Panel 6.1 – Culinary traditions in an entangled world: continuities, innovations and hybridizations in Mediterranean culinary practices (8th – 5th centuries BC)


Organisation/Vorsitz:

  • Ana Delgado Hervás (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
  • Meritxell Ferrer (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

Vortragende:

Panel abstract

Material cultures and daily practices play a central role in the invention and (re)production of identities, politics and economics in the context of historical experiences of migration and displacement. Following this premise, the aim of this session is to analyze daily practices and materialities, especially those related to food –the way of cooking and food preparation as well as its consumption–, in the construction, manipulation and negotiation of social identities, power relations and economies of production and exchange in different Mediterranean colonial contexts. Through different study-cases this session wants to explore the continuities, innovations and/or hybridations experimented by several Mediterranean communities between 8th and 4th centuries BC, relating them with the economic, political and social dynamics occurred in their specific contexts, the construction of new foodscapes as well as their local and global networks.

Paper abstracts

1. Meritxell Ferrer und Ana Delgado Hervás (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) / Marta Santos Retolaza (Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya-Empúries)

Foodscapes and culinary traditions: continuities, innovations and hybridizations in the culinary practices of Emporion’s Neapolis, northeast Catalonia (6th-4th centuries BC)
Between 8th and 4th centuries BC, new foodscapes emerged in western Mediterranean. The available foods, the ways of producing or obtaining them, the technologies, installations and tools used to process, prepare and cook them, the consumption modes, their appearance and taste, as well as their social and cultural meanings were transformed in these Mediterranean settings. In the configuration of these transformations were also significant the multiples experiences of migration, displacement, connectivity and trade that characterized the Mediterranean Sea during this period. These experiences entailed the mobility of foods and ingredients, tablewares and consumption practices, but also recipes, cooking sets and implements and culinary practices that got new meanings in different local contexts.
The aim of this paper is to explore the dynamics experimented by foodways and food habits in Emporion between 6th and 4th centuries BC. In particular, we want to focus on continuities, innovations, transformations and hybridities produced in relation to the ingredients engaged in the elaboration of foods, the installations, tools and wares used to cook and the culinary practices and traditions. Through this study we want to place value on the role of cooking sets, culinary practices and cooking practices employed in the daily life by the emporitai, in the transformation of the consumption practices and in the articulation of global and local economies in this Mediterranean enclave.

 

2. Birgit Öhlinger (Universität Innsbruck)

The communal meal as "social technique" in a changing world of Archaic Sicily
Within the archaic Mediterranean Sea as mega-space of transcultural interactions Sicily was one of the most important hubs due to its central position. With the new foundations of Phoenician and Greek settlements along the coasts from the 8th century BC on, the hinterland of the island was transformed more and more into a zone of intercultural encounters with specific meeting places, where the ‘global’ interchanged with the ‘local’ and vice versa. At these places rituals as social technique play an integral part as collective representations constructing personal, social and cultural identities and affiliations. At the centre of these practices was the communal meal, where social identities were negotiated and transformed. It was one of the oldest and most frequent celebrated feasts of Bronze and Iron Age Sicily, archaeologically attested through hearth places and ritual deposits containing animal bones, ash and ceramics for the preparation and consumption of food and drinks. Because of its century old tradition a diachronic analysis of the communal meal and its related activities – like food preparation – offers the opportunity to study the formation, transformation and innovation of this culinary practice within a changing world, where the local communities were challenged to strike a balance between new influences form outside and a continuance of a local feeling of belonging and this on various social levels and in different social situations.

 

3. Ana María Niveau-de-Villedary (University of Cadiz, Spain)

Daily consumption and ritual commensality: social contact settings at the beginning of the Phoenician presence in central and western Mediterranean (9th-8th centuries BC)
Following the topic of this panel, the main aim of this communication is to delve into some of the processes and mechanisms through which the cultural and social identities of two societies in contact –in particular, the Phoenician and the local– were modified and transformed. This study will be done through the analysis of one activity carried out by everyone, such as the ingest of food, but strongly structured both, social and culturally.
Recent discoveries in western and central Mediterranean have allowed to enlarge almost a century the chronology of this phenomenon, as well as have provided new domestic and ritual contexts where feeding practices were carried out. The analysis of these new data allow to highlight the continuities and modifications of consumption and commensality practices in these earlier colonial spaces as well as their social implications. But also, the comparison of these earlier colonial settings allow to evidence the different patterns and rhythms experienced by each of them.

