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Fish pickling industries and Garum’s production

by Egenia Salza Prina Ricotti

Fish pickling industries and Garum’s production

In ancient times, apart from the fresh fishes furnished by the fishponds, large catches were made by fishing boats and by other systems. Of course this originated the problem to preserve the meat of these fishes and it was for this reason that a prosperous salting industry flourished all around the Mediterranean sea and the Atlantic coasts.
The largest quantity of fish meat was produced by the tuna fishing installations which in Latin were called coetarium. This ancient “tonnara” is described to us by Oppianus and we can see that they were identical to our modern ones

We unfurl in water nets that are made like towns. We see in them halls, doors, and doors-like roads. The tuna fishes arrive in long compact lines like migrant peoples’ phalanxes. Some of them are young, some are old and some other are neither old nor young. They enter the nets in very large number and they push inside until something blocks them or until there is no more place for others fishes to enter in. Thus large and excellent catches are easily done.

If the ancient “tonnare” were made exactly like the modern ones, different was the processing of their products. In ancient times this processing consisted in a simple salting of the fish meats which produced the “cybium”, hard wedges of tuna all white for the salt which covered them. Besides it is only in our times with the arrival of cans, clamping machines and sterilization, that we can enjoy the modern canned tuna. Up to the XIX cent. such a thing didn’t exist: the meat of the fish was treated with simple salt and preserved in large barrels. It certainly was not very appealing.
Many other fishes were also salted and often they were manufactured in one of the most important industry of those times: the garum’s one. Factory were installed both in Spain, and in Morocco. Their ruins can still be found all along all the Atlantic coast, and also the Mediterranean one.
When made with fish scraps the “garum”, which Pliny, the great naturalist, defined as “the putrefaction of fishes”, could be very bad and could easily decay. In Apicius (De re coquinaria) there even is a recipe for correcting its odour and taste but I can’t suggest anyone to trust or, what would be worse, try it. Anyway good “garum” existed and was the one made with fresh fishes cut in pieces and set in layers covered with salt. This mixture was set in the sun and let ripen there for many days. From time to time it was mixed on, and, at last, the liquid which it had formed was collected and put in sealed amphoras, while the solid rest found in the containers were sold apart and called “allec” a product very similar to our anchovies. Garum was very important in ancient time cooking and many different kinds of it were used. The best recipes are the ones found in the Geoponics.
However the most excellent “garum” was the “sociorum” one, which was done in the Neopunic area of the Spanish and Moroccan coasts, the same places from which now the Consorcio canned tuna, which is considered the best, comes. It is in this same area that you still find the rests of the factories in which large basins coated with “cocciopesto” stood lined up.
A similar systems to make Garum is seen on the North- African coasts but here the basins are directly excavated in the rocks of the coast and then impermeabilized by a cement coat. One could still see one of these installations in a place near Sabratha where until a few years ago there was a “tonnara”. Other basins of the kind were found on the Sidi Billal coast and, of course, in Leptis there must have been many factories as Pliny, the great naturalist, cites Leptis’ “garum” as one well known in the Roman empire.
On the contrary we never find basins of this kind on the Tyrrenian coasts where “tonnare” and fishermen villages abounded and where certainly “garum” was produced. Pompeii, with its perfectly preserved factory where garum was prepared putting the layers of cut fish-meat and salt in big “dolia”, will clear the fact for us. At Pompeii’s “officina del garum” in each one of its four “dolia” we can see the rest of the garum it contained and from the dimensions of the fishbones found on their bottom we can see that in this factory they used only small fishes. We can also notice that they confectioned different types of “garum”; In a dolium the deep purple coloured rests correspond to the last recipe of the Geoponiche for making a “garum” with a red wine addition. Always in this factory at Pompeii we find a back courtyard with piles of anforas to pour the “garum” in them, and after sealing them, send their product to different markets.
Of course factories like this one could have existed all along Italy’s southern Tyrrenian coast, but it will be impossible for us to identify them: the only thing we would now find of them will be some “dolia” fixed in the ground and a mountain of “amphoras” sherds.



Bibliography

- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI – L'importanza del pesce nella vita, nel costume e nell'industria del mondo antico in RPAA Vol. LXXI, 1998-1999 pp.111-165