Food in Antiquity PDF
Preview Food in Antiquity
Note on cover illustration The Exeter Fish-plate Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, England. Reproduced courtesy of the Museum. Photo M Dobson Among the more modest products of the pottery shops of the always been receptive to craftsmen and ideas from the Greek mainland and the Greek settlements in Sicily and Greek mainland, particularly from Athens, took up the South Italy, the red-figured fish-plate enjoyed a temporary notion of the red-figured fish-plate and made it their own. vogue in the 4th century BC. The plate has been given its Much the largest proportion of the fish-plates that are name in modern times from the fish that decorate the upper known now (over one thousand) were made in these west surface. Some fish-plates have been found in domestic ern localities. contexts, and it seems likely that the plate would have been used for fish, but it may have carried nuts, fruit and cakes The Exeter fish-plate was made in Campania, most likely in besides. However, the majority of known fish-plates come or near the town of Cumae, and comparison with other from graves, and the shape was perhaps more usually made known examples suggests that it was decorated by the to serve as a funerary offering; in one instance, from a grave Bonython Painter soon after the middle of the 4th century near Palermo, a quantity of fish-bones were found on the BC. The fish depicted are two-banded and striped bream; plate. shell-fish are also included, one large and three small white. The shape of the plate consist/s of a broad surface that slopes The plate with its central depression and its decoration down to a small depression in the centre where the juice of underlines the importance of fish in the diet of the time. the fish was caught. The central depression seems also to Brian Sparkes have supported a small black bowl that held the fish-sauce. There was a deep, overhanging rim and a broad ring foot. There are some fish-plates that carry no decoration, only the black paint, but the majority have an assortment of fish Bibliography painted on the broad upper surface around the central depression. The overhanging rim may also be decorated I. McPhee & A.O. Trendall 1987 Greek Red-figured Fish-plates (14th with fish; more usually, it carries a wave pattern or vertical Supplement toAntike Kunst, 1987); for the Bonython Painter, see stripes, or is left plain black. The fish are most often perch, pp. 85-6 and pl. 25d-f. bream and such; sometimes shell-fish, octopus and torpedo J. Delorme & C. Roux 1987 Guidei//ustrede lafauneaquatiquedans fish are included. /'art grec. N. Kunisch 1989 GriechischeF ischteller: Natur und Bild. The vogue for such decorated plates seems to have started I. McPhee & A.O. Trendall 1990 'Addenda to Greek Red-figured in Athens around 400 BC, but by the middle of the 4th Fish-plates',Antike Kunst 33, 31-51; for the Bony-thon Painter, see century the various areas with Greek communities in Sicily p. 40 and pl. 10, 1. The Exeter fish-plate should be added as Cam and South Italy (Campania, Paestum and Apulia), which had pania IIC2i no. 566. FOODKN _NTKQUKTY edited by John Wilkins, David Harvey & Mike Dobson Foreword by Alan Davidson UNIVERSITY of EXETER PRESS First published in 1995 by University of Exeter Press Reed Hall Streatham Drive Exeter EX4 4QR UK www.ex.ac.uk/uep/ Reprinted 1996, 1999 © John Wilkins, David Harvey, Mike Dobson and the several authors each in respect of the chapter contrib uted, 1995 Designed and typeset in Caslon 10.5/13.5 by Mike Dobson, Pallas (Humanities Computing), University of Exeter, Queen's Building, EX4 4QH. Printed in Great Britain by Short Run Press Ltd, Exeter British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library ISBN O 85989 418 5 □ Contents Foreword Alan Davidson .................................................................................................................... ix Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................. xiii Ack.now ledgemen ts ................................................................................................................... xiii General Introduction John Wilkins .......................................................................................................................... l Part One Cereals and Staples Introduction John Wilkins .......................................................................................................................... 7 1 Acornutopia? Determining the Role of Acorns in Past Human Subsistence Sarah Mason, Institute of Archaeology, London ................................................................... 12 2 Barley Cakes and Emmer Bread Thomas Braun, Merton College, Oxford .............................................................................. 25 3 Cereals, Bread and Milling in the Roman World K.D. White, London ............................................................................................................ 