Taste and the Ancient Senses

Rudolph, Kelli

doi:10.4324/9781315719245

Cited by 20 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Toner 2014; Betts 2017). 5 Edited volumes by Bradley (2015) and Rudolph (2018) respectively explore various sensory aspects of smell and taste in antiquity. Chapters by Livarda (2018) and Wallace-Hadrill (2014) have explored imported foods from the sensory perspective but not with the aim of assessing a consciousness of connectivity.…”

Section: A Sensory Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Same Taste, Different Place: Looking at the Consciousness of Food Origins in the Roman World

Rowan

2019

Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal

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While an enormous variety and quantity of foodstuffs were moved around the Roman Empire, the general population may not always have reflected upon or valued knowledge regarding the origin of their foodstuffs. This article looks at the methodological challenges associated with identifying a consciousness of food origins and connectivity, particularly in the non-elite. Sensory archaeology is used to demonstrate a degree of consciousness based on the physical experience of consumption and the mnemonic links forged between consumption, emotion, and memory. Focusing on the sensory experiences of non-native soldiers, archaeobotanical assemblages from Roman military sites in Germania inferior are used as case studies. The article concludes with a closer look at the frequently mentioned, yet not fully explored notion of a 'taste of home' in the ancient world and at what point a foodstuff no longer evoked a reflection upon its place of origin.

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Section: A Sensory Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Same Taste, Different Place: Looking at the Consciousness of Food Origins in the Roman World

Rowan

2019

Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal

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“…As most of our firings took place in cold and rainy Baltimore weather, our workgroup's shared sensory experience of this phase is associated with cups of soup laced with oyster crackers, greasy French fries and tumblers of hot chocolate. But taste is a complex and intimate sense, requiring a material to be placed inside the mouth and eventually becoming part of the taster's body (Rudolph 2018). For our own firings, our meals were linked to holding warmed (and warming) bowls of food, gulping hot beverages that traveled down our throats and feeling our stomachs fill in anticipation of the upcoming, stressful reduction phase.…”

Section: The Second Sensory Phase: the Sound Sight And Taste Of Brigmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bringing Back the (Ancient) Bodies: The Potters’ Sensory Experiences and the Firing of Red, Black and Purple Greek Vases

Balachandran

2019

Arts

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The study of Athenian black-figure and red-figure ceramics is haunted by nearly a thousand "hands" of the artisans thought to be responsible for their painted images. But what of the bodies attached to those hands? Who were they? Given the limited archaeological and epigraphic evidence for these ancient makers, this study attempts to recover their physical bodies through the ceramics production process-specifically the firing of vessels-as a communal activity potentially including a large cast of participants including craftsmen and craftswomen, metics, freed people and slaves. Using an experimental archaeology approach, I argue that we can begin to approach the sensory experiences of ancient potters and painters as they produced all the colored surfaces (and not only images) that endure on Greek vases. I propose a four-stage sensory firing in combination with the three-stage chemical firing process known for the production of Athenian ceramics, suggesting that each stage-and the colors produced at each stage-had their own "sensory signatures." Examining extant vases with this awareness of the bodily experience of their ancient makers has the potential to bring back these ancient bodies, moving us beyond the limiting narrative of a single hand wielding a paint brush.which often assumes a single maker with a recognizable "hand." But what of the surfaces of Greek vases as a whole, the shades of red, black and purple that make the images and text legible and the whole bodies of the people who made them?This paper argues that we have not fully considered the surfaces that the ancient Greeks potters and painters made as evidence of these makers' skill and embodied experience. Moving beyond the painted line as the marker of a single craftsman at work, I look to the firing of Greek ceramics as the key moment in the communal production process, one in which all of the work involved in throwing and painting an easily mutable clay object literally crystallized into its durable and indelible final form. The firing was responsible for the production of the range of colors-the reds, oranges, shades of black and brown and also the purples-for which Greek vase painting is renowned. 1 These colors are iron compounds formed under specific temperature and environmental conditions and are chemically reproducible in an experimental archaeology approach. As will be described in this paper, such an approach to the firing of Athenian ceramics offers otherwise unknowable insights into the ancient production process. The firing is an intensely sensory experience, with specific senses heightened at different stages as different colors are being made on the vessels inside the kiln. The colored surfaces of vases therefore have not only a particular chemical, physical and artistic signature but also a "sensory signature." It is by considering these sensory cues that we may approach the bodies of ancient makers at work.As the Hellenistic poem "Kiln" 2 demonstrates, the firing was the stage most fraught with physical danger and the potential f...

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“…Nevertheless, over the past decade many scholars have embraced the challenges of writing about the sacred past from a sensory perspective. Prominent recent publications dealing with the Greco-Roman world include the Routledge Series of edited volumes on The Senses in Antiquity, which covers the five 'conventional' senses (Bradley 2015;Butler and Nooter 2018;Purves 2018;Rudolph 2018;Squire 2016), in addition to Synaesthesia and the Ancient Senses (Butler and Purves 2014), as well as Archaeology of the Senses (Hamilakis 2013), A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity (Toner 2016) and Senses of the Empire: Multisensory Approaches to Roman Culture (Betts 2017). Each of these edited volumes addresses a wide range of historical topics, including explicitly religious themes such as, for example, early Christian attitudes to seeing (Heath 2016), fragrance in the Rabbinic world (Green 2015) and the tastes and smells of Roman animal sacrifice (Weddle 2017).…”

Section: Affiliationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Hughes

2018

BAR

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Taste and the Ancient Senses

Cited by 20 publications

References 0 publications

Same Taste, Different Place: Looking at the Consciousness of Food Origins in the Roman World

Same Taste, Different Place: Looking at the Consciousness of Food Origins in the Roman World

Bringing Back the (Ancient) Bodies: The Potters’ Sensory Experiences and the Firing of Red, Black and Purple Greek Vases

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