BiodivAquArt : Still life, living sea? Aquatic Biodiversity of the Past and Contemporary Development Issues

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PRÉSENTATION

Abstracts

The Mediterranean underwater fauna, through the representations of Cycladic vases in the “marine” style of Aegean bronze.

Muriel Garsson, Curator of the Archeology Museum of Marseille

A multitude of vases for drinking, pouring, containing, in the so-called « marine » style, was found during excavations of ancient sites on several islands (Santorini, Milos, Thasos, Paros, etc.). Dated most often from the Aegean Bronze Age until the first millennium BC, these vases raise questions. Their first characteristics are their iconographies which represent essentially, if not exclusively, the Mediterranean underwater fauna still visible today between 0 and 20 meters.

 

What fish in Roman fishponds?

Marie-Brigitte Carre, Retired CNRS archaeologist, CCJ (Centre Camille Jullian), CNRS/ University of Aix Marseille

The excavation of several fishponds from the Roman period on the eastern Adriatic coast (X Augustan region Venetia and Histria, in present-day Croatia) raises many questions about the species that were kept in fishponds and the functioning of these structures, which are related to very different types. The buildings are the result of a choice by the owners of the coastal estates, to diversify and supplement their resources by combining seafood with agricultural and artisanal production. In rare cases, and thanks to archaeo-ichthyology, the presence of fish skeletons trapped in the sediments can provide some answers on the nature of the species. But how to relate all the partial collected data: ancient texts, buildings, fish remains in habitat contexts? Can the size, location, number of tanks, internal layout of the tanks help to identify specific uses of species, a type of semi-extensive or intensive farming? Ancient fishponds have been the subject of numerous historical and geo-environmental studies, but they generally do not take into consideration the species that occupied them. These are the questions that this communication would like to address in the context of a multidisciplinary exchange.

 

Taxonomic identification of Roman mosaics

Anne-Sophie Tribot¹, Véronique Blanc-Bijon², Daniel Faget¹, Thomas Richard³, Andrea Travaglini⁴, Gaël Denys⁵, Guy Charmantier⁶, Thomas Changeux³

¹ UMR TELEMMe, CNRS/University of Aix Marseille, France

² CCJ (Centre Camille Jullian), CNRS/University of Aix Marseille, France

³ MIO (Institut Méditerranéen d’Océanologie), University of Aix Marseille/University of Toulon/IRD/CNRS.

⁴ Historic Archives, Department of Animal Conservation and Public Engagement (CAPE), Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Italian National Institute of Marine Biology, Ecology and Biotechnology, Naples, Italy.

⁵ Laboratoire de Biologie des organismes et écosystèmes aquatiques (BOREA), MNHN, CNRS, IRD, SU, UCN, UA, Paris, France

⁶ MARBEC, Univ Montpellier, CNRS, Ifremer, IRD, Montpellier, France

Fish and aquatic fauna occupy an important place in Roman mosaic iconography, and tell us about the aquatic foods and past aquatic biodiversity. By studying a corpus of about 300 mosaics, the objective of this exploratory study is to identify the represented species, in order to highlight the spatial and temporal variations of taxonomic representations.

 

The sea as a source of food in the Central Adriatic during the Renaissance. Food from the Sea. From the market to the table in the Central Adriatic.

Maria Lucia de Nicolo, University of Bologna, School of Arts and Cultural Heritage Department.

This essay focuses on the analysis of two sources: the price lists (i.e. mercuriali) which include the fish species traded in the coastal cities of the Adriatic, and their relations to the consumption of fish, shellfish and mollusks, as attested in the most important Renaissance cookbooks (e.g. Maestro Martino, Cristoforo di Messisbugo, Bartolomeo Scappi), which include also recipes and preparations taken from the popular cuisine and the eating habits of fishermen. These sources provide information on the finest species of fishes and shellfish (e.g. sturgeons, oysters) destined to the court banquets in Rome during the Renaissance period. These evidence also include original, and yet unexpected, information on the depletion of valuable marine species, such as sturgeons and oysters. For instance, the high demand and consumption of oysters, especially within the courts of Rome, is cited as the main cause of their disappearance across the coast of Pesaro in the Central Adriatic.

 

Thing or animal : the commodification of fish in Stilleven of the Dutch 17th century

Clara Langer, Master Visual Arts and Cultures, University Lumière Lyon II.

