A dietary assessment of colonial Cape Town’s enslaved population

Linda Mbeki*, Lisette M. Kootker, Jason E. Laffoon, Gareth R. Davies, Henk Kars

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

There is a growing body of bioarchaeological research on eighteenth and nineteenth century colonial Cape Town, a significant node in the transportation networks of both the Indian and Atlantic oceanic slave trades, attempting to shed light on the lives of enslaved persons. Here, a preliminary archaeological isotopic dietary baseline for the colonial Cape is presented. It is apparent from the data that cattle tended to graze far inland from Cape Town in an arid C3-C4 to purely C4 biome. Sheep/goats grazed close to the settlement or some distance away in C3 to C3-C4 biomes. A qualitative comparison of the baseline data to that of enslaved persons at The Cape suggests that this population did not consume large amounts of marine protein as has been concluded in the past. The archaeological baseline data was utilised, in combination with published modern data, to create a quantitative dietary reconstruction of a subset of this population using a Bayesian multi-source diet mixing model (FRUITS). The reconstruction confirms that the Cape’s enslaved did not consume much marine protein but relied predominantly on terrestrial C3 plant protein.

Original languageEnglish
Article number17
Pages (from-to)1-15
Number of pages15
JournalArchaeological and Anthropological Sciences
Volume13
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 7 Jan 2021

Funding

LM was supported financially by the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust (OMT ref. 19671/02), the Van Ewijck Foundation and the National Research Foundation (NRF South Africa, grant no. 74691). GRD is funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC Synergy grant (agreement no. 319209). The authors would like to thank Prof. Alan Morris (University of Cape Town) for access to the Cobern Street collection. Heritage Western Cape is thanked for granting permission for sampling. South African Heritage Resources Agency is thanked for providing the sample export permit. The authors would further like to acknowledge Dr. Graham Avery for his assistance identifying the faunal material, Jan Bakker (University of Amsterdam) for identifying the archaeological fish specimen and Jaco Boshoff, Ethan Cottee and Gerty Thirion (IZIKO) for facilitating the sampling process. The raw modern fish data are kindly provided by Carl van der Lingen (University of Cape Town/ Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, South Africa). We are indebted to Richard van Logtestijn, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, for the prompt production of C and N isotope data. Suzan Verdegaal and Remy van Baal, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, generated the ?Capatite data. Bert Brouwenstijn is thanked for producing the map.

FundersFunder number
Carl van der Lingen
FP7/2007
National Research Foundation
Van Ewijck Foundation
Seventh Framework Programme319209
European Research Council
National Research Foundation74691
Seventh Framework Programme
University of Cape Town
Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust19671/02
Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

    Keywords

    • Cape colonial diet
    • Dietary assessment
    • Dutch East India Company
    • Enslaved persons
    • FRUITS

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