 

4. Eva Miguel Gascón (University of Barcelona) / David Asensio i Vilaró / David Garcia i Rubert / Rafel Jornet Niella / Samuel Sardà Seuma

Introduction of wine consumption in the Northeastern Iberian Peninsula communities at the Early Iron Age: adaptation, changes and innovations in the local hand-made pottery assamblages
The Phoenician presence in the Northeastern Iberian Peninsula, its associated exchange network and the interaction with indigenous communities has been a key theme in the study of Protohistory since the 1970s. The recognition of the intense activities of these pioneer traders acted as a timely counter balance to the tradicional explanation of Greek colonisation in development of the Iberian Culture.
Inside the archaeological record, Phoenician amphorae have been extensively studied through different approaches and techniques. This studies have overshadowed the local hand-made pottery, leaving their consideration as a secondary concern to explain the impact of Phoenician products in these communities.
Taking into account that archaeometrical analysis (focused on provenance studies) performed to the Phoenician amphorae founded at this area, detected some regional differences, it was thought to be interesting to propose an integrated study of the entire assamblages.
This paper presents the study of several hand-made pottery contexts from the Ilercavonia and Cossetania regions in order to compare how the communities of these two different areas adapted or change their vessels and eating habits to consume the new products introduced as a consequence of the Phoenician commerce. It is possible to detect any significant changes? Are there any regional differences?

 

5. Francesca Spatafora (Polo di Palermo per i Parchi e i Musei Archeologici)

Alimentary habits and cooking of foods in protohistorical and archaic Sicily
The unitary cultural facies that characterizes Sicily since the Middle Bronze Age offers the possibility to recognize common alimentary habits to the various communities, obviously depending of the settlements location, variedly displaced along the shores or in the most inside areas of the island.
An useful contribution to understand the diet and the way in which food is consumed, is given by the analysis of the tools used for obtaining food and of the containers for cooking: in some cases, they show an extraordinary continuity of use for several centuries. In others, their morphology evolves, adapting themselves to changing cooking or to the introduction of new foods, especially when there is the presence of foreigners permanently settled on the island.
Since the 7th century BC, in fact, the established presence of the Greeks and the Phoenicians allows to recognize, also trough the material culture connected to the everyday life of the local community, offers a very significant cross-section for understanding the processes of resistance or, in contrast, of negotiation and interaction in an area of Sicily that is characterized by continuous and deep relationships between different groups by origin, education and culture.

 

6. Juliette Bertaut / Alexandre Beylier / Anne-Marie Curé / Eric Gailledrat / Ariadna Nieto-Espinet / Rachel Pinaud

Into the middle-ground? Multidisciplinary approach of consumption practices in La Monédière (Bessan, Southern France) (6th-5th centuries BC)
The settlement of La Monédière, established on the Hérault river, approximately 6 km from the sea shore, is located in the heart of an area that clearly shows, from the beginning of the 6th century BC, the implantation of Greek merchants and craftsmen, well before the foundation of the massalian colony in Agde (Agathé) (ca. 425/400 BC).
The early development of pottery activity in link with the production of grey-monochrome ware and wheel-thrown cooking ware, is indicative of the range of these contacts, synonym of a close and rapid interaction between the colonial and the indigenous world. La Monédière was occupied without interruption between the beginning of the 6th and the end of the 5th century BC and appears as a basically indigenous site, all the while being highly inserted in Mediterranean exchange networks, to the point that an emporic function is clearly considered, implying the hypothesis of the recurring presence of allochthone individuals or groups.
The intrinsic characteristics of this site, as well as the nature of the material culture and the consumption practices associated with it, reveal complex and sometimes contradictory processes of conservatism and innovation. Confrontation of the study’s results, on one side animal and vegetal resources, and on the other, the ceramic repertoire, raises the question of the archaeological readability of acculturation and borrowing mechanisms, as well as the characterisation of potentially mixt contexts.

