User:Akenefick/sandbox



A fish wheel, also known as a salmon wheel, is a device situated in rivers for catching fish which looks and operates like a watermill. However, in addition to paddles, a fish wheel is outfitted with wire baskets designed to catch and carry fish from the water and into a nearby holding tank. The current of the river presses against the submerged paddles and rotates the wheel, passing the baskets through the water where they intercept fish that are swimming or drifting. Naturally a strong current is most effective in spinning the wheel, so fish wheels are typically situated in shallow rivers with brisk currents, close to rapids, or waterfalls. The baskets are built at an outward-facing slant with an open end so the fish slide out of the opening and into the holding tank where they await collection. Yield is increased if fish swimming upstream are channeled toward the wheel by weirs.

Fish wheels were used on the Columbia River in Oregon by large commercial operations in the early twentieth century, until were banned by the U.S. government for their contribution to destroying the salmon population (see below). The wheel's prevalent use in catching salmon, (in particular, salmon species Chinook, Chum, Coho, Sockeye, and Pink) and other anadromous species of fish, has given fish wheels their second name as salmon wheels. Although salmon were prioritized by commercial fishers and Indigenous peoples (albeit for different reasons,) other fish such as steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), ooligan (Thaleichthys pacificus), and lamprey (Lampetra tridentata) were also considered valuable catch. While the fish wheel is best known for its presence on the Northwestern coast of North America, there is debate whether the technology arrived via Asian migrants who had come to labor in the gold fields, by Scottish and Russian migrants, or was a potentially Scandinavian invention sometime during the turn of the twentieth century.

The advent of fish wheel technology in the early twentieth century also drew interest from various First Nations communities of Northwestern North America, as well as dog-sledders. Ultimately, the efficacy of the wheel proved an excellent means of subsistence for hungry sled dogs and humans alike, and began to draw communities toward fertile rivers where they started using wheels to feed themselves. This changed routine hunting grounds for many communities including some Northern Athabaskan First Nations (such as Haida and Tlingit), who began to place more emphasis on fishing than hunting.

Since this time, despite being a foreign technology, the fish wheel has become a culturally embedded tool for self-subsisting communities and Indigenous peoples of the Northwestern area of North America; the latter of whom have incorporated it in some ways with their traditional ecological knowledge. As well, the fish wheels of today are enjoying a sort of beneficial renaissance wherein strict rules and regulations from both Canada and the United States have been instituted to restrict them in commercial uses, and instead, are encouraged as a means to feed small off-grid communities, and in conservation efforts.

Salmon Significance in Northwestern North America
The implementation of fish wheels in the Pacific Northwest at the dawn of the twentieth century made salmon a lucrative commodity for new settlers, but they also significantly contributed to the destruction of various salmon populations along the coast. This not only implicated the environmental ecology of the area, but was also greatly problematic for the surrounding Indigenous communities, as salmon have long been a culturally embedded food and species for such First Nations peoples for many reasons that can be seen in their traditions of smoking salmon meat, to clothing used in rituals, and the prominent featuring of salmon in First Nations art. The unique life cycle of salmon—wherein the fish migrate from the ocean up rivers to spawn and die, and whose spawn repeats the cycle by returning to the ocean to mature —made for an interesting source of food, in particular because different species of salmon spawn at different times during the year, and in different rivers. Therefore, as a food not omnipresent throughout the year, the coming of new salmon journeying up river to spawn was a celebration. Interestingly, despite the variance of cultural traditions between the many coastal tribes of the Northwest, this celebration, known as the First Salmon Ceremony, is a ceremony that all such communities share in common, and all rejoice in the return of the salmon. Such a dependence on the return of these fish made Indigenous communities of the coast sensitive to the healthy procreation of journeying salmon, and in this way, just as the return of salmon heralded a season of harvest, it also cautioned fishermen to reap only a selective number, so there was enough salmon left to spawn, and ultimately, return the following year. This model of seasonal adherence and moderation made for a dependably renewable food source, and a naturally sustainable relationship between people and salmon. With this in mind, Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Indigenous peoples is increasingly becoming an important topic of conversation in addressing policy-related issues of environmental sustainability. Industrialized fishing brought about by Euro-American settlers in the late nineteenth century not only greatly disturbed the food security of local Indigenous communities, but was interpreted by these communities as both disrespectful to the salmon, and also their way of life. This, among many other things, contributed to tensions between Indigenous, and non-Indigenous communities of the Northwest.

