food

An Experimental Investigation of Alternative Neolithic Harvesting Tools

Author(s)
Marc-Philipp Häg 1
Publication Date
Harvesting tools have seldom been found during excavations at Neolithic sites in North-Western Europe but cereal consumption was widely practiced in that region, as grain discovered in settlements showed. Several researchers have, over the last 50 years, highlighted this discrepancy between missing harvesting tools and the presence of cereal grains...

Experimental Archaeology and the Sustainability of Dental Calculus Research: The Case of Chocolate and the Nuns Of S. Maria Della Stella’s Church, Saluzzo, Italy

Author(s)
Sarah Sandron 1 ✉,
Anita Radini 2,
Dominique Scalarone 3,
Beatrice Demarchi 1,
Rosa Boano 1,
Alison Beach 4,
Cynthianne Spiteri 1
Publication Date
In Italy, chocolate (Theobroma cacao L.) was introduced during the Columbian exchange, and it quickly became both an important and accessible part of the Italian culinary tradition. Today, Italy is Europe’s second-largest chocolate producer...

An Experimental Approach to Tannur Ovens and Bread Making in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula during the Iron Age

Author(s)
Carmen Ramírez Cañas 1 ✉,
Penélope I. Martínez de los Reyes 1,
Antonio M. Sáez Romero 1
Publication Date
Culinary culture has played an essential role in the configuration and interaction of human societies throughout history, shaping both individual and collective identities. Like the modern Mediterranean diet, Phoenician-Punic subsistence relied on cereals, often in the form of...

Pit Preserve from Ida – on the Problem of Charred Seeds from Prehistoric Pits

Author(s)
Lutz Zwiebel 1
Publication Date

Introduction

A wild seed propagator and gardener (such as myself) relies on years of close human-plant interaction. The adaptability of domesticated and many wild plants to human economy and behaviour has always thrilled me. When I first read archaeological reports of frequent and large amounts of prehistoric charred seeds that were dumped in the ground I was bemused. It contrasted starkly with the care and sensitivity I use in the processes of seed harvest, drying and selection. So I started reading more and also charring seeds myself.

An Analysis of Contemporary Sources to Uncover the Medieval Identity of the Drink Bochet

Author(s)
Susan Verberg 1
Publication Date
When Le Ménagier de Paris (1393), a medieval household manual detailing a woman's proper behavior in marriage and running a household, was newly translated and republished as The Good Wife’s Guide: a Medieval Household Book by the Cornell University Press in 2009, its collection of recipes – including one for bochet – became easily available to the general public...

The Vertical Olive Crushing Mill as a Machine and its Energy Balance - A Preliminary Approach

Author(s)
Antonis G. Katsarakis 1
Publication Date

Introduction

The vertical monolithic olive mill of the type of mola olearia which, like the Roman trapetum, first appeared during the Hellenistic era and spread all over the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean, surviving until the 20th century

Bottle Gourd as an Implement for the Poor in Roman Italy

Author(s)
Brittany Bauer 1
Publication Date
Bottle gourds, which are thought to have originated in Africa, have been collected and cultivated in Italy since antiquity for the making of vessels and utensils, as well as food, musical instruments, and fishing buoys. Columella and Pliny the Elder both write extensively about the uses of bottle gourds, yet the importance of this vegetable in antiquity is notably absent from modern scholarship...

Diet of the Poor in Roman Italy: An Exploration of Wild and Cultivated Plants as an Essential Dietary Component

Author(s)
Brittany Bauer 1 ✉
Publication Date
Most of the population of Roman Italy was poor, whether they were the poor who were constantly in search for food and shelter, or the temporarily poor who were artisans or shopkeepers but could fall into poverty at times. In classical literature, pleasures of the mind were favoured over pleasures of the body. Epictetus wrote that only stupid men spent time dwelling on matters of the body such as eating...

Rubobostes' Feast

Author(s)
Marius Ardeleanu
Publication Date
In Romania, in recent years, numerous cultural events and projects have been developed to reconstruct some aspects of everyday life from the past, or to promote archaeological sites (Ardeleanu, 2012, pp.72-73). One of these sites is the Porolissum Archaeological Reserve (Sălaj County). It includes an important prehistoric centre (with discoveries from the Neolithic Age, Bronze Age, Hallstat, and...