Thrushes were everyday street food in Roman Era, excavation reveals
Pollentia, settled by the Roman Empire after conquering Spain's Balearic Islands in the second century BCE., was transformed into a thriving urban seaport, with a forum, a Tuscan temple, a theater, and cemeteries. Among Pollentia's tabernae, or network of shops, is a building first excavated in the 1990s. This establishment, identified as a popina, contains a bar embedded with six large amphorae, confirming that food was prepared and sold there.
Connected to this building is a sewage pit measuring four feet across and nearly 13 feet deep, dug around 10 BCE. This cesspit, associated with the fast-food restaurant, reveals the culinary diversity of the Romans and their mastery of quick preparation and consumption in casual dining settings.
Alejandro Valenzuela, a researcher at the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies in Mallorca, analyzed the four-meter-deep garbage pit, shedding light on the eating habits of the Romans. Examining the skeletons in the cesspit, Valenzuela found that most of the thrush bones were skulls, breastbones, and distal bones of wings and legs. Largely missing were the thrushes' larger wing, chest, and leg bones.
Valenzuela suggests that, due to their size, thrushes could have been offered on skewers, facilitating street consumption. "Given their small size and the street food context, it's also entirely plausible that they were presented on skewers or sticks for easier handling," he told Live Science. He posits that the Pollentia tavern's cooks prepared a thrush for consumption by removing its sternum to flatten it, then quickly grilling or pan-frying the bird.
Historians have long thought that thrush was a luxury dish for Romans, recorded as a delicacy in some ancient literature. The Greek historian Plutarch wrote in his biography of the Roman general Lucullus that "a thrush could not be found anywhere in the summer season except where Lucullus kept them fattening." Some sources detail the practice of thrush husbandry, raising them in bulk for food. This practice allowed their meat to be enjoyed by elites throughout the year.
However, the overwhelming presence of thrushes in the Pollentia tavern cesspit suggests that they were "widely consumed, forming part of the everyday diet and urban food economy," writes Valenzuela in a study published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. The remains found in Pollentia appeared in a modest establishment rather than an aristocratic villa, indicating that these birds were accessible to the general populace.
The cesspit contains many prepared and cooked bones of mammals, fish, and birds, including pig bones, marine shells, and up to 165 bones from bird species such as the cattle egret and thrushes, dating from 10 BCE. to 30 CE. Roman urban food featured seasonal products and practical culinary techniques, reflecting the sophistication and dynamism of their culinary practices.
"Based on local culinary traditions here in Mallorca—where song thrushes (Turdus philomelos) are still occasionally consumed—I can say from personal experience that their flavor is more akin to small game birds like quail than to chicken," Valenzuela told Live Science. The presence of these birds in a non-elite environment indicates that they were consumed widely and were part of the daily diet and urban economy.
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