The Columbia River, Oregon
The abundance of salmon in the Columbia River of Oregon state made the area popular to Euro-American traders and business-people in the 19th century, those whom quickly anchored a profitable business of trade with Indigenous communities, river boats, and steamships traveling along the Pacific coast. However, the landscape of trade changed drastically with the boom of the industrial revolution, and the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad to Oregon in 1883. The revolution also brought with it new technologies in food preservation—canning, in particular—and consequently, new types of entrepreneurs who saw opportunity in the Columbia River as grounds to establish salmon canneries. These companies placed their factories strategically at the beginning of the salmon's upstream migration, when the fish were not yet weakened and wounded from their journey. This, however, meant for captured salmon that had yet to spawn, which would prove greatly injurious to the population. By the end of the 1880s, thirty canning companies had been erected, and brought with them new harvesting techniques, including shore seining, gillnets, and fish wheels. The wheels, in particular, were tremendously effective in the churning waters of the Columbia. One fish wheel, for example, recorded a catch of 227,000 pounds of salmon in one day in 1894. By 1900, seventy-six fish wheels had been erected between the Cascades, Celilo Falls, and the Dalles Rapids. 1911 marked the highest year of harvest at forty-seven million pounds of fish, but also drew attention to a rapidly declining salmon population. The efficacy of fish wheels made them unpopular with other fishers on the Columbia, including Indigenous communities dispossessed of their traditional hunting grounds, downriver gillnetters, and even sport fishers who found the wheels ignoble. Contrariwise, the fish wheel operators pointed blame at the gillnetting fleets for being responsible for destroying the salmon population. The argument grew heated and drew the attention of conservationists and government officials who soon joined the conversation, and eventually legislation to limit salmon harvest was enacted, including restrictions on gillnets, and the prohibition of fish wheels, which were officially outlawed in Oregon by 1926 and in Washington in 1934.

The legal battle entitled United States v. Winans exemplifies the climate of Indigenous relationships with the state at the time, in regards to land and water dispossession by the encroaching establishment of such fishing industries. The United States had recently entered into several treaties with certain First Nations tribes of the Pacific Northwest wherein land occupied by the First Nations was taken by the state in exchange for monetary compensation and small land reserves ("reservations") where said tribal communities were guaranteed the security of practicing their cultural traditions—including hunting and fishing. With these treaties newly in place, fishing and canning companies were free to erect their industries on what was once Indigenous land. Brothers Lineas and Audubon Winans, for example, established a state-licensed fish wheel operation near Celilo Falls in the 1890s, which devastated the local salmon run that was otherwise of critical importance to tribes situated downstream, such as as the Umatilla, Yakama and Nez Perce peoples. Likewise, under the protection of these newly-established treaties, the Winans brothers' operation also legally and forcibly prohibited passage to these Indigenous peoples to their traditional fishing grounds. The battle was fought by First Nations peoples against the state to reinstate rights to their lands whereupon the Washington State Court ruled for the Winans on the basis of their exclusive rights to private property. In response, the Indigenous community brought suit to enjoin the brothers' operation to cease using their fish wheel.

Alaska and Yukon
In 1949, a man running a fish wheel some twenty miles south of Fort Yukon sparked a small gold rush when he discovered pea-sized nuggets of gold caught in the baskets of the wheel, and a local radio station caught the news. Bush aircraft brought many prospectors who set up a camp along eight miles of the Yukon river, which included a small coffee shop and a clothing store, and set about panning the river bed. Unfortunately, no gold was found, and all but two of the initial nuggets were discovered to be brass. Those two that were gold were suspected to have belonged to the remains of an old prospector's cache, and were reported to have been only worth two dollars.

