So what did we eat before we had spuds?

EXOTIC foods like turkeys, pineapples and artichokes were eaten by Ireland’s cultured classes in the 16th and 17th centuries – but a new study is set to forensically examine the diet of the masses 500 years ago.

The European Research Council has awarded funding of €1.5million to unearth details of early Irish diet in the first study of its kind.

Dr Susan Flavin of Anglia Ruskin University, who is leading the fiveyear project, said she is hoping to show what was on Irish dinner tables before the arrival of the potato in Ireland.

She said: ‘There weren’t any potatoes in Ireland in the 16th century.

‘I think the focus on the potato, and famine, even though obviously we should focus on the Famine, means that we haven’t actually studied Irish diet beforehand. We have all these assumptions that people were malnourished because they all ate the same thing but there is no evidence for that because there has never been an academic study of what people ate.’

The research project will bring together historians, archaeologists and scientists to investigate the daily diet of a nation at a level of detail never before undertaken in Europe. Dr Flavin, senior lecturer in early modern history at the UK-based Anglia Ruskin University, said Ireland’s upper classes has a surprisingly rich diet in the 16th and 17th centuries.

‘Foreign luxuries like sugar, turkeys, pineapples and artichokes found their way into the homes of the elite. Those are things that turn up in the household accounts of Dublin Castle and the Earl of Cork,’ she said.

‘We don’t know if diet was that exotic beyond that level. We also know that at the lower levels of society the European fashion for hopped beer, and with it continental drinking rituals, was embraced by both men and women.

‘There is a perception that Ireland remained isolated from the major dietary changes that occurred across early modern Europe, but my research suggests a much more complex and integrated picture.’

At present, records from what the stonemasons ate in Christchurch in Dublin are the only indication of what lower classes ate in Ireland during those two centuries. ‘They ate lots and lots of egg, tongue, scallions and peas and beans,’ said Dr Flavin, who authored the book, Consumption And Culture In Sixteenth Century Ireland.

‘We know what sorts of foods but we don’t know how they are eaten and if certain parts of the population had better diets than others.

‘We are going to look at if people in particular regions ate more or less oats, or if there was a difference in the amount of fish, meat and dairy eaten in different parts of the country.’

Human teeth and bones from the time period will be forensically examined to see what the general population were eating.

Dr Flavin, who will be supported by academics from University College Dublin, the Institute of Technology Sligo, Durham University and the University of Bristol, said the team would use forensic techniques on human remains in the study.

Archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, isotope and organic residue analysis experts, will test pottery and bone to build a detailed picture of the Irish diet and its likely effects at an individual level.

A database will also be developed to map the archaeological and dietary evidence across different regions of Ireland and different social contexts.

Human teeth will be examined