Food and Diet in the Visigothic Kingdom

In sixth- and seventh-century Iberia, within what is now Spain and Portugal, grain, livestock and local harvests supplied food. Household and institutional labor turned those resources into meals. Archaeological remains from rural villages and urban cemeteries reveal different parts of that process, while monastic rules describe how one community divided food work and prescribed meals.

From harvest to food

At Gózquez, an early medieval village near Madrid occupied from the sixth to eighth centuries, excavators found storage pits and cooking ovens among its productive structures. Rural underground silos preserved grain stocks beyond harvest, while household hand-mills let people grind grain before cooking or baking.

In the seventh century, Isidore, bishop of Seville, set out a bread-making sequence in his monastic rule: lay workers, meaning people who were not monks, cleaned and ground wheat; monks prepared the dough and baked the bread themselves. The monk in charge of stores, often called the cellarer, oversaw grain supplies for bakers and animals, and coordinated the shepherds and fishers who supplied the community.

Meat, plants and local diets

Animal bones show when livestock became food. At Vilauba, a rural settlement in Catalonia in northeastern Spain, animal bones show most sheep and goats in the sixth and seventh centuries were slaughtered between two and four years old, while pigs were killed before age two. The researchers interpret these patterns as a shift toward meat production; cattle were also often slaughtered young. Its crop remains include wheat as the main cereal, plus barley, rye and millet, with grape and walnut remains.

Bone collagen, the protein that forms part of bone, preserves chemical signatures that isotope studies use to identify long-term food sources. At Gózquez, the isotope study found diets based mainly on common plant crops such as wheat and barley, with small but regular millet contributions and limited animal protein. The authors interpret the millet signal as evidence of crop diversification in this rural community. In Valencia, isotope analysis of ten people buried between the fifth and seventh centuries near La Almoina’s cathedral and bishop’s residence found a diet based mainly on terrestrial resources associated with common crops and animals fed on them. This signal can reflect meat as well as plant foods. The researchers interpret this cemetery group as socially privileged.

Monastic meals and observance

Isidore’s rule prescribed vegetables and beans during the week, with small amounts of meat allowed on some feast days; a monk could still choose to abstain. Sick monks could receive more nourishing food. The Rule of Fructuosus was stricter about meat, yet allowed exceptions for illness, travel and receiving guests.