Alaska and Yukon
In Alaska and the Yukon Territory, the harvest of salmon is important for self-subsisting communities and individuals for both people and dog sled teams. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game will allocate permits for the use of fish wheels in such personal circumstances, but under strict rules and regulations, and only in specific areas of the Chitina and Copper rivers. Given these rivers traverse between the countries of Canada and The United States, state-sanctioned rules and regulations between Alaska and the Yukon are similar. Additionally, given the precarious situation of the local salmon population and its importance to Indigenous communities, community-driven initiatives like the Yukon River Panel offer critical suggestions to government policy-makers in both countries that consider the cultural relevance of salmon, and the importance in conserving their species. For example, one of many initiatives driven forward by this panel is a program for First Nations youth that involves, among many other traditional interactions with salmon, instruction in operating a fish wheel.

Wildlife Conservation
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game currently employs nine fish wheels situated along the Yukon River to help quantify the population of migrating salmon species, as does the Nisga'a Fisheries Board, with wheels in the Nass River of British Columbia. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife also uses fish wheels for salmon stock assessment, and does not permit the use of them for commercial gain. However, multiple studies have found that this method of live-capture, where the fish were kept for periods of time in holding tanks, then physically handled in marking procedures, initiated stress in released specimens, and ultimately impeded their ability to swim upstream. In an effort to mitigate the stress induced in these procedures, from 2001 to 2003, researchers tested the implementation of an event-triggered video-recording system on fish wheels in Alaska's Yukon River drainage. In these systems, captured fish would trigger a camera shutter which would document every fish that passed through the wheel thereby removing the need for human handling. In these experiments, this method also demonstrated an improvement in fish-counting accuracy, however the cost of the video-recording equipment makes implementation on a large scale restrictive.

Mesolithic Period (8000–4000 BCE)
Prior to the Neolithic period in Ireland and advances in farming technology, archeological evidence such as the discovery of of stone tools, bone assemblages, archeobotanical evidence, isotopic analysis of human skeletal remains, and dental erosion on the remains of human teeth indicate the Mesolithic Irish were a hunter-gatherer society that ate a diet of varied floral, and faunal sources. Discoveries of food byproducts such as bone fragments and sea shells are key indicators toward the dietary habits of the Mesolithic Irish, as immediate food products have long-since decomposed —especially in the presence of Ireland's largely acidic soils. However, what evidence of food has been found, together with discoveries of Mesolithic food-harvesting tools and the relationship of local environments with settlement sites, provides an understanding of may have eaten. Settlement sites, in particular, have supported notable insight into the dietary habits of the Mesolithic Irish. For example, the proximity of Mesolithic settlements to water systems point to groups or individuals who ate marine species. Indeed, the predominant location of Mesolithic Irish settlements are close to water systems, and therefore suggests a diet rich in vegetation, marine life, and smaller mammals, as distinct from their British and Native American contemporaries whose settlements further inland influenced a diet more substantive with meat. For example, deer features minimally in archeological discoveries, thought to be particularly due to the infrequent presence of deer along coastal regions, bays, and estuaries. The deliberate positioning of such settlements also suggests a cultural preference for particular foods. Also unique to settlements positioned close to water systems are large mounds of bivalve shells known as middens, which provide concrete evidence that shellfish played a role in the dietary practices of the Mesolithic Irish. Shell middens are frequent Mesolithic discoveries in Ireland, which for their majority, were predominantly composed of oyster and limpet shells. The coastal town name of Sligo (in Irish Sligeach) which means "abounding in shells," references the area's historic plenitude of shellfish in the river and its estuary, as well as the middens common to the area. Additionally, Ireland's position as an island and thus unique composition of biodiversity and geography suggests its Mesolithic people enjoyed a somewhat dissimilar diet than their proximal contemporaries. For example, prehistoric Ireland's paucity of small mammals, and its absences of species important to other Mesolithic communities, such as red deer, wild cow, and elk  would have contributed to unique dietary habits and nutritional standards. Indeed, the persistent evidence of certain species, such as boar in contrast with the scarcity and/or uncooked nature of other animal remains such as bear and birds of prey (remains of which have been found in Mesolithic bone assemblages, but are otherwise absent in in isotopic analysis of human bones ) suggests a particular understanding of certain animals as sources of food, others that served symbolic or medicinal purposes (as they were in other parts of Europe ), while others still, such as dog, which are not supposed to have been consumed at all.

