A Very Brief Introduction Into How I Came Up With the Experiment:
A few months ago I was excavating a medieval village, dating to c. 12th-15th century, in lieu of further building work starting there. Preliminary work carried out at the site before excavations started indicated that the current village was a lot bigger in the medieval period before shrinking to its current size, having also had a manor house, which is no longer standing. The modern village now consists of a church and a small number of houses along a main road surrounded by fields used for growing crops and rearing animals. The excavation went on to reveal features such as building foundations, field boundaries and a lime quarry with nearby kilns, alongside plenty of pottery and a range of animal bones and teeth. What these finds reflect is how the site was used, economic occupation, and animal rearing and consumption.
Some of the animal bones found showed cut marks indicating that some butchery was happening on site (Figure 1). This is to be expected, as animals often formed part of the diet to some extent. Research suggests that butchering of carcasses produces distinctive assemblages, before cooking and consumption take over and produce their own distinct pattern of bone deposition (O’Connor 1993). With cattle and sheep, it has often been assumed by researchers that, due to the low quality of the meat, heads and feet would be dumped near the site where they were initially butchered. Excavations at a 13th century Axe Bridge, in Exeter, have shown deposits of horns and feet bones near riverside muds where other refuse would also have been dumped (Levitan 1987, O’Connor 2004). Analysis of the site is still ongoing with the completion of the excavation in terms of the types of animal bones present and their distribution across the site so it is uncertain whether similar patterns will be seen here too.
Figure 1 showing butchery marks near the articular end (left on the photo). The fine nature of the cut mark indicates that a knife was used to remove as much meat as possible from the bone (Maltby 1989).
However, what struck me at the time when I was working on the site, was the presence of individual teeth separated from mandibles and maxillae, or a small clump of teeth attached to a small fragment of jaw. Research at the time comparing them to known samples from other excavations suggested that at least some of them came from pigs. Considering that a pig’s head contains a lot more meat and fat compared to sheep for example, it formed the basis of a number of recipes which became more widely accessible with the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. One such example was Gervase Markham’s book on housewifery advising women on the skills and knowledge required to make a good housewife for example gives multiple recipes using livers, feet, blood, udders and heads of various animals including calves, hogs and lambs. He provides diagrams on how to dissect carcasses for cooking, including one for a pig, which shows that the head provided three separate cuts of meat that should be used elsewhere- the full head, the cheeks and the ears (Figure 2). Markham then goes on to explain how to roast a pig over a spit on a fire. No indication is made of removing the head beforehand, instead talking about partly cooking the pig to be able to remove the hair and skin easier, leaving behind the rest of the meat and fat (Markham 1568- 1637). Paintings from the time period also show a whole roasted pig or just its head served on a platter with an apple in its mouth. Parts of the pig’s head such as the cheeks are still used to make stews and casseroles, with the whole head can be used in making brawn or potted meat. Admittedly I have never come across anyone in England that would use the whole head and have noticed that eating it does not appeal to many, unless they come from a similar background to me where it is still usual to use an entire animal when cooking. I have fond memories from when I was still living in Bulgaria of the festival-like atmosphere in winter when my family butchered a whole pig and cooked the ears on the barbeque plainly seasoned with salt and pepper. It was one of the very first things to get cooked to keep everyone going, and consumed with alcohol by the adults.
Figure 2 showing how a pig would have been butchered for use. Numbers 2,3 and 4 show that the head was cut off at the neck with the ears and cheeks also removed.
Knowing that a pig’s head could and was prepared to be consumed led me to consider whether the processes utilized in its preparation and consumption could have led to loosening of individual teeth, or even the break away of small clumps of teeth, and their release into the soil to be found in the archaeological record. I approached my local butcher to order a pig’s head and conduct my own experiment, with the specific aim of testing whether cooking, and in particular boiling, a whole pig’s head will loosen and dislodge any teeth. Boiling the head instead of roasting, would create movement, with water circulation moving the bones around to create conditions that may result in dislodging teeth.
How did I cook the head?
After doing some research on how to cook the head, I settled on adapting a recipe dating from 1602 from a book called The Tudor Kitchen: What the Tudors Ate and Drank by Terry Breverton. The recipe’s listed ingredients were 3 pigs trotters, 1 pork shoulder with the bone left in, 1.5 litres of water, 500ml white wine, 3 bay leaves, 2 quartered nutmegs and 6 cloves as the ingredients. Everything is boiled together for 3 hours until the meat is tender and falls apart easily. Once everything is cool enough to touch the meat is stripped from the bones, placed in a serving dish with the liquid strained over it, with everything left to turn into jelly. Other than the water creating movement, I would also be manually removing the flesh from the bones, further increasing the probability that at least some of the teeth would be dislodged and come off the jaw.
