Food Cuisine And Society In Prehistoric Greece

Food and drink, along with the material culture involved in their consumption, can signify a variety of social distinctions, identities and values. Thus, in Early Minoan Knossos, tableware was used to emphasize the difference between the host and the guests, and at Mycenaean Pylos the status of banqueters was declared as much by the places assigned to them as by the quality of the vessles form which they ate and drank. The ten contributions to this volume highlight the extraordinary opportunity for multi-disciplinary research in this area.

This is the first study of food in classical antiquity that treats it as both a biological and a cultural phenomenon. The variables of food quantity, quality and availability, and the impact of disease, are evaluated and a judgement reached which inclines to pessimism. Food is also a symbol, evoking other basic human needs and desires, especially sex, and performing social and cultural roles which can be either integrative or divisive. The book explores food taboos in Greek, Roman, and Jewish society, and food-allocation within the family, as well as more familiar cultural and economic polarities which are highlighted by food and eating. The author draws on a wide range of evidence new and old, from written sources to human skeletal remains, and uses both comparative historical evidence from early modern and contemporary developing societies and the anthropological literature, to create a case-study of food in antiquity.

"Greek archaeologist Soultana Maria Valamoti takes readers on a culinary journey in her synthesis of plant foods and culinary practices of Neolithic and Bronze Age Greece. Plant foods were the main ingredients of daily meals in prehistoric Greece and most likely of special dishes prepared for feasts and rituals. For more than thirty years, Valamoti has been analyzing a large body of archaeobotanic data that spans 7,000 years from the Neolithic to Bronze Age and that was retrieved from nearly one hundred sites in mainland Greece and the Greek islands. This book also reflects experimentation and research of ancient written sources. Her approach allows an exploration of culinary variability through time. The thousands of charred seeds identified from occupation debris correspond to minuscule time capsules. She is able to document changes from the cooking of the first farmers to the sophisticated cuisines of the elites who inhabited palaces in the first cities of Europe in the south of Greece during the Late Bronze Age. Along the way, she explains the complex processes for the addition of new ingredients (such as millet and olives), condiments, sweet tastes, and complex recipes. "Ancient Grains" also explores regional variability and diversity. Rich chapters are devoted to overviewing plantstuffs in their spatial and temporal distribution, with ritual and symbolic significance noted, and also to broader themes and practices. The main chapters are on bread/cereals, pulses, oils, fruit and nuts, fermented brews, healing foods, cooking, and identity. Valamoti also offers insight into engaging in public archaeology and provides recipes that incorporate ancient plant ingredients and connect prehistory to the present in a critical way. Finally, a thorough bibliography also includes archaeobotanical publications in Greek. Copious color and black and white photos enhance the text"--

The Achaemenid Persian Empire (550-330 BCE) was a vast and complex sociopolitical structure that encompassed much of modern-day Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, and included two dozen distinct peoples who spoke different languages, worshiped different deities, lived in different environments, and had widely differing social customs. This book offers a radical new approach to understanding the Achaemenid Persian Empire and imperialism more generally. Through a wide array of textual, visual, and archaeological material, Elspeth R. M. Dusinberre shows how the rulers of the empire constructed a system flexible enough to provide for the needs of different peoples within the confines of a single imperial authority and highlights the variability in response. This book examines the dynamic tensions between authority and autonomy across the empire, providing a valuable new way of considering imperial structure and development.

The 23 papers presented here are the product of the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and approaches to the study of kitchen pottery between archaeologists, material scientists, historians and ethnoarchaeologists. They aim to set a vital but long-neglected category of evidence in its wider social, political and economic contexts. Structured around main themes concerning technical aspects of pottery production; cooking as socioeconomic practice; and changing tastes, culinary identities and cross-cultural encounters, a range of social economic and technological models are discussed on the basis of insights gained from the study of kitchen pottery production, use and evolution. Much discussion and work in the last decade has focussed on technical and social aspects of coarse ware and in particular kitchen ware. The chapters in this volume contribute to this debate, moving kitchen pottery beyond the Binfordian ‘technomic’ category and embracing a wider view, linking processualism, ceramic-ecology, behavioral schools, and ethnoarchaeology to research on historical developments and cultural transformations covering a broad geographical area of the Mediterranean region and spanning a long chronological sequence.

Through creative combinations of ethnohistoric evidence, iconography, and contextual analysis of faunal remains, this work offers new insight into the mechanisms involved in food provisioning for complex societies. Contributors combine zooarchaeological and historical data from global case studies to analyze patterns in centralization and bureaucratic control, asymmetrical access and inequalities, and production-distribution-consumption dynamics of urban food provisioning and animal management. Taking a global perspective and including both prehistoric and historic case studies, the chapters in the volume reflect some of the current best practices in the zooarchaeology of complex societies. Embedding faunal evidence within a broader anthropological explanatory framework and integrating archaeological contexts, historic texts, iconography, and ethnohistorical sources, the book discerns myriad ways that animals are key contributors to, and cocreators of, complex societies in all periods and all places. Chapters cover the diverse sociopolitical and economic roles wild animals played in Bronze Age Turkey; the production and consumption of animal products in medieval Ireland; the importance of belief systems, politics, and cosmologies in Shang Dynasty animal provisioning in the Yellow River Valley; the significance of external trade routes in the kingdom of Aksum (modern Sudan); hunting and animal husbandry at El Zotz; animal economies from two Mississippian period sites; and more. Food Provisioning in Complex Societies provides an optimistic roadmap and heuristic tools to explore the diverse, resilient, and contingent processes involved in food provisioning. The book represents a novel and productive way forward for understanding the unique, yet predictably structured, provisioning systems that emerged in the context of complex societies in all parts of the world. It will be of interest to zooarchaeologists and archaeologists alike. Contributors: Joaquin Arroyo-Cabrales, Fiona Beglane, Roderick Campbell, Kathryn Grossman, Patricia Martinez-Lira, Jacqueline S. Meier, Sarah E. Newman, Terry O'Connor, Tanya M. Peres, Gypsy C. Price, Elizabeth J. Reitz, Kim Shelton, Marcus Winter, Helina S. Woldekiros

What do we think about when we think about Greek food? For many, it is the meze and the traditional plates of a Greek island taverna at the height of summer. In Gifts of the Gods, Andrew and Rachel Dalby take us into and beyond the taverna in our minds to offer us a unique and comprehensive history of the foods of Greece. Greek food is brimming with thousands of years of history, lore, and culture. The country has one of the most varied landscapes of Europe, where steep mountains, low-lying plains, rocky islands, and crystal-blue seas jostle one another and produce food and wine of immense quality and distinctive taste. The book discusses how the land was settled, what was grown in different regions, and how certain fruits, herbs, and vegetables became a part of local cuisines. Moving through history—from classical to modern—the book explores the country’s regional food identities as well as the export of Greek food to communities all over the world. The book culminates with a look at one of the most distinctive features of Greece’s food tradition—the country’s world renown hospitality. Illustrated throughout and featuring traditional recipes that blend historical and modern flavors, Gifts of the Gods is a mouth-watering account of a rich and ancient cuisine.

38 papers on Aegean Bronze Age pottery in honour of Jeremy Rutter. They range from specific site reports, to technical reports, and issues of chronology, to analysis of the social and religious functions of particular vessel types, and studies of trade and cultural contacts.