Bronze Age Meat Technology in the Salzberg Valley

The analyses of an animal bone find deposit by Erich Pucher showed a predominance of pork bones. Missing parts such as the the spine, the pelvic and the ribs and especially the skulls in coexistence to the dominance of meaty parts of the extremity exclude a slaughter on site. A breeding of pigs on the Salzberg can be excluded because finds show almost no juvenile or female animals, but a dominance of animals in the perfect slaughtering age. All observations lead to a well organised delivery of specially prepared meat packs. The find of big numbers of lower jaws has to be seen in this context. They could have served as a kind of handle for the meat pack. The whole zoological record favours a certain archaic cutting method which has survived in some areas in the eastern Alps. With this method the pig is placed belly down and opened from the back. The internal organs as well as the spine, the pelvic, the ribs and the skull of the butchered pig are removed this way. Ethnologic research and a series of practical experiments have confirmed the feasibility of this method. The proximity of the find to sunken logwall structures of the same period suggest a causal connection and lead to the assumption, that these structures have been used as curing basins to make the meat durable. To achieve this, the delivered meat has been put into the basins and covered with rocksalt from the mine. Two of the previous numerous structures were examined closer and documented. They were discovered and unearthed in 1877 and 1939 and multiply published in scientific literature, but no final conclusions were made. These are now followed up by Fritz Eckart Barth. He also has made the assumption that the cured meat was not the final product. The micro climate in the prehistoric mine - smoke and salt rich air, constant temperature and a strong draft - would have been perfect to produce cured and smoked ham and bacon of outstanding quality and durability. Also this hypotheses was supported by numerous experiments. It is very likely that the big amount of incidental bones were used in some way. Usually you would expect to find the bones smashed in order to get the bone marrow, but this was not the case. At the excavation the occupation layer showed clay pots with a high content of graphite next to animal bones. This supports the theory that the bones were used for the production of pocket soup, as it was common until the 19th century. There meat and the bones were boiled and cooked into a gelling mass and the thick jelly was subsequently dried. Robert Seemann () and Franz Brandstätter analysed a phenomenon - the alteration of copper to covellite - which might be linked to the use of the logwall structures. This copper-sulphide coating on copper and bronze objects occur only under certain environmental conditions and with an abundant supply of sulphur. This poses the question if the reason could lie in the use of the the logwall structures as curing basins. The natural sulphur of the meat and the environmentally controlled storing conditions in the clay rich Haselgebirge help to support this thesis. Presumably the copper and bronze objects were purposely placed in the curing basins to stop the occurring putrefaction and prolong the use of the basins.

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