Thanks to Ireland's geography and the locations of Mesolithic settlements, the variety of food sources available to the Mesolithic Irish was consequently unique. Outside of boar, large predators including the wolf, the brown bear, and lynx, are scarce in archeological assemblages, and understood to have been generally avoided as a source of food, as they were in most contemporary Mesolithic Europe. Likewise, while cereals were unlikely to have been yet consumed due to the processing required to make them digestible, fungi, roots, leaves, stems, flowers, nuts, seeds, berries and fruits were all otherwise simple to harvest and eat, and would have substantiated the Mesolithic diet with nutritional variety and a diversity of flavour. This in combination with the prevalence of settlements along waterways suggests key dietary staples of the Mesolithic Irish were marine and floral sources of food. Additionally, that boar was brought to Ireland by early Mesolithic colonists and features frequently in archeological assemblages of faunal bones, points to another noteworthy staple in the Mesolithic Irish diet. Despite the scarcity of plant-based artifacts in light of Ireland's wet weather and acidic soil, biochemical assessments of human bone have been used to provide evidence for a variety of floral sources, including crowberries, raspberries, blackberries, water-lily seeds, tubers, apples, and hazelnuts. The sizable presence of hazelnuts at many archeological assemblages in both Mesolithic Ireland and Britain suggest the nut was important, and may have even been used as a form of currency, as acorns were for Native Americans of California during the same period. There is indication that these nuts, in particular, were stored underground during the winter months. Elm bark is also suspected to have been a prized source of food for being particularly rich in nutrients, as well as featuring in the diets of other northern Mesolithic European communities, the Scandinavian in particular. However, despite Ireland's coastal geography, there is no evidence of seaweed collection among the Mesolithic Irish in archeological remains, as well as little evidence of deep-water ocean species. However the presence of shellfish and in-shore fish—particularly salmonids—in the Irish Mesolithic diet is impressive. The absence of evidence for seal is a notable contrast with Mesolithic Scotland, where archeological sites demonstrate the significant exploitation of seals.

Though the Mesolithic Irish were a hunter-gatherer people, such assemblages as middens, discoveries of lithic tools and technologies, and seasonal organization of animal remains alludes to understandings of environmental management to meet subsistence needs. For example, the transportation and management of boar through selective hunting and culling techniques suggests a food source potentially purposefully semi-domesticated, as well as a species important to the Mesolithic communities of Ireland. Research into the composition of middens, as well, suggests that these Irish communities understood tidal behaviours, and optimal harvest periods for respective marine species. Different species of shellfish require different environmental conditions, such as intertidal flats for mussels and cockles, and rocky shorelines for limpets so different harvesting strategies would have been required harvest and profit from different varieties of shellfish. As well, that freshwater, coastal, and in-shore marine life features greater than deep-sea species in archeological evidence of the Irish Mesolithic diet inherently points to the use of in-shore fishing techniques such as traps and nets, in lieu of off-shore or deep-sea hunting techniques. The recovery of stone tools in specific sites and vogue technologies of the period such as blade-and-flake likewise suggests their roles in the construction and maintenance of basic food procurement technologies like fish traps. There is even some suggestion of the Mesolithic Irish being actively engaged in land snail farming.

It is also worth noting the fundamentally seasonal nature of the Mesolithic diet and how various seasonally-conscripted food-gathering activities would have affected the time and social organization of the Mesolithic Irish during the year. Such activities would have consisted the hunting and foraging of seasonal plants and animals when they were at their most abundant, as well as such storage-related activities such as preserving meat and seafood through smoking, and caching nuts and seeds. As various plants are fertile only biannually, and the migratory patterns of animals can change over time , these food-gathering activities would have been significantly varied and as such, would have required attention and understanding to environmental and animal behaviours.

While most foods would have been eaten raw and out-of-hand, archeological evidence has provided insight into Mesolithic food processing techniques, such as crude forms of butchery, the soaking of seeds , and thermal processing to directly heat or smoke foods. At a site in Kilnatierney where ash, burnt shells, fish, and pig bones were discovered in a dug-out depression, the diminutive size of the fish bones suggests they were cooked on skewers or directly on hot rocks. The presence of burnt mounds of stones indicate cooking methods likely focused on direct heating methods such as roasting on spits constructed on tripods over open flames, and in earthen hearths.