I ordered a whole pig’s head from the butcher at my local farm shop, collecting it the day before I planned to cook it to give myself the entire day to do so. I was presented with the whole head, which surprised me a little, as I was expecting it to come in two halves after a discussion with an ex farmer friend on current butchery methods involving cutting the entire pig in half, including the head. Getting it halved was not an issue, with the butcher using a saw to cut it in half vertically. I did not see whether any teeth were dislodged during this process as the butcher was standing in front of the head during the process. The head was then bagged up to take home.
When I was young, I saw pigs being butchered at home a few times, with a blow torch being used to singe the hair and make it easier to scrape off. I did not have access to a blow torch this time around, so I removed as much hair as I could using a sharp knife. I checked whether any teeth were missing at this stage, as the head had been sawn in half the day before. Most of the teeth appeared to still be in place, with none of the rest being particularly loose at this stage. There were some missing at the very front, indicated by fresh pits and lack of healing, located where the saw cut the jaws in half, so it is highly likely that some teeth fell out at the time of sawing.
To cook the head, I placed each half in two largest pots I had, splitting the rest of the ingredients too. As neither of the two halves fit fully in the pots, I had to cut chunks off to make each half fit and be completely submerged in the liquid. Unfortunately, neither of my pots were big enough so I ensured the boned parts were turned over regularly to ensure everything is cooked through fully. This had the advantage of further agitating the meat and bones to create further movement that may dislodge teeth. Both halves were then slowly simmered for 3 hours before turning off the heat, straining the liquid into a large, clean bowl and removing the meat from the bones.
Results of cooking experiment
After I drained the meat and bones through a sieve, I examined the teeth before removing any of the meat. None had fallen out during the cooking process as all were still in place within the jaw. I did not see any within the sieve once I had removed the meat out. I used my fingers to try and move the teeth within the jaws to see if any had been loose. Some did move, this was not enough for me to be able to pull them out of their sockets manually using force. The gentle rolling motion of boiling liquid would not have been able to do so either.
Once the meat was cool enough to handle, I removed all the flesh from the bones using my fingers. No teeth fell out at this stage, remaining firmly held in their sockets. Once all flesh had been removed from the head and jaws, I placed the bones bag in the pots and covered them with water to make stock. Now that the protection and cushioning provided by the flesh was no longer there, I wanted to see if further movement of the bones and liquid would have a further effect on the teeth. While the bones were better submerged in water this time, the subsequent two hour boil resulted in no loss of teeth.
Discussion
Overall, my experiment on establishing if cooking can separate the teeth from the jaws of a pig demonstrated that this was not enough to release individual teeth or small clumps of them within the soil. A range of other factors acting on the bone subsequent to their disposal after cooking would have had a bigger impact. It is a complex issue and I aim to go into some of these factors below to shed some light on what else could have happened.
Pigs lend themselves easily to being kept in a backyard, with household slaughtering continuing into fairly recent times (O’Connor 2017) within the UK. From personal experience, keeping pigs still happens elsewhere in eastern Europe as they are cheap to look after, being able to eat a wide variety of food stuffs, including leftovers that would normally be thrown away. They fatten easily and provide a huge amount of meat once slaughtered with everything from the skin to the intestines being consumed, either fresh or preserved to last the winter. The bones themselves could and often were used in earlier periods of history to make tools and everyday objects like pins, tool handles, combs etc. Once the bone was used in such a way, it is difficult to assign to a specific species of animal (O’Connor 2017). Following on from this, the teeth would have had very little nutritional use or value for tool making, and would have been removed and disposed of when the maxilla or mandible were used for something else. Those bones that did end up being disposed of in refuse pits when they ceased being useful, would have been accessible to other animals, such as dogs and foxes, that scavenge for food with any unused remains redeposited elsewhere (Brain 1967, 1969 & Stallibrass 1990). Dogs were useful animals to keep at the time with foxes being very adaptable, especially in gaining access to easily accessible food in refuse collection areas. Both animals would consume bones, often moving them elsewhere to eat. Any unwanted material, as perhaps with teeth being made out of dentine and enamel and no meat or marrow attached (O’Connor 2004) may have been ignored in favour of the more desirable jaw bones. On a similar note, humans also sometimes crack bones open to expose the marrow within. My uncle, for example, chews through chicken bones to get to and and eat the marrow before disposing of the cracked remains. With bigger and thicker bones, like the jaw bones, other tools, such as meat cleavers or crushing implements, would have been used to crack them open before cooking into a broth or to make into dishes requiring gelatine. This process of course would have dislodged and separated the teeth from the rest of the jaw both individually and in small clumps of other teeth and fragments of jaw bone. Both of these examples were found at the site I was working on.
