You think of the Anglo-Saxon elite and your mind may wander to the cinematic portrayal of royals and nobles of this era living on fatty meats and copious ale. Meanwhile, their peasant counterparts were forced on a cereal and vegetable-based diet and were made to hand over the prize cuts of meat to their rulers in a form of exploitative rent. But this may not be the case.

Bioarchaeologist, Dr Sam Leggett, and historian, Dr Tom Lambert, have recently published a pair of articles in the journal Anglo-Saxon England that could transform the understanding of medieval kingship and society.

In the classic "you are what you eat," Leggett analyzed the chemical signatures of diets preserved in the bones of 2,023 people buried in England between the 5^th and 11^th Centuries. The data was then cross-referenced with social status indications, such as the number of grave goods, grave orientation, and body position. It was found that there was no correlation between social status and high protein diets, suggesting Anglo-Saxon royalty may not have been the meat-lovers we once thought, which differs from medieval texts and historical studies.

So where did this assumption come from? Well, there is plenty of textual evidence found in this time period, in the form of food lists. One such list was compiled during the reign of King Ine of Wessex (c. 688-726) – who was the first West Saxon king to issue a code of laws. Lambert and Leggett estimated that the food in this list equated to 1.24 million calories, and more than half of those came from animal protein. When split over the estimated 300 guests, it was predicted that each person would have consumed approximately 4,140 calories made up of beef, mutton, salmon, eel, and poultry, along with honey, cheese, and ale.

This list was comparable to other food lists from southern England, and all shared the same pattern: a vast amount of meat, a moderate amount of bread, and a pretty sizeable (but not excessive) amount of ale. There was no mention of vegetables in these lists, although it cannot be ruled out that these were not served. The researchers compared these feasts to the modern-day barbecue – where people cook large amounts of meat and usually leave a lot of leftovers – and stressed that they were likely a one-off extravagance.

“The scale and proportions of these food lists strongly suggests that they were provisions for occasional grand feasts, and not general food supplies sustaining royal households on a daily basis. These were not blueprints for everyday elite diets as historians have assumed,” Lambert said in a statement.

“The isotopic evidence suggests that diets in this period were much more similar across social groups than we’ve been led to believe. We should imagine a wide range of people livening up bread with small quantities of meat and cheese, or eating pottages of leeks and whole grains with a little meat thrown in,” Leggett added.

It is thought that the lavish feasts were outdoor events in which whole oxen would have been roasted – evidenced by pits that have been excavated in East Anglia – and attended by a large array of people including ordinary farmers.

It was previously theorized that the free peasants in the kingdom provided a feorm or food-rent to the Anglo-Saxon elite. However, Lambert has studied the word feorm in many different contexts and thinks that this term actually refers to a single feast and not an ancient form of tax.

“We’re looking at kings travelling to massive barbecues hosted by free peasants, people who owned their own farms and sometimes slaves to work on them. You could compare it to a modern presidential campaign dinner in the US. This was a crucial form of political engagement,” Lambert said.

In the past, food taxes have been fundamental to theories about the beginnings of English Kingship and early land-based politics. In fact, they still form an important part of modern debates regarding the treatment of English peasants. This new research could throw that into disarray, by shining a light on the daily lives of our past ancestors.