Neolithic Period (4000-2500 BCE)
Understanding the details about the the foodways of the prehistoric Irish can be difficult to capture, especially given the island's temperate climate and prevalence of wet, acidic soils that are quick to erode organic material , but thanks to extensive evaluation of biochemical and isotopic signatures recovered from human bone and pottery sherds, there is insight into Neolithic dietary habits. Biomarkers such as lipid and plant residues preserved in the clay matrix of pottery vessels observe a diversity of plant- and animal-life in the diet of the Neolithic Irish, including berries, leafy vegetables, tubers, legumes, meats, seafoods, and nuts. These in combination with the agricultural developments of the Neolithic period such as field systems, farming tools, and animal husbandry begin to describe the dramatic changes in the dietary practices and eating behaviours of the prehistoric Irish people, distinct from their Mesolithic ancestors.

The cultivation and processing of cereals, as well as the maintenance of livestock in farming scenarios saw the consumption new significant consumption of new foods, particularly emmer wheat, barley, beef, pig, and goat, which coincided a steep decline in the consumption of marine life. Emmer wheat was assumed to be a preferred crop for its resilience to wet Irish weather and soil, but evidence of other cereals such as rye, einkorn and barley have been recovered, albeit at a lesser degree. Sugarcane, maize, sorghum, and dryland grasses were introduced to Ireland in only recent centuries, and were therefore absent from the diet of Neolithic Irish. Likewise, although the remains of oat were discovered, their minimal quantity at sites indicate that it was a wild plant, and not yet cultivated. New domestic livestock including beef and sheep are understood to have been brought to the island from continental Europe, in addition to red deer, which marked new and increasingly significant species in the Irish diet. For example, evidence of enclosures couching large assemblages of charred cattle bones suggests the cooking and consumption of large quantities of beef, potentially during large communal gatherings. As they were during the Mesolithic period, hazelnuts were still prevalent discoveries at many Neolithic sites, though their presence declines toward the Bronze Age.

The introduction of agricultural management greatly influenced new dietary staples of the Irish communities. While attention on farming crops witnessed a decline in the consumption of wild forage, changes in the landscape also offered new foraging opportunities for wild plant-life which would have thrived along the edges of cleared agricultural land. While radiocarbon dating of Neolithic fish nets and weirs suggests the consumption of marine life, what archeological evidence of food has been recovered points to a sharp decline in the consumption of aquatic species, converse to the notable consumption of marine life by the Mesolithic Irish. The advancements of farming during the Neolithic period are assumed to have influenced this decline, in tandem with the heightened consumption of farmed animals, cereals, and the very influential introduction of dairying , which coincided similar advancements in other Neolithic societies. Approaches to agriculture, like those elsewhere across northwestern Europe, were focused on long-term plot management rather than rotational methods, and implemented manure as fertilizer. The emergence of new technologies in cooking, water, and waste management is evidenced by an increasing frequency of crescent-shaped mounds of burnt stones, called fulachtaí fia in Irish, that are understood to be the remnants of burning and/or cooking sites. Yet, despite all such advancements, there was a noticeable absence in the presence of cutlery, cooking, or other eating implements among recovered archeological artifacts.

Bronze Age (2000-500 BCE)
It is understood that both direct- and indirect cooking methods were important features of Irish cuisine during the Bronze Age (2000—600BCE). The former used open fires to cook foods supported by ceramic vessels, spits, or surface griddles, while the latter used methods to heat surrounding mediums of earth, air, or water to cook foods within. Radiocarbon dating of crescent-shaped mounds of burnt stones, called fulachtaí fia in Irish, are understood to be the remnants of cooking sites in Ireland that emerged in the early Neolithic Period but came to prominence during the Bronze Age. While the word fulacht in medieval texts refers to the direct cooking of food on a spit, it is thought that its origins reside in such Neolithic sites that may have been chiefly used for indirect cooking methods involving hot stones, suggesting at least that the term and its derivatives refer to the activity of cooking. Contrary to Mesolithic sites featuring burnt mounds, post-Mesolithic sites are significant for featuring significant remnants of flint, charred mounds of stones in close proximity to the remains of domesticated livestock, in addition to being accompanied by pits understood to have held water. Stones belonging to these mounds, the majority of which are large pieces of sandstone, are understood to have been heated and then submerged into these pits of water or buried underground as heat conductors used to boil, steam or bake food. While burnt mounds of similar natures have been discovered around Europe, Ireland hosts the greatest number of these sites, which suggests that indirect cooking methods were significant in Irish cuisine during the time. These mounds tend to feature a notable amount of stones, thought to be due to their repeated use over hundreds of years, and for the volume of stones needed to heat water to adequate cooking temperatures. Such technology could likely have facilitated a dual purpose for the use in building steam lodges, which were common in parts of Europe at the time, but fulachtaí fia typically feature significant assemblages of charred faunal remains, which argues they were used predominantly as cooking sites. It has been considered that these sites were impromptu cooking locations used particularly by hunters, but most fulachtaí fia were established in low-lying agricultural lands and similar environments not supportive of optimal hunting conditions. As well, the faunal remains recovered from such sites are typically feature the long, upper limb bones of domesticated livestock, archeologically associated with animal exploitation for meat, and also suggestive of animals being previously processed, or slaughtered, butchered, and eaten on site.