While recent studies around still lifes aimed to define this genre as “portraits of things”, this understanding can reveal itself problematic in the case of animals. During the Early Modern era, their status was the object of vivid discussions, in France as well as abroad. Today still, the French law is ambiguous, placing them between the thing and the living being. How was this ambiguity translated in still lifes? By focusing on fish paintings produced in the Netherlands in the 17th century, we will see how Stilleven transform animals, in this case marine ones, into consumption goods. In the light of iconological as well as material methods, fish still lifes end up offering us a new insight into Dutch society and its relationship to the sea.

 

Cooking marine biodiversity: A process of transforming living organisms, witness of local resources and actor of changes in our plates.

Christian Qui, Restaurateur.

Through three themes, the objective is to question the profession of cook and the relationships it establishes through encounters. 1) Living cooking methodology: Throwing away lists and recipes to make and invent with what exists 2) Nature morte or Still Life: Old paintings as witnesses of biodiversity: what I see. 3) The cook as an interface between small-scale fishermen and scientists: crossing of knowledge, techniques and memories. The example of the Garum recipe.

 

It’s all about whales: from written and visual sources to bones

Nina Vieira, Joana Baço and Cristina Brito

CHAM – Centre for the Humanities, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa

The history of the (eternal) relationships between whales and people has been one of the most inquired themes while trying to understand the human impact towards marine ecosystems over time. Nevertheless, and within the scope of environmental history and the blue humanities, a lot of questions still need to be addressed as we move far back in time.

This long interaction has been marked by capture and death, and by the way these animals have shaped human choices and culture and, consequently, this story is mirrored in different types of documentary sources and in material remains.

A complete and comprehensive understanding of human-whales interaction is only possible through the compilation of written, visual, and archaeological sources and their interpretation by an interdisciplinary team. The skills of environmental historians and archaeologists yield results for the history of whales and whaling. We include here the research we have been developing in archives up to the analysis of whale bones in museums, private homes and public spaces. Gathering different type of data allow to infer about targeted whales’ species, former patterns of distribution, the extension of captures, and cultural constructions about the animals.

In this paper we try to show how different methodologies can work in a complementary way and to better understand the marine biodiversity of the past.

 

Sixteenth-century drawings of aquatic creatures and what they can tell us

Florike Egmond, Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.

This paper introduces the many hundreds of coloured drawings of naturalia – and specifically of aquatilia (creatures living in water) – made in the course of the period c. 1530-c. 1630, often by anonymous painters. Many of these drawings can be found in collectors’ albums. Many were made with the explicit purpose to document and depict living nature (especially fishes of the Mediterranean) scientifically, but these drawings belong equally to the domains of art and science. I will briefly sketch a chronology and geography of this visual interest in aquatilia, which was part of the so-called renaissance of the natural sciences. Concluding with the example of an album that focuses on the Adriatic Sea, I hope to show that these often little-studied drawings have a wealth of information to offer to both historians and biologists.

 

Documentary sources for a natural history of whales in Portugal

Teresa Lacerda, Cristina Brito & Nina Vieira

CHAM-Centre for the Humanities, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa

Early modern sources for the natural history of whales in Portugal are now emerging as very rich by the variety of forms they take – news, memoirs, poems and marine zoology studies. Those large cetaceans, when they stranded on the Portuguese coast or accidentally entered the Tagus River (Lisbon), aroused the curiosity of the people, nobles and scholars. The whales and the resources that were extracted from them were important for food, lighting and apothecaries. However, these large and fascinating marine animals also enriched the spirit, being the subject of poems, almost always used as a metaphor to deal with moral issues, but also relating the real processions of people who went to watch the whales. At least from the 18th century onwards, animal’s features started to be described in detail by different scholars. Some written sources were accompanied by illustrations, considering also anatomy, measurements and colours, that were later disseminated throughout Europe and adapted to local contexts and translated into other vernacular languages from Portuguese. In Lisbon whales gained a cultural existence beyond their biological life. One of these animals was embalmed and framed to be admired by the king. A large oil painting, now lost, was on display at the Arsenal in Lisbon. Thus, written sources and iconography reveal that the memory of whales was also expressed in visual supports both to satisfy common and scientific curiosity.

 

The importance of the historical analysis for the understanding of the real marine biodiversity loss: the case of the Mediterranean coastal elasmobranchs

Andrea Travaglini¹, Angelo R. Mojetta², Francesco L. Leonetti³, Peter N. Psomadakis⁴, Nicola Maio⁵, Emilio Sperone⁶ and Massimiliano Bottaro7

[1]Historic Archives, Department of Animal Conservation and Public Engagement (CAPE), Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Italian National Institute of Marine Biology, Ecology and Biotechnology, Naples, Italy.

²Institute for Marine Study (ISM), c/o Civic Aquarium of Milan, Milan, Italy.