Although individual teeth may have fallen out while an animal was alive, for example as a result of dental disease, this would be difficult to confirm without more of the jaw being available for further study. Examples of these were found during the course of the excavation, which will be subject to further analysis by animal bone specialists, who will be able to confirm the species of animal and if disease was indeed present. Even in cases where the teeth were originally attached to a mandible or maxilla, the soil conditions would also have had an effect on them, resulting in separation and movement. Once a bone has been deposited on the soil, a number of physical, chemical and biological processes occur to degrade it even further. Weathering, and in particular, sunlight, begin acting on the bones, creating cracks and splits to degrade it (Tappen & Peske 1970). Bones also suffer decay within the soil, something which is complex and not well understood, with soil conditions and various bacteria and microorganisms also playing a part in degeneration. Acidic soils often result in the poor preservation of bone (White & Hannus 1983, Weiner & Bar-Yosef 1990) resulting in gradual degradation where teeth are loosened and separated. Further degeneration of bone is also dependent on the presence of other ions already in the soil that can act to dissolve it further. How far the ions are able to do this also depends on how degenerated bone is before it enters the soil (Farquarson et al 1997, Pate & Hutton 1988, Johnson 1997). Bacteria may also be responsible for destroying bone, although different ones work best in different temperatures (Davis 1997, O’Connor 2004). The porosity of the bone, i.e. how easy it is for bacteria to enter the bone and be able to react with it, would also affect its breakdown (Hedges et al 1995, Turner- Walker et al 2002). Regardless of the processes acting one bone to degrade it, once this has happened movement of animals (worms, bugs, burrowing of rabbits etc) within the soil, the development of plant root systems and ploughing arable land will move teeth around a piece of land. That will be before an excavation even begins, where use of tools like mattocks and spades can damage fragile bones and break them apart.
In short, once animal bone has ceased to be useful to humans as food or tools, scavenging, weathering, soil conditions, farming arable land and even archaeological excavations can detach teeth from their settings within the jaw.
Conclusion
To summarise the results of the experiment, butchering methods, in particular where there is a continuous backward and forward motion to cut the jaws in half vertically, is more likely to dislodge teeth, with long, slow cooking methods having no effect whatsoever. Once the carcass has been butchered and the meat has been used as food, a bunch of other factors come into play that are more likely to separate teeth from their settings within the jaw bones.
Cooking a whole head was an interesting experience in itself observing people’s expressions when they tried it for the first time. There were four food tasters on the day I served the pig’s head: myself, my other half and my parents. I was the keenest to try the final product, with my parents undecided and my other half not particularly keen on the idea from the beginning. The final product using the 1602 recipe, was a mixture of fatty and meaty parts, with the final texture being too blubbery for most. There were plenty of leftovers after we had finished eating, which I divided into two portions and froze for later use, creating two other recipes: Pig’s Head in Tomato Sauce and Pasta and Pig’s Head with Sauerkraut. These worked better, my parents and myself liking these a lot more. The fat content still did not win my other half over, who would rather not be subject to this particular experiment again, unless I use a different cut of meat minus the fat!
I include the two recipes below in case any of my readers would also like to have a go.
Pig’s Head in Tomato Sauce and Pasta
Ingredients:
1 portion pigs head in wine
2 garlic cloves grated
1 onion diced
1 cinnamon stick
1 sprig rosemary leaves removed
4/5 sprigs thyme leaves removed
1 can tomatoes
1 can boiling water
salt and pepper
1 tsp marmite
300 g dried pasta
Grated parmesan, to serve
Method: Fry the onion, garlic and cinnamon together with the pig’s head until the vegetables have started softening. Add the herbs, can of tomatoes, salt and pepper, water and marmite. Stir together to combine. Add the pasta and let everything simmer together until the pasta is cooked through. Serve with grated parmesan on top.
Pig’s Head and Sauerkraut
Ingredients:
1 portion pigs head in wine sauce
400 g chicken breast, sliced
1 cup long grain rice
540g chopped up sauerkraut
1 tsp paprika
A couple of pinches of savoury and spearmint, to taste
1 cup water
70g butter, dotted around the top
Method: In a ceramic pot or casserole dish, layer the pigs head, chicken, rice, sauerkraut, the seasoning and water. Mix everything together and add the cup of water and dot the butter on top. Cover with the lid and bake in the oven at 180 degrees C for an hour or until the rice is cooked. Keep checking to make sure it does not dry out. Serve with bread to mop up the juices.
Would I do the experiment again? Yes I would.
Ideally I would have access to a working, cooking fireplace in a period property akin to Mary Arden’s farm where I am able to use an appropriately sized cast iron pot to cook the entire pig’s head in, replicating Medieval cooking technology and methods as closely as possible during the experiment. A large enough pot would also provide enough space for the boiling liquid to move the meat around more and create better conditions for any teeth to be loosened. An open fire makes it more difficult to control the temperature with the pot having to be moved to different parts of the fireplace to do so. Moving the pot around often will affect how the meat moves and cooks within the pot. Doing the cooking this way may produce slightly different results if carried out again.
References:
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Mary Arden’s House https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/visit/mary-ardens-farm/ [Accessed on 23rd September 2021]
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