As fulachtaí fia emerged alongside developments in animal husbandry in Upper Palaeolithic Europe, it is thought that such pyrolithic technology emerged in response to the newfound importance of livestock. This is further compounded by the scarcity of game animal remains throughout all sites, and otherwise prevalence of sheep, pig, and cattle bones. This is not to discredit the lesser though still significant presence of red deer bones. Likewise, the absence of marine life at fulachtaí fia , also suggests a greater consumption of domestically farmed animals, and might also imply fish were cooked differently or respective of livestock. Many sites feature indications of stake-hole clusters that may have once supported tripods and spits used for draining the blood from- or cooking recently killed animals. Archeobotanical evidence from the Bronze Age is hard to recover due in part to Ireland's temperate weather and acidic soils , but fossilized hazelnut shells have survived at sites , as well as evidence of elm bark having which is supposed to have been used as feed for livestock and people alike. There is thought that hazelnuts were used to produce oil, whereupon the nuts would have been boiled in the heated waters of fulachtaí fia for the purpose of extracting their natural oils which would have accumulated atop the water's surface, then skimmed and used or stored. Boiling, as such, is thought to have been a choice cooking method during the Bronze Age, perhaps most notably for its good retention of calories in foods. Boiling meat, for example, is thought to have been a preferred cooking application for both helping to retain moisture in lean meats, for rendering fatty deposits in coarser cuts, as well as extracting marrow from bones. The aforementioned long, shallow pits that accompany most fulachtaí fia are typically found lined with insulating materials like stone, timber, and other organic materials, and divided with partitions suspected to have been intended to separate the hot stones from edible materials, or to divide different types of foods. It is thought that the use of clean, fresh water was a preferred medium given the placement of troughs over or near natural springs, and for their close proximity to irrigation channels carved into the earth which could have assisted in draining the pit after it was used. Other pits, such as those dug into sand or removed from water sources, are thought to have been used as subterranean ovens.

The typically large scale of these mounds and their perpetuity in the landscape not only suggests that individual fulachtaí fia were returned to and used often, but that they were fixtures of social gatherings both large and small. This is furthered by the presence of large assemblages of animal bones, as well as the mounds' notable distance from developed settlements, and the substantive size of the troughs—expected to have held large quantities of food. The laborious nature of preparing food, in addition to that of building these hearths would likely have required multiple actors working over long periods of time to finalize a meal, which suggests that cooking food would have been a social activity, likely with roles of responsibility distributed among the workers and hence a social structure. As ritual sites were often marked by the production and display of commemorative items, the suggestion that these sites were sometimes spaces of notable communal gathering is further substantiated by the discoveries of monuments, stone circles, and other non-funerary artifacts. Likewise, that fulachtaí fia are structures made principally to facilitate the indirect cooking of food—methods significantly slower and longer than direct heating applications—provides further reasoning that these mounds were places for special occasions where people chose to spend long periods of time eating and communing together.

