prohibition had been lifted and that new food production and consumption practices were developed. Pig continues, however, to be almost absent at a number of urban sites and castles/fortified villages; this may suggest the persistence of Islamised communities in Sicily after the end of Islamic rule.

Introduction

For millennia Sicily’s productive lands and strategic position in the Mediterranean Basin have stimulated the interest of different powers; this holds especially true for the Middle Ages when the island became a frontier of the Arab world.

Until the early 9^th c. AD, Sicily was under Byzantine administration. In AD 827, the Arab conquest of Sicily began; troops coming from Ifrīqya (modern Tunisia and eastern Algeria) landed in Mazara del Vallo (south-western Sicily) and, after four years, they conquered Palermo, which became the capital of the island. The Arab conquest of Sicily was a rather slow and staged process. A complete conquest of the island was only achieved in AD 848 and was followed by a period of economic prosperity (Amari, 1954, Metcalfe, 2009, Chiarelli, 2011, Nef, 2013, Molinari, 2019, Molinari, 2020).

In the second half of the 11^th c. AD, the Normans started their own conquest of the island, which took thirty years to complete (CE 1061–1091). In this period, Islamic communities still made up most of the Sicilian population; however, growing religious intolerance resulted in the first mass migration of Islamic people from Sicily to North Africa. When the Norman dynasty died out, political control over Sicily passed by inheritance to the Hohenstaufen (Swabian) dynasty (CE 1198–1266); later, the island fell to the Angevin (CE 1266–1282) and the Aragonese (CE 1282–1516; Bresc, 1986, Metcalfe, 2011, Bresc, 2013). From the end of the Swabian period, Islamic objects are no longer part of the Sicilian archaeological record, indicating that Islamic cultural influence on the island was waning (Molinari 2020).

The centrality of medieval Sicily within the complex economic and political dynamics of the Mediterranean has been the subject of many archaeological and historical studies (e.g. Spatafora 2005; Molinari 2009; Arcifa 2010; Molinari, 2010a; 2010b; Nef and Prigent, 2010, Nef, 2011, Arcifa et al., 2012, Molinari, 2012, Molinari, 2013, Nef, 2013, Pezzini, 2013, Spatafora and Canzonieri, 2014, Arcifa, 2016, Mandalà, 2016, Carver et al., 2017; 2018; 2019; Molinari, 2019, Arcifa and Sgarlata, 2020). Specific categories of archaeological evidence (e.g. pottery, burials) and buildings (especially mosques) have been used as indicators of socio-cultural and economic change across the different political phases of medieval Sicily (e.g. Molinari, 1997, Bagnera and Pezzini, 2004, Di Salvo, 2004; Molinari 2009; Molinari 2010c; 2010d; Molinari, 2011, Arcifa and Bagnera, 2014, Ardizzone et al., 2014, Sacco, 2014, Ardizzone et al., 2016, Bramoullé et al., 2017, Sacco, 2018).

Conversely, animal remains have rarely been considered (but see Arcoleo and Sineo, 2014, Arcoleo, 2015, Battaglia et al., 2016, Scavone, 2016, Scavone, 2019, Aniceti, 2020, Castrorao Barba et al., 2021, Aniceti, in press).

Yet, zooarchaeological investigations can be highly informative as animal remains are often the result of food consumption, an important cultural identifier. Their potential is especially valuable in a region such as medieval Sicily, which was composed of different ethnic groups contributing to a melting pot of traditions and beliefs. The religions professed by these groups (Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Paganism) were also associated with different dietary habits. Islam and Judaism were and are still characterised by several permanent food taboos, pork avoidance being the most relevant to this study (Insoll, 2001, Kocturk, 2002, Regenstein et al., 2003, Greenfield and Bouchnick, 2011, Morales-Muñiz et al., 2011, Price, 2020). Food avoidances are also associated with Christianity, although these tend to be temporary and are usually only followed by restricted groups of people (e.g. clerics) – the only exception being the consumption of horse meat (Simoons, 1994, Lauwerier, 1999).

Considering the important economic role played by pigs in Roman and Byzantine Sicily (e.g. Scavone, 2016, Aniceti, 2020, Castrorao Barba et al., 2021; Mackinnon Unpublished report [a], Unpublished report [b], Unpublished report [c], Unpublished report [d]), a potential absence of pigs in Islamic sites cannot be ascribed to environmental constrains. Such a theory would rely on the fact that, because of their inability to sweat, pigs tend to be intolerant of high temperatures (>36 degrees Celsius), unless some water sources, mud or wooded areas are present in the vicinity (Simoons, 1994, Diener et al., 1978, Insoll, 2001). Palynological analyses from Pergusa Lake (central Sicily) have demonstrated that, despite a long period of aridity before the Arab conquest (AD 750–800) (Sadori et al. 2013), wooded areas survived in the Islamic period (Incarbona et al. 2010). These could have represented refuge areas in medieval times, favouring pig husbandry and the practice of free-range herding. Similarly, recent anthracological studies at Islamic Mazara del Vallo (south-western Sicily) have revealed the occurrence of a mosaic of different ecosystems, including thermo-xerophilous woodland (with a clear incidence of the Quercus ilex type) and Mediterranean maquis (Fiorentino et al., in press).

Since environmental factors cannot explain the potential absence of suids in Islamic assemblages, the reason is more likely to be found in the ‘social Islamisation process’¹ of the island in medieval times. Since the Byzantine period, Jewish communities also settled in Sicily; in Palermo, at the end of the 10th c. AD, they were established in an area known as Harat Al-Yahud (the Jewish quarter) (La Lumia, 1984, Vanoli, 2012, Mandalà, 2013). In Judaism, like in Islam, dietary rules include permanent food taboos, such as the prohibition of consuming pork. In addition, to be halal and kosher (‘consumable’ in Arab and Jewish respectively), animals had to be culled in a specific way. Usually, this consists in cutting the jugular vein and the esophagus of the animal with a sharp knife, in order to interrupt the flow of blood to the brain, thus producing an immediate state of unconsciousness. During the Schechita (the Jewish butchery process), the animal sciatic nerve is also removed. Because of the difficulties in removing this nerve, all hind limbs are often considered prohibited (Daróczi-Szabó 2004). The Jewish practice can be detected in the archaeological record (Lisowski 2019) more easily than Muslim butchery (Aniceti 2020). No evidence of Schechita has been detected on the kosher species (e.g. caprines, cattle) analysed from the sites discussed in this paper (Aniceti 2020).

In this paper, for the first time, the pork-taboo issue is analysed by examining a substantial number of faunal assemblages that are contextualised within their historical framework. The main aim of this research is to investigate pork production and consumption in medieval Sicily (7^th-14^th c. AD) with a specific focus on the Islamic period and placing this phenomenon within its broader husbandry and cultural context.