Fishing in the Southern Danube Delta during Greek colonisation: an archaeoichtyofaunal focus on the Caraburun-Acic Suat settlement

There are limited studies on fishing in the Black Sea during the Archaic period, particularly during the first wave of Greek colonisation. This question, often raised and dealt with through a vague chronology that mixes literary, epigraphic and iconographic sources from different periods, is not well documented through archaeoichthyofaunal data. The archaeological excavations carried out at Caraburun-Acic Suat were an opportunity to look at this question through the site’s inhabitants’ food waste, on a settlement founded during the Archaic period (second quarter of the 6th century BC) and occupied until early 3rd century AD, though with major gaps. A precise picture of the exploitation of fish resources during the Archaic period on a site located opposite the Razelm-Goloviţa lagoon complex, south of the present Danube Delta, was drawn up thanks to a field sampling strategy, coupled with fine sieving of sediments. This paper presents nine archaeological contexts, six dating to the Archaic period and three to the late Classical/early Hellenistic peiod. A total of more than 6,000 remains, recovered from over 1,000 litres of sediment, were counted and analysed. More than 500 remains were taxonomically determined. The remains of cyprinids predominate. Perch and pike are less well represented among the range of species found. Finally, a handful of very poorly preserved sturgeon remains complete the list. This pattern of exploitation/consumption, which began in the Archaic period, repeated itself after a hiatus of around 100 years in the late Classical/early Hellenistic period. The discussion focuses on how archaeoichthyofaunal data shed light on fishing areas invested and on targeted fishing and draws comparisons to nearby and more distant sites of the Mediterranean.