Joanita Vroom Professor of Archaeology, Leiden University Resident at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: January and May 2024 Research topic at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: »Food for Thought. An Archaeology of Consumption in the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds« Project outline: 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. (Joanita Vroom) Research partner: Joanita Vroom follows the invitation of Hagit Nol, Junior Professor of Islamic Archaeology, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. Her stay is supported by the project »Islamic Archaeology and Art History« (IAAH) funded by the VolkswagenStiftung. Scholarly profile of Joanita VroomJoanita Vroom is Professor of the Archaeology of Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University (NL). She takes a particular interest in the socio-economic (production and distribution) and cultural aspects (cuisine and eating habits) of material culture (including ceramics) in these Post-Roman societies, and is series editor of the »Medieval and Post-Medieval Mediterranean Archaeology Series« (MPMAS) at Brepols Publishers (Turnhout)..Website: Main areas of research: Archaeology of the Byzantine, Islamic, Crusader and Ottoman periods in the Mediterranean and Eurasia (ranging from the 7th to the 20th centuries); material culture (especially ceramics) of various empires; food, consumption and eating habits from Late Antique to Modern times in the Mediterranean and EurasiaSelected publications:
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