³Department of Integrative Marine Ecology (EMI), Calabria Research Center for Advanced Marine Infrastructures (CRIMAC), Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Italian National Institute of Marine Biology, Ecology and Biotechnology, Amendolara (CS), Italy.

⁴Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy.

⁵ Department of Biology, University of Naples “Federico II”, Naples, Italy.

⁶ Department of Biology, Ecology and Earth Sciences (DiBEST), University of Calabria, Arcavacata di Rende (CS), Italy.

⁷Department of Integrative Marine Ecology (EMI), Genoa Marine Centre (GMC), Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Italian National Institute of Marine Biology, Ecology and Biotechnology, Genoa, Italy.

Elasmobranchs are one of the most threatened marine taxa worldwide and historical data can provide important information to better understand how populations have changed over time.

This is the case of the Mediterranean Sea, which is considered an extinction hotspot and it also represents one of the areas in which the most ancient evidences of interaction between humans and elasmobranchs are available for a long period of time.

Coastal elasmobranchs are in many descriptions and artistic representations of fishing activities and marine life since the ancient Greek period to the beginning of the XX century.

Our results highlighted that many species were known since ancient period in whole Mediterranean Sea and that they also were considered common until the beginning of the last century.

Our study also clarifies the historical absence of some rays in the Mediterranean, providing novel and useful information for the correct current management of the elasmobranchs.

 

Archives, gazetteers and newspapers: squeezing historical sources to describe the raise and fall of the Italian crayfish in Spain

Miguel Clavero, Estación Biológica de Doñana – CSIC, Sevilla.

King Philip II introduced European gardening uses into Spain, involving the construction of ponds and imported fashionable species to stock those ponds, including crayfish. Attempts to obtain crayfish from the Netherlands or France were made since the 1560s and Italian crayfish (Austropotambius fulcisianus) were finally shipped from Tuscany in 1588. The conversion of crayfish from a priced royal delicacy to a wild-caught popular food item remains obscure, but by the 19^th century it was widely distributed in some areas of Spain. The expansion continued through multiple introductions until the 1970s, including an intense promotion by the Spanish dictatorship since the 1950s that led to overexploitation processes. The resulting declines fuelled initiatives to introduced North American crayfish species, which were the ultimate cause of the collapse of the Italian crayfish in Spain. This story was built-up based on a wide-variety of historical documents, highlighting the potential of interdisciplinary approaches to describe long-term ecological patterns and inform biodiversity conservation.

 

Role of the golf of Naples as an outstanding archive of previous knowledge on faunal biodiversity

Andrea Travaglini[1], Massimiliano Bottaro[2]

[1] Historic Archives, Animal Conservation and Public Engagement (CAPE) Department, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Napoli (Italy)

2  Department of Integrative Marine Ecology (EMI), Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Napoli (Italy)

Due to its favourable geographical, geomorphological and landscape features, the Gulf of Naples has always been the favourite area for the study of natural history.

In particular, marine fauna was popular already ancient times and there are numerous interesting testimonies starting from the end of 1500s. With the activity of the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn (SZN) founded in 1872, it is the most studied area in the world in marine biology.

We report a summary of the archaeological, artistic and folkloristic evidence and of the literature available on the interaction between humans and marine life, starting from the Bronze Age and continuing over time up to the historical resources preserved at the SZN (Collections, Library, Archives).

We consider that the Gulf of Naples could represent the most distinguished example at an international level in the panorama of historical ecology as an archive of ancient testimonies and historical data on marine fauna biodiversity.

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PROGRAMME

9:30 – Introduction

Session 1 – Antique artefacts and knowledge of past aquatic biodiversity: methodology and perspectives

• 9:40 – The Mediterranean underwater fauna, through the representations of Cycladic vases in the “marine” style of Aegean bronze.

Muriel Garsson, Curator of the Archeology Museum of Marseille

• 9:55 – What fish in Roman fishponds?

Marie-Brigitte Carre, Retired CNRS archaeologist, CCJ (Centre Camille Jullian), CNRS/ University of Aix Marseille

• 10:10 – Taxonomic identification of Roman mosaics

Anne-Sophie Tribot¹, Véronique Blanc-Bijon², Daniel Faget¹, Thomas Richard³, Andrea Travaglini⁴, Gaël Denys⁵, Guy Charmantier⁶, Thomas Changeux³

¹ UMR TELEMMe, CNRS/University of Aix Marseille, France

² CCJ (Centre Camille Jullian), CNRS/University of Aix Marseille, France

³ MIO (Institut Méditerranéen d’Océanologie), University of Aix Marseille/University of Toulon/IRD/CNRS.

