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The case of the missing victuals

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Abstract

The evidence for birds and mammals recovered from excavations at the former Royal Navy Victualling Yard opposite the Tower Hill in London and a new method of combining all the stratigraphic and environmental evidence shed new light on several aspects of 17th- to 18th-century life: the contrasts and connections between feasting in the officers’ quarters and tanning in the tenements, fish and the Spanish Armada, unscrupulous milkmaids and swindling cattle dealers, Dutch furniture and snail pie. A new method is presented for using fragmentary cattle horn cores as corroborative dating evidence, and investigations are conducted into the mysterious fate of the “missing victuals.”

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West, B. The case of the missing victuals. Hist Arch 29, 20–42 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03373579

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