38 4 Byzantine Porridge: tracta, trachantis and tarhana Stephen Hill, University of Warwick & Anthony Bryer, University of Birmingham ............ 44 5 Bread-baking in Ancient Italy: c!ibanus and sub testu in the Roman World Anthony Cubber!ey, Sevenoaks School .................................................................................. 55 6 Ethnoarchaeology and Storage in the Ancient Mediterranean: Beyond Risk and Survival Hamish Forbes, University of Nottingham & Lin Foxha!!, University of Leicester ............. 69 7 Molecular Archaeology and Ancient History Robert Sa/fares, University of Manchester_I nstitute of Science and Technology ...................... 87 Contents □ Part Two Meat and Fish Introduction ,,~", John Wilkins ..................................................................................................................... .\1 02 ) ~~ 8 The Roman Meat Trade Joan Frayn, Open University ............................................................................................ 107 9 The Apician Sauce -!us Apicianum Jon Solomon, University of Arizona .................................................................................. 115 10 Eating Fish: the Paradoxes of Seafood ,~"-"- Nicholas Purcell, St John's College, Oxford. ......................................................................\ 0132) ~--------,f 11 A Pretty Kettle of Fish /- t,!j,9) Brian Sparkes, University of Southampton ....................................................................... 12 Fish from the Black Sea: Classical Byzantium and the Greekness of Trade David Braund, University of Exeter .................................................................................. 162 Part Three The Social and Religious Context of Food and Eating Introduction ,..<:::;'."'+- John Wilkins ..................................................................................................................... 1(:-::+✓ 13 Cereal Diet and the Origins of Man: Myths of the Eleusinia in the Context of Ancient Mediterranean Harvest Festivals Gerhard Baudy, University of Kiel ................................................................................... 1~ 177°' 14 Ritual Eating in Archaic Greece: Parasites and Paredroi _ Louise Bruit Zaidman, University of Paris VII & Centre Louis Gernet .............................. 196 15 Opsophagia: Revolutionary Eating at Athens ,~~;'_:"1~ i2_91} James Davidson, Trinity College, Oxford .......................................................................... -:z:c:-e 16 Ancient Vegetarianism Catherine Osborne, University College, Swansea ................................................................ 214' Contents □ 17 Fasting Women in Judaism and Christianity in Late Antiquity Veronika Grimm, Wolfson College, Oxford ......................................................................... 225 Part Four Beyond the Greco-Roman World Introduction John Wilkins ...................................................................................................................... 242 18 The Most Ancient Recipes of All / --,; Jean Bottero, Sorbonne, Paris ....................................................................................... l(· 24~f) 19 Food and 'Frontier' in the Greek Colonies of South Italy Mario Lombardo, University of Lecce .......................................................................... ;.<:.256 ) \,_,/" 20 Lydian Specialities, Croesus' Golden Baking-Woman, and Dogs' Dinners David Harvey, University of Exeter .................................................................................. 273 21 Persian Food: Stereotypes and Political Identity Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg, University of Utrecht ................................... ;. ....................... 286 22 The Food of the Prehistoric Celts Peter Reynolds, B utser Ancient Farm, Hampshire ............................................................. 303 23 Food for Ptolemaic Temple Workers Dorothy J. Thompson, Girton College, Cambridge .............................................................. 316 24 Food and Archaeology in Romano-Byzantine Palestine Shimon Dar, Bar-Ilan University, Israel .......................................................................... 326 Part Five Food and Medicine Introduction .<«,>,,_,(-"= }.~ZJ John Wilkins ....................................................... ••. . ••. . •••·••••..• • ••••••••·•······························ 25 Hippokratic Diaita Elizabeth Craik, University of St Andrews ...................................................................... p43)) f{' ,_ ,d"', ,:;7,_ ,, Contents □ 26 Food and Blood in Hippokratic Gynaecology Helen King, Liverpool Institute of Higher Education ......................................................... 35 l 27 Galen and the Traveller's Fare Vivian Nutton, Wei/come Institute, London ....................................................................... 