⁴ Historic Archives, Department of Animal Conservation and Public Engagement (CAPE), Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Italian National Institute of Marine Biology, Ecology and Biotechnology, Naples, Italy.

⁵ Laboratoire de Biologie des organismes et écosystèmes aquatiques (BOREA), MNHN, CNRS, IRD, SU, UCN, UA, Paris, France

⁶ MARBEC, Univ Montpellier, CNRS, Ifremer, IRD, Montpellier, France

• 10:25 – Discussion
• 10:40 – Break (20 minutes)

 

Session 2 – Fish on the plate: from the aquatic foods of the past to the emergence of sustainable consumption of sea and freshwater products

• 11:00 – The sea as a source of food in the Central Adriatic during the Renaissance. Food from the Sea. From the market to the table in the Central Adriatic.

Maria Lucia de Nicolo, University of Bologna, School of Arts and Cultural Heritage Department. (Remote videoconference, to be confirmed).

• 11:15 – Thing or animal: the commodification of fish in Stilleven of the Dutch 17th century.

Clara Langer, Master Visual Arts and Cultures, University Lumière Lyon II.

• 11:30 – Cooking marine biodiversity: A process of transforming living organisms, witness of local resources and actor of changes in our plates.

Christian Qui, Restaurateur.

• 11:45 – Discussion

 

• 12:00 – 14:00 Lunch Break

 

Session 3 – Various material for environmental history: from Aquatilia to marine creatures

• 14:00 – It’s all about whales: from written and visual sources to bones.

Nina Vieira, Joana Baço and Cristina Brito, CHAM – Centre for the Humanities, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa.

• 14:15 – Sixteenth-century drawings of aquatic creatures and what they can tell us

Florike Egmond, Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.

• 14:30 – Documentary sources for a natural history of whales in Portugal.

Teresa Lacerda, Cristina Brito & Nina Vieira, CHAM-Centre for the Humanities, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa

• 15:45 – Discussion
• 15:00 – Break (20 minutes)

 

Session 4 – Historical visions on aquatic biodiversity for current conservation issues

• 15:20 – The importance of the historical analysis for the understanding of the real marine biodiversity loss: the case of the Mediterranean coastal elasmobranchs

Andrea Travaglini¹, Angelo R. Mojetta², Francesco L. Leonetti³, Peter N. Psomadakis⁴, Nicola Maio⁵, Emilio Sperone⁶ and Massimiliano Bottaro7

[1]Historic Archives, Department of Animal Conservation and Public Engagement (CAPE), Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Italian National Institute of Marine Biology, Ecology and Biotechnology, Naples, Italy.

²Institute for Marine Study (ISM), c/o Civic Aquarium of Milan, Milan, Italy.

³Department of Integrative Marine Ecology (EMI), Calabria Research Center for Advanced Marine Infrastructures (CRIMAC), Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Italian National Institute of Marine Biology, Ecology and Biotechnology, Amendolara (CS), Italy.

⁴Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy.

⁵ Department of Biology, University of Naples “Federico II”, Naples, Italy.

⁶ Department of Biology, Ecology and Earth Sciences (DiBEST), University of Calabria, Arcavacata di Rende (CS), Italy.

⁷Department of Integrative Marine Ecology (EMI), Genoa Marine Centre (GMC), Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Italian National Institute of Marine Biology, Ecology and Biotechnology, Genoa, Italy.

• 15:35 – Archives, gazetteers and newspapers: squeezing historical sources to describe the raise and fall of the Italian crayfish in Spain

Miguel Clavero, Estación Biológica de Doñana – CSIC, Sevilla.

• 15:50 – Role of the golf of Naples as an outstanding archive of previous knowledge on faunal biodiversity

Andrea Travaglini[1], Massimiliano Bottaro[2]

[1] Historic Archives, Animal Conservation and Public Engagement (CAPE) Department, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Napoli (Italy)

2  Department of Integrative Marine Ecology (EMI), Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Napoli (Italy)

• 16:05 – Discussion
• 16:20 – Conclusion

Useful information

Phone numbers:

Daniel Faget:  +33 6 31 87 86 04

Thomas Changeux : +33 6 59 80 87 48

Anne-Sophie Tribot : +33 6 19 95 08 89

 

• From Marseille airport to Aix-en-Provence

1 – Marseille Airport > Marseille St-Charles

• By bus: LeCar 91 https://www.lecaraixmarseille.com/_files/ugd/ef29c5_6161b4addfc2484e8aa81b70c62f56e4.pdf?index=true

Departure every 10 to 20 minutes

2 – Marseille St-Charles > Aix-en-Provence

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