Food at the Frontiers
Ghent, 20. May 2016
Location: Het Pand, the conference center of Ghent University, in the Rector Gillis room.
For directions see http://www.ugent.be/het-pand/en/accessibility
Organised by Wim Broekaert () and Arjan Zuiderhoek ()
Introduction
"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." This aphorism was coined in 1825 by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a famous French gastronome and author of Physiologie du goût, the 19th-century handbook for foodies. Brillat-Savarin already understood that the deliberate choice of food, preparation techniques, and consumption patterns all contributed to the creation of one’s unique self-image or identity in society. Yet, food preferences change: purchasing power, age, interpersonal relationships, available supplies and many other factors determine the daily menu. In a globalizing world such as we know today, one additional factor to take into account is the constant interaction with foreign cuisines, encouraging people to experiment with new ingredients and cooking techniques, to change traditional diets and adopt new dishes. In this respect, the Roman empire was perhaps not all that different from today. Ever since the Roman armies marched through Mediterranean and non-Mediterranean territory, new dishes and exotic ingredients constantly reached Italy. However, before Tiberius could enjoy his German vegetables (Pliny NH 19.28) and Apicius could start to prepare flamingos and parrots (6.231), these ingredients needed to pass and travel through the empire’s frontier regions. It is precisely in these areas that people, both Roman and native, encounter new foodstuffs, engage with different diets and start (or refuse) to adopt them. In this conference, we wish to approach the impact of frontiers on consumption patterns, by asking in what different ways living at the frontiers is able to influence food and cuisine of populations living on both sides of the frontiers. What induced local and resident communities to abandon or adapt traditional consumption patterns? How quickly and through which channels did these new food habits travel within and beyond the frontiers? We are interested in the military, but also and especially in the food habits of civilian populations living on both sides of the frontiers of the Roman empire. We concentrate on production, distribution and consumption, and primarily on interaction at the frontiers, on flows from the imperial center to the frontiers, and on flows from outside the empire into the frontier areas. By focusing on the intermediate role of frontier zones, rather than on the results of interaction, we approach the question of cross-cultural exchange and its consequences on food and cuisine from a new angle.
Programme (preliminary)
9-9:30: Welcome and Coffee
- 9:30-10:30 Richard Hingley, Food and food consumption in the cultures and societies along the Roman imperial frontiers: perspectives on cuisine and identities
- 10:30-11:30 Courtney Bobik, Seeds, Bones, Roots, and Papyri : A Look at Egyptian Diet during the Roman Period
- 11:30-12:30 Asja Tonc & Marko Dizdar, Eating well on the Danube: Early Roman graves from Ilok
12:30-13:30 Lunch
- 13:30-14:30 Wim De Clercq & Christine Van Cauwenberghe, Salt for the Soldiers. An inquiry into salt-making, distribution and consumption at the most north-western fringes of the Empire.
- 14:30-15:30 Wouter Vanacker, Farming on the edge. Food and frontier(s) in Roman Tripolitania.
15:30-16:00 Coffee
- 16:00-17:00 John Pearce, 'My fellow-soldiers have no beer’: cuisine and cultural change in the Vindolanda tablets
Abstracts
Richard Hingley, Food and food consumption in the cultures and societies along the Roman imperial frontiers: perspectives on cuisine and identities
This paper will consider some anthropological approaches to the consumption of food in colonial and frontier contexts. The aim is to provide some comparative perspectives on food and consumption in other societies to set the materials and theories derived from studies of the Roman provinces in context. The focus of attention is upon how ‘foreign’ items are adopted in everyday cuisine and in feasting and upon how work in anthropology and history might assist with new understandings of Roman frontier society.
Courtney Bobik, Seeds, Bones, Roots, and Papyri : A Look at Egyptian Diet during the Roman Period
Egyptian society during the Roman Period was a cultural melting pot. With Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Persian, Indian and other cultural influences, Egyptian diet could be considered as vibrant and fragrant as the society it reflects.
My overall research project aims to investigate the welfare and prosperity of the people of Roman Egypt. A key element in this will be food and its effect on mortality, traditions, and culture. What makes studying the economic history of Roman Egypt so unique is that it is one of the few places and periods where both archaeological and documentary evidence are available. There have been specific studies carried out on certain aspects of welfare, but I intend to provide the first overall survey, connecting all this independent evidence.
For this paper, I will focus on the diet of Roman Egypt. I will present a map tracing the various archaeologically attested components of their diet to their countries of origin. The archaeological evidence regarding diet during this period comes in many forms. This research will primarily focus on the archaeobotanic and faunal remains from settlement sites from the Nile Delta and Fayum such as Karanis, Taposiris Magna, Naukratis, and Thmuis; along with the Eastern and Western Desert sites such as Mons Claudianus, Myos Hormos, Berenike, and the Bahriyah, Kharga, and Dakhla Oases.
