A survey is presented of archaeozoological information from medieval and postmedieval towns in the southern Low Countries (the present regions of Flanders and Brussels, in Belgium). Diachronic changes in the consumption of the three main domestic meat-suppliers (cattle, pig, sheep) in nine towns are investigated, and trends are compared among these towns. At the same time, possible geographical differences in meat consumption are traced. The observed differences in time and space are then explained as part of the economics of animal husbandry and of the interaction between town and countryside. From a methodological standpoint, this survey demonstrates that in a number of cases, information from archaeozoological contexts with varying depositional histories, often reflecting different socio-economic strata, can be combined to obtain a picture of meat consumption, and thus of the town's food provisioning, through time.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2017
As part of the energy transition, the French government is planning the construction of three offshore wind farms in Normandy (Bay of Seine and eastern part of the English Channel, north-western France) in the next years. These offshore wind farms will be integrated into an ecosystem already facing multiple anthropogenic disturbances such as maritime transport, fisheries, oyster and mussel farming, and sediment dredging. Currently no integrated, ecosystem-based study on the effects of the construction and exploitation of offshore wind farms exists, where biological approaches generally focused on the conservation of some valuable species or groups of species. Complementary trophic web modelling tools were applied to the Bay of Seine ecosystem (to the 50 km2 area covered by the wind farm) to analyse the potential impacts of benthos and fish aggregation caused by the introduction of additional hard substrates from the piles and the turbine scour protections. An Ecopath ecosystem model composed of 37 compartments, from phytoplankton to seabirds, was built to describe the situation “before” the construction of the wind farm. Then, an Ecosim projection over 30 years was performed after increasing the biomass of targeted benthic and fish compartments. Ecological Network Analysis (ENA) indices were calculated for the two periods, “before” and “after”, to compare network functioning and the overall structural properties of the food web. Our main results showed (1) that the total ecosystem activity, the overall system omnivory (proportion of generalist feeders), and the recycling increased after the construction of the wind farm; (2) that higher trophic levels such as piscivorous fish species, marine mammals, and seabirds responded positively to the aggregation of biomass on piles and turbine scour protections; and (3) a change in keystone groups after the construction towards more structuring and dominant compartments. Nonetheless, these changes could be considered as limited impacts of the wind farm installation on this coastal trophic web structure and functioning.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2017
