Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewFoodways in Roman Republican Italy By Laura M. Banducci. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 2021. Pp. 366. $85. ISBN 9780472132300 (cloth).Erica RowanErica RowanDepartment of Classics Royal Holloway, University of London Egham, United Kingdom; [email protected] Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreOften overshadowed by the wealth of material from Pompeii, foodways in other regions of Roman Italy have received considerably less scholarly attention. While this monograph goes a long way toward redressing that imbalance, readers hoping to find something akin to Hilary Cool’s Eating and Drinking in Roman Britain (Cambridge University Press 2006) will perhaps be disappointed. This is not to say that the book does not have great value, simply that the title is somewhat misleading. Rather than a full review and analysis of the material from Roman republican Italy, the book focuses on third-century BCE to early first-century CE Etruria. The monograph is the expanded version of Banducci’s doctoral thesis (University of Michigan) and undertakes an extremely detailed and innovative analysis of the ceramic and animal bone assemblages from three sites: Musarna, Populonia, and Cetamura del Chianti. It is the first publication to perform such a close reading of this material. The careful examination of ceramics, exploring abrasions and areas of blackening on the vessels, allows us to see, in minute detail, microregional variation in cooking practices.The introduction includes a brief overview of food in the ancient sources and its role as a marker of cultural identity. Following this, the book is divided into three sections. The first part (chs. 1, 2) sets the region and artifacts in their wider historical and cultural contexts before moving on to take a more detailed look at each of the three study sites. Those familiar with Roman houses, the debate over identifying public and private spaces within them, and the problematic term “romanization” can probably skip the first chapter, as the material is aimed at those with little to no prior knowledge of these topics. In the next chapter, the sites and sampled contexts are described to the level of context number, which is necessary for the discussions in the later chapters. It is here that the reader discovers that Banducci did not have the most abundant or most complete assemblages to work with, which makes her close analysis and careful findings all the more commendable. Much of the material was from construction fills, leveling layers, pits, and wells from a single structure or area within each site.The second part of the book (chs. 3–6), which is by far the longest, recounts the methodology and results of the author’s doctoral thesis. In addition to standard descriptions of ceramic quantification and measurement methods, the methodology chapter (ch. 3) also features Banducci’s more innovative recordings, such as vessel stability and ease of access to the contents. There are tables and images of the vessel forms, which help clarify the sometimes confusing terminology used in the academic literature to describe these objects, especially when multiple languages come into play. The next two chapters (4, 5) present the results of the analyses of the ceramics for cooking, food preparation, and serving, respectively. Although the findings are interspersed with boxed-off discussion sections, the level of detail provided makes for rather dry reading. This reviewer acknowledges that it is difficult to present the findings in any other way, especially if all the nuances of the assemblages are to be reported, but a shortening of some of the findings into tables might have helped. The final chapter in this section briefly discusses the archaeobotanical assemblages recovered from Populonia, Cetamura, and other nearby sites, before providing a detailed report on the zooarchaeological material from all three sites.The final chapters (chs. 7, 8) summarize and synthesize the data presented in the earlier sections. In chapter 7, the ceramic and zooarchaeological findings are combined and presented chronologically by site, highlighting intersite similarities and differences as well as change over time. Unhindered by statistics and percentages, this chapter reads much more smoothly than the previous ones. Chapter 8 takes a macrohistorical perspective on foodways, focusing on the way major events such as the Second Punic War and the Gracchan land reforms may have influenced diet and cooking at each of the case-study sites. The chapter ends by zooming back in to look at the microscale of individual households. Here, contemporary ethnographic research is married with the archaeological evidence to explore the way enslaved people, women, hosts, and guests could have influenced the household food supply and cooking methods. The text finishes with a brief concluding chapter followed by three methodologically oriented appendices.The book marks an important step in the road toward data synthesis and our understanding of the development of food and diet in ancient Italy. It is becoming ever clearer that the social, political, and dietary changes brought about by Roman conquest, be it in Italy or elsewhere, varied enormously. It is rare, however, that we are able to see the impacts of this process and the variety of human responses in such striking detail. Banducci’s close study of the pottery, and particularly her use-wear analysis, demonstrates what can be done with the evidence if looked at closely and with more complex research questions in mind. Despite their close proximity and general similarities in cooking techniques, all three sites displayed unique food histories, indicating local traditions and choices. At Musarna, cooking pots increased in size while bowls were eventually superseded in popularity by platters in the middle of the second century BCE, which suggests a change in the way people shared and displayed food. However, at Populonia there was little change through the centuries, and pre-Roman practices continued 200 years after the Romans gained control of the region (275). Similarly, Banducci’s ability to show detailed microregional variation and the influence of larger trade networks, site setting, and landscape on dietary choices and availability reinforces the value in integrating ceramic and environmental evidence, a task that is rarely accomplished. The inclusion of the statistical methods in the appendices and the online supplementary material, still a developing practice in monograph publishing, acts as a benchmark for data sharing.There are, however, a few minor problems. Banducci’s thesis was completed in 2013 and—while changes have no doubt been made—it retains the clunky feel of a rapid thesis-to-monograph transition. The introductory chapters contain somewhat too much background information, and the results chapters are so detail-laden that it takes the reader more than 200 pages to arrive at the discussion section, which, by comparison, is relatively short. As a result, there is very little in the way of narrative or space for more complex theoretical engagement. In the interim between completion of her doctoral degree and this monograph publication, additional archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological material has been published, and there are places where this new data needs to be taken into account. The overview of zooarchaeological data in Italy, for example, only references A. King (“Diet in the Roman World: A Regional Inter-Site Comparison of the Mammal Bones,” JRA 12, 1999, 168–202) and M. MacKinnon (Production and Consumption of Animals in Roman Italy: Integrating the Zooarchaeological and Textual Evidence, JRA Suppl. 54, 2004), while in the archaeobotanical discussions the vast quantities of material collected from northern Italy are absent. Since the coverage extends into the early first century CE, valid and exciting comparisons could have been made with sites like Pompeii, which would have given the book a broader feel. Some images needed to be in color, as it is impossible to see abrasions in grainy black-and-white photographs. Nevertheless, despite these issues, the book is original, innovative, and modern in its methodology and presentation, and the findings will certainly act as food for thought for those interested in Roman diet, republican Italy, and historical cooking practices more generally. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 126, Number 1January 2022 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Views: 931Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/718139 Views: 931Total views on this site HistoryPublished online November 11, 2021 Copyright © 2022 by the Archaeological Institute of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.
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