Joanita Vroom

Aufenthalt

Januar und Mai 2024

Forschungsthema

»Food for Thought. An Archaeology of Consumption in the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds«

Projektbeschreibung

During the past fifty years, much anthropological, sociological and historical study on food and consumption has been undertaken by eminent scholars such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, Mary Douglas and Jack Goody. Their work made it abundantly clear that in all cultures and in all periods specific aspects of foodways shed light on the relation between eating manners and dining habits on the one hand, and key aspects of the society in which they are practiced on the other. Nowadays, it is widely accepted that cultural anthropology in particular provides useful models for using food behaviour as a key to understanding the complexities of human civilization. This holds also true for archaeology, where there is a growing awareness that food practices are a meaningful object of study, not only because of their economic and cultural importance but also because of their place in the excavated material culture of past societies. Unfortunately, until now Byzantine and Islamic archaeologists have not paid much attention to the relationship between foodways and the actual artefacts they find. This project intends to radically improve this state of affairs by enabling the writing of a handbook on the archaeology of food in the Medieval Mediterranean for Cambridge University Press.

Wissenschaftliches Profil

Joanita Vroom ist Professorin für Archäologie des mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Eurasiens an der Fakultät für Archäologie der Universität Leiden (NL). Ihr besonderes Interesse gilt den sozioökonomischen (Produktion und Verteilung) und kulturellen Aspekten (Küche und Essgewohnheiten) der materiellen Kultur (einschließlich Keramik) in diesen nachrömischen Gesellschaften. Sie ist Herausgeberin der Reihe »Medieval and Post-Medieval Mediterranean Archaeology Series« (MPMAS), die bei Brepols Publishers (Turnhout) erscheint.

Veröffentlichungen (Auswahl)

• Feeding the Byzantine City: The Archaeology of Consumption in the Eastern Mediterranean (ca. 500-1500), Turnhout: Brepols Publishers 2023.
• (Hg.) Sweeth Tooth: The Journey of Sugar from East to West / Zoetekauw: De reis van suiker tussen oost en west, Utrecht: Parnassus Press 2020.
• (Hg. mit Y. Waksman und R. van Oosten), Medieval MasterChef: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on Eastern Cuisine and Western Foodways (Medieval and Post-Medieval Mediterranean Archaeology Series II), Turnhout: Brepols Publishers 2017.
• (Hg.) 2015, Medieval and Post-Medieval Ceramics in the Eastern Mediterranean - Fact and Fiction (Medieval and Post-Medieval Mediterranean Archaeology Series I), Turnhout: Brepols Publishers 2015.
• Eine vollständige Publikationsliste finden Sie hier.

Forschungskontext

Joanita Vroom ist auf Einladung von Hagit Nol, Juniorprofessorin für islamische Archäologie an der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Fellow am Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften. Ihr Aufenthalt wird von der VolkswagenStiftung im Rahmen des Projektes »Islamic Archaeology and Art History« (IAAH) gefördert.