 

7. Ariadna Nieto-Espinet (CSIC- IMF) / Angela Trentacoste (University of Oxford) / Sergio Jiménez-Manchón (UMR 5140-Archéologie des sociétés méditerranéennes, CNRS) / Silvia Albizuri (Universitat de Barcelona) / Eric Gailledrat und Alexandre Beylier (UMR 5140-Archéologie des sociétés méditerranéennes, CNRS) / Gabriel de Prado (Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya-Ullastret) / Rosa Plana (Université de Montpellier) / Ferran Codina (Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya-Ullastret) / Marta Santos, Joaquim Tremoleda und Pere Castanyer (Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya-Empúries) / Silvia Valenzuela Lamas (CSIC- IMF)

Cooking Greek and eating Greek? Multisite comparison of culinary practices the Western Mediterranean in Iron Age based on zooarchaeological remains
This study presents a synthesis of zooarchaeological studies in view to characterise different culinary traditions in the Western Mediterranean during the Iron Age, most notably Iberian, Greek and Etruscan. The study is based on the species eaten and butchery patterns as well as cooking techniques (roasted vs. boiled bones). The zooarchaeological data will be contextualised with the shape and size of the cooking pots in view to characterise different culinary traditions and to elucidate what was cooked and how, as well as points in common and differences between the three areas studied (Empordà, Agde and Po Valley).
This presentation is part of the ERC-Starting Grant project ZooMWest: Zooarchaeology and Mobility in the Western Mediterranean, ERC-StG 716298.

 

8. Anne Sieverling (Technische Universität Darmstadt)

Nutrition habits in early Akarnania
As nowadays, food in antiquities was not only indispensable to life, but also highly significant for various ecological, economical and sociocultural matters. The aim of this paper is to discuss the paleodiet of the early historical times in Akarnania. By using an interdisciplinary methodological approach, comprising the interpretation of the pottery along with the animal bones and pollen from Stratos, the hinterland Stratiké and a sanctuary the nutrition habits are examined.
The vessel properties capacity, stability, accessibility and transportability provide evidence for the functional classes of pottery, e.g. consuming, processing, cooking, transporting. The distribution as well as the composition of functional classes reflects general consumption habits, including the preparation of food with and without heat, and storage. Changes of vessel forms or even whole functional classes show, inter alia, modification in the nutrition of a specific timespan. Furthermore, the analysis of the various contexts offers the rare opportunity for comparing a specific nutrition patterns in the settlement and the sanctuary of the Stratiké. The contextual differences are also reflected in the archeozoological material which indicates a specific way of food preparation and consumption in the sacred context due to sacrificial rituals. The interpretation of the palynological analysis in this region highlights the economic and ecologic impact on the environment and the cultivation of plants.

 

9. Sara Giardino

Foreign pottery shapes in the Phoenician ceramic repertoire of the Central and Western Mediterranean
In this paper, I examine the presence in colonial contexts of the central-western Mediterranean area of ceramic shapes not typical of the Phoenician tradition. Observing some particularly significant case studies, in which, for example, the adaptation of Greek shapes for drinking use, as well as the use of vessels clearly of indigenous derivation occurs, a dual connection of the ceramics in use can be identified: on one hand, Phoenician ceramics are influenced by the Greek cultural sphere, on the other hand, they are receptive towards the production of indigenous community. Through the study of the evolution of the Phoenician expansion in the West, it is possible to reconstruct the meaning of the presence of these vessels. They represent the result of the (re)construction and redefinition of cultural identities within multicultural communities. By their very nature, Phoenician settlements are contexts in which identity constructions were particularly dynamic: the cultural contacts between colonial and local communities and the integration of indigenous elements in colonial milieus are of supreme importance in complex processes of identity configuration. Furthermore, in the specific context of ceramic production, hybridisation processes indicate not only the introduction of innovative functional aspects in the production of the indigenous societies, but they may also reflect some influence of indigenous procedure on the manufacture and use of vases in the Phoenician colonies.