359 28 Oribasios and Medical Dietetics or the Three Ps Mark Grant, Haileybury College. ....................................................................................... 371 Part Six Food and Literature Introduction / John Wilkins .................................................................................................................... \~) ,,~::_,,; 29 Comic Food and Food for Comedy Dwora Gilula, Hebrew University, Jerusalem .................................................................... 386 30 Archestratos: Where and When? Andrew Dalby, London House for Graduate Students ...................................................... \ 31 Problems in Greek Gastronomic Poetry: on Matro'sAttikon Deipnon .·. ·.·.• ,113')1 Enzo Degani, University of Bologna .................................................................................. ~y 32 The Sources and Sauces of Athenaeus John Wilkins, University of Exeter & Shaun Hill, University of Exeter ........................... . Index of passages discussed ..................................................................................................... 439 General index ..........: ................................................................................................................. 440 □ Foreword Alan Davidson THIE concept behind this book, and behind the highly enjoyable and successful conference which it represents, is to my mind, an excellent one. It would have been unsurprising, but less felicitous, if the subject had been 'Food in Classical Greece and Rome'. The wider, almost panoramic, screen which the conference organisers and the editors of the book preferred is such that the main emphasis could be and is on Greece and Rome, quite naturally and understandably, but without leaving everyone else languishing in a sort of limbo outside the city gates. Recalling, across five decades, my own undergraduate studies of 'Ancient History', I realise that they would have been of greater value to me if something had been done to set Greece and Rome in a wider context. I knew of course that there had been other civilisations and that while Greece and Rome flourished there were other peoples 'out there' who had to be kept at bay (or who, eventually, forced their way onto the centre of the stage and wrecked the scenery), but such peoples had little reality for me; they constituted little more than a forgotten and irrelevant past or an outer darkness which could be deemed useful because it threw into even higher relief the shining accomplishments of the two great classical civilizations. Foreword □ The mild sense of wrong which I now feel when I look back at my partial studies of what should have been a wider field is echoed in a curious way by feelings which I have about much of the writing on food and cookery which confronts us on bookshop shelves. Too much of it, especially where historical/aspects are involved, seems to revolve around the elite, the tiny, tiny proportion of people who could afford this or that and whose tables were al~ost unimaginably opulent from the point of view of the 99% of 'others' who were their contemporaries. Of course it is legitimate to write about the food of the elite if one knows and states that that is what one is doing. It can be an interesting subject, and often has the advantage that good·source material survives, in literary form. But it is a different matter if one writes about the food of the elite, past or present, as though that was all there was which would interest anybody. There is a parallel between these two feelings of mine, in that they both concern the sweeping aside of the lesser breeds or the ordinary people,aka hoipolloi. The present book, as it happens, demonstrates effectively how both these failures of scope may be avoided. Part Four, 'Beyond the Greco-Roman World', by its very title dispels any notion that the first point has been overlooked; and the introductory paragraphs of Peter Reynolds' paper on Celtic Foods describe neatly how the point bears on whole nations, including the very one from which I see myself as descended. As for the second point, one need only read the papers in Part One to see that here too the spirit and practice of the contributors is absolutely as one would wish. There is a wealth of information about the food of ordinary people, indeed more that I would have dared hope for, since I had not previously known just how much information could be gleaned from a combination of archaeological and literary sources. Having been working recently on the history of cereal foods, and in the past on seafood of the Mediterranean region, I appreciate with particular warmth the new insights and data which the authors of many of the papers furnish. Thus the paper on Byzantine porridge has a special appeal for me, dealing as it does with tracta and tarhana, two indisputably plebeian foods (whose other attributes, and even identities, may be and are disputed, as in the
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