Botanical and faunal evidence however, is a fragile and restricted form of evidence due to nature of its preservation and documentation. For future research, it will then be beneficial to combine my botanical and faunal analyses with other forms of evidence such as papyrological data, which could aid in the further piecing together the missing components of the diet in Roman Egypt.
Asja Tonc & Marko Dizdar, Eating well on the Danube: Early Roman graves from Ilok
Changes in dietary habits are often mentioned as one of the staples of Romanisation. Nothing seems to be more „Roman“ than consuming olive oil and wine, particularly in regions not familiar with these products before Roman conquests, and their consumption seems to be easily observed through the presence of different amphorae types. The same can be applied on the regions along the Danubian limes in present-day Croatia, where a small Early Roman cemetery has been excavated in Ilok, on the Danube bank. They are interpreted as burials of a small auxiliary unit, probably of local origin judging by the presence of pottery with autochthonous La Tène characteristics. Imported finds are, however, more relevant in terms of dating and pointing to trade networks, possibly even procurement strategies of the military unit. Different amphora types and tableware point to introduction of new food products, but also changes in vessel shape that suggest the integration of new methods for cooking and food preparation and consumption.
Although some changes in dietary habits can be observed already in the mentioned imported goods and accompanying ceramic vessels, the real „treats“ are much less detectable at first sight –plant remains found in the burials (mostly carbonised). Archaeobotanical analysis for the first grave have already demonstrated the appearance of clearly non-domestic species such as fig, olive and grape. Further analysis is currently being made for other grave assemblages. Comparisons in the region and beyond suggest as very likely the idea that plant remains were deposited as part of a burial ritual.
Besides the obvious conclusions on appearance of new food products, the finds from Ilok are significant in observing burial rituals, as well as changes these rituals underwent during Romanisation, with implications on the importance of food as a means to express one's status and identity.
Wim De Clercq and Christine Van Cauwenberghe, Salt for the Soldiers. An inquiry into salt-making, distribution and consumption at the most north-western fringes of the Empire.
Salt supplied directly or via food constitutes a crucial resource for the good physical health of human beings. Depending on its form of appearance (crystallized or in solution), throughout history each society created its specific chaînes opératoires for the extraction and distribution of the much sought-after commodity. As such and in view of very specific and often remote geographical locations in the landscape for extraction opportunities, salt has always the been subject of complex exchange mechanisms and elite monopolization. Seen from this angle, it comes as no surprise that the Roman State was involved in several ways in the procurement of salt. Its agent-in-the-field, the army, had large interests to establish secure supply lines for the preparation and preservation of food but also as a part of the soldiers’ wage.
Two iconic inscriptions, found almost two centuries ago in Rimini, bear witness of the close contacts that existed at the time of the Batavian revolt between a centurion of one of the Rhine-legions on the one hand and the salinatores of the civitates of the Menapii and Morini on the other hand, two regions situated along the North Sea in extrema galliarum , according to Tacitus in a contemporary account. This epigraphic evidence seems to point to a direct flow of the mineral resource from the remote and swampy North-Gaulish coasts towards the heavily militarized Rhine-zone, distant for hundreds of kms inland, hence sparking a still lively historical and archaeological debate on the transaction mechanisms in play (trade, taxation,...) and the exact meaning of the term “salinator”.
During the previous century, the epigraphic evidence for salt-making in the Menapian area has been supplemented with additional evidence testifying for the importance of the long-distance transactions, also commercially, in salt or in salt-processed products. Moreover, archaeology increasingly sheds light upon the location of the salt-making sites in the landscape, the process of salt-making itself, the distribution network (as revealed by salt-containers) and the social context of production, transaction and consumption in Northern Gaul. This insight into the chaîne opératoire has not been addressed properly in some recent contributions on the North-Gaulish salt production, which often seem to draw upon the epigraphic evidence only, supplemented by distribution maps.
In this paper we aim at integrating both historical and archaeological data from the region, in order to create a broad but also much more complex view upon mechanisms of production and distribution of an essential food-commodity, originating a remote area of the Roman Emipre. Next to the direct flow of salt from the area to the Rhine and other areas, we will also address the local use of salt for the production of other food-products in the coastal landscape and in the hinterland. Finally we will try to grasp the role salt played in developing and sustaining social and cultural identities within local North-Gaulish societies.
Wouter Vanacker, Farming on the edge. Food and frontier(s) in Roman Tripolitania.
In the Roman imperial era Tripolitania was a frontier region in many ways. Environmental, political, economic, social and cultural borders created discrete opportunities for and constraints on the cultivation of food as an economic and cultural resource. My contribution will first consider the nature and dynamics of these frontiers, and their effect on local food production and consumption. Second, I will examine whether the development of food production in the Gebel and the pre-desert can be compared with the phenomenon of ‘frontier agriculture’ manifested in more recent historical contexts.