Middle Ages (5th-15th century ACE)
Distinct from preceding eras, the middle ages ushered the development of dense urban centers that dramatically effected preexisting food systems by changing both physical and societal infrastructures. The spread and increasing normalization of a new type of civilian who did not produce or hunt their own food and and was thus reliant on foreign market trade and import from rural farms made the need for accessible and consistent sources of food vital. Uniquely to Ireland, the emergence of Norse towns in the 9th and 10th centuries and their subsequent growth during the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in the 12th and 13th centuries ushered a population boom that brought with it new foods born of foreign trade and new methods of production. The Anglo-Normans in particular propagated a commercial economy that encouraged urban settlement and the steady trade of local and foreign commodities by holding festive market fairs and attracting settlers with offers of burgage plots replete with space for a house and garden. Documentary data such as medieval law tracts, literature on the lives of saints , as well as early records of land holdings provide insight into how food was grown and distributed among society. As such documents were generally concentrated on the literate upper classes of Ireland, additional archeological data offers broader insight into food consumption habits of peasants, commoners, and Irish Medieval society as a whole. Together, these findings and records play a significant role in interpreting urban food consumption behaviors of Medieval Ireland.

During the middle ages in Ireland, laws were written to allow only certain foods to certain classes of people. As the accommodation of guests and its embedded acts of hospitality including the offering of food was a strong social convention of Ireland during this time, people entertained at the homes of others expected the service of specific foods. Consequently, if a guest was ‘entitled’ to a certain food and did not receive it during their accommodation, they could justly accuse their host of failing to meet their obligations of hospitality which was a punishable offense. The law tracts articulating the designation of certain foods to certain classes generally focused on free male landowners with some minor attention to free married women, but they do not describe what foods were entitled to peasants. This is because peasants were considered only semi-free (accommodated and thus 'owned' by their landlords  ) and were therefore not entitled to hospitable offers of food or beverage. There is some description of a ‘poor diet’ which references what was permitted to criminals and monks. The specificity of these foods was precise and provided such laws that decided, for example, to whom individual sections of beef were entitled, or in what quantities food was expected to be given and to what kind of person. These 7th and 8th century law texts describe 7 grades of commoners and 3 grades of semi-free peasants—with these grades often further subdivided--in order to help guide judges through cases based on customary law. As it was often difficult to tell these distinctions physically apart, food was used as a social cue so people could distinguish anothers' class, and accommodate them with the appropriate reception.

Prescribing class status to certain foods consequently constructed the perspective of certain foods as being luxurious, and others as being common, but also created distinct nutritional staples for different levels of this stratified society. For example, the lowest-class free commoner was liberally entitled to barley, oats, and dairy products, whereas then penultimate low-class commoner was allowed this in addition to baked breads ; though neither were permitted to goods derived of rye or wheat as such cereals were rare in Ireland (and thus privileged only to upper classes of people). Venison and other game meats were likewise considered low-class foods as wild animals derived from ungoverned lands were considered accessible to all classes and thus common. This was contrary to cattle which belonged to the lands of respective lords and made beef a privatized, restricted, and thus more coveted food. The same was said for wild fish, as any commoner was entitled to a fish net or trap, albeit modestly-sized ones. Based on theological rationale, certain foods could travel between ranks under special conditions, such as during injury, pregnancy, menstruation, and illness when individuals were understood to require more substantial nutrition. All free people during sickness were, for example, permitted garden herbs and small amounts of butter. Free married women were generally entitled half of what their husbands were entitled, but it was considered a punishable offense to deny a pregnant woman of any food she craved. This was thought to have been designed in part to protect women from miscarriage. Dietetic rationale within these laws deemed only soft foods permissible to feed children, including soft eggs, porridge, curds and whey , and garnished only with ingredients (such as honey or butter) that their father's class was permitted to eat. As religious doctrine heavily influenced these law tracts, Sundays were observed with greater leniency and some foods typically reserved for higher classes were shared with those of lower status. Cow, goat, and sheep milks were staple foods in all classes, from the lowest free commoner to the highest-ranking nobleman , though cow and goat milk were considered higher-ranking milks than sheep's. Common and small birds were afforded to be eaten by commoners, whereas larger or rarer birds such as swans were reserved for royalty (queens, particularly, in the case of swans ). Larger eggs of larger birds species were also permitted only to high class individuals for the basic reason that things of greater quantity or volume were given first to people of higher class status.

