What Ladies and Gentlemen Ate: The Diet and Foodways of a British Gentry Household in Seventeenth-Century Newfoundland

This paper presents results from a zooarchaeological investigation of faunal remains recovered from two seventeenth-century structures located in Ferryland, Newfoundland. Constructed sometime between 1623 and 1625, these buildings served as the residence of Sir George Calvert (the first Lord Baltimore) and later Sir David Kirke (Governor of Newfoundland) along with their families, until the colony was destroyed in 1696. The associated faunal remains are not only used to further understand the general dietary patterns and foodways of Ferryland’s early colonial inhabitants, but also to investigate the consumption patterns of the gentry and their servants who lived in these two structures. Therefore, this provides a unique opportunity to investigate the diet and foodways of a specific group of people living in seventeenth-century Newfoundland.