As written records generally focused on storehouse inventories and staple commodities, archeobotanical remnants recovered from urban cesspits offer further insight into less-common foods such as wild forage, foreign imports, and garden-grown goods that supplemented the diets of upper-class people, and substantiated those of whom could not afford food from the market. Both written record and archeological data indicate that sheep, cow, and goat milks made for the staple source of protein for most people, while oat, barley, and rye cereals culminated the typical source of carbohydrate ; consumed usually as ale, in pot-based dishes, and breads. As beer-making would only surface later in Ireland during the 14th century, and because ale had a short shelf-life that did not import or export well, ale-brewing was a significant industry in urban centers for providing what was then valued as a nutritious dietary staple. Cheap and widely available, oat was the preferred grain for this industry up until the 14th century until it was replaced by barley which was considered superior, though not as superior as wheat. Wheat was difficult to grow in Ireland's wet, acidic soils, but the Anglo-Normans nonetheless worked to intensify the its production as it was a coveted grain to the upper-classes, and vital in the creation of the Catholic sacramental Host; a thin, white wafer. This monastic bread was typically made from barley, oat, and pulse flours baked on ashes or dried into biscuits, but the making of a special wheat-based wafer was reserved for Sundays. As a sacred and rare food, wheat production was a heavily monitored and controlled operation, and wheat products were sometimes used as currency. Contrarily, while highly-accessible oats were considered 'poor' food, they were also valued as nutritious and easily-digestible, and thus made a staple for children , as well as cheap fuel for horses. Oat gruel, however, was considered inferior in quality and was thus unacceptable to share with travelers. Likewise, pulses, legumes and flours made from them were generally reserved for animal feed and for times of food scarcity. Beans, typically a food of the poorer classes, were often eaten in sweet puddings, according to recipe books of the 13th and 14th centuries. Pulses and legumes also did not grow well in wet, acidic soil , and were generally avoided as a crop, but the arrival of the Anglo-Normans, their new method of crop-rotation  , and the coinciding increase of pulse production in Ireland at the time signals the growing of pulses as a means to improve conditions for wheat crops (a crop which thrives in the nitrogen-rich soils left over by a previous crop of pulses or legumes).

Quickly-perishable foods, and those not grown at a commercial scale, such as fruits, nuts, and vegetables are underrepresented in historical records, but archeological evidence suggests such foods were nonetheless important seasonal supplements to the Irish diet. As evidence suggests most urban dwellings were furnished with gardens, the growth and harvest of a variety of fresh fruits, herbs, and vegetables would have provided variety of the diets of urban dwellers. As well, as fragile plant-life erodes and disappears quickly compared to grain chaff that fossilizes easily, what evidence is recovered may present a distorted assessment of what ratio of cereals to plant-life was consumed at the time only because there is no empirical data of such eroded materials. The presence of vegetables, in particular, is therefore minimal in archeological assemblages, but fruit—via fossilized seeds and pits—consequently features more frequently, with evidence of cherry, strawberry, sloe, rowan, blackberry, bilberry, apple, and haws as present in Medieval cesspits. Apples are frequently mentioned in Medieval texts of various kinds , particularly in reference to sweet varieties as valuable and rare offerings to nobles and lords , and sour breeds as used to make cider, verjus, vinegar, and medicine. That theological and dietetic discourse affected these texts also affected the corresponding behaviors by which certain foods were consumed —to eat apples raw, for example, was frowned upon by medieval physicians and so apples were generally cooked into puddings, or fermented into drinks. Fruit and herb consumption in the medieval period was particularly encapsulated in a medicinal fervour as unique fruits were prescribed and avoided for reasons concerning health. The perishable nature of fruits and vegetables also changed the ways in which they were consumed by challenging consumers to develop methods of preserving them. Cooking and fermenting are already examples, but fruits were also commonly dried, pickled, or made into relishes using brine and honey. Their omnipresence consequently precipitated the convention of eating many sweet and savory foods with jams, jellies, chutneys, and relishes. An herbal broth called brothchán, made with oatmeal and herbs served to sick was one such dish accompanied by a fruit relish, notably on Sundays. The recovery of several fruit presses also suggests that fruits were pressed into juices, though only at a domestic scale. Hazelnuts, having being an important Irish food from prehistory  , were still common in the medieval era, and ground into a meal called maothal. There is also documentation of a wine trade between Ireland and Biscay from the 7th century ACE, as well as early Irish texts that reference a wine imported from Bordeaux specifically for church feasts. This bolsters substantial evidence of wine trade between Ireland, France and England between the 12th and 15th centuries.