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Multidisciplinary approaches to food and foodways in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean

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Sylvie Yona Waksman

Foreword

Sylvie Yona Waksman

Texte intégral

  • 1 ANR: French National Research Agency.
  • 2 With the exception of Ilias Anagnostakis and Johannes Koder, who unfortunately were not able to at (...)

1This volume brings together researchers from different disciplines (archaeology, archaeometry, history, art history) and specialties (ceramology, archaeozoology, archaeobotany, biological anthropology…), countries and scholarly traditions, who assembled on the occasion of the final conference of the ANR-funded1 project “People, pottery and food in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean” (POMEDOR), organized in Lyon on 19-21 May 2016.2 Within the rapidly expanding area of research on food and foodways, the medieval Eastern Mediterranean is still very much an unexplored area, particularly when compared to medieval western Europe or to the Roman world. This volume should be seen as an attempt to explore and develop this new field, in a multidisciplinary approach. It may be considered as a follow-up to the series of meetings, organized in the same spirit in Lyon between 2010 and 2014 together with Emmanuelle Vila (Archéorient, UMR 5133 Lyon) and Sabine Fourrier (HiSoMA, UMR 5189 Lyon), within the framework of the transversal theme “Dietary practices, diachronic approaches in the Mediterranean” (PRALIM) of the “Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée”.

2Beyond the POMEDOR project, whose scope and outputs are presented in the introduction and in several contributions, the conference covered a wider field with the intention of favoring contacts across disciplinary and linguistic boundaries.3 These contacts were stimulated by a “Byzantine” dinner, which took place at the Paul Bocuse Institute4 in Écully, under the mentoring (“parrainage”) of Chef Régis Marcon. The dinner was a research project on its own, narrated by Andrew Dalby, and its recipes and illustrations punctuate the volume and follow its organization,5 from the mise en bouche / introduction to the Malvasia sweet wine / concluding remarks by Johannes Koder, through medieval Cyprus and the Levant, Byzantium and its followers, and the trade in goods and in tastes.

3Although there is still a long way to go from “multidisciplinary” to “interdisciplinary” approaches to food and foodways in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean, it is hoped that the POMEDOR project, its final conference and the present volume may bring us closer to this perspective.

Notes

1 ANR: French National Research Agency.

2 With the exception of Ilias Anagnostakis and Johannes Koder, who unfortunately were not able to attend.

3 We were keen on including volumes and articles in Greek, Turkish, Russian, Hebrew… in the bibliographies, which open a whole range of sources, often little-known but increasingly available online.

4 This foreword happened to be completed soon after the passing of Paul Bocuse, to whom we would like to pay tribute. Well known for his leading role in the development of gastronomy, the “Empire” he created also made possible culinary experiences such as the one recounted in this volume.

5 See the menu (design A. Dauvergne): www.pomedor.mom.fr/sites/pomedor.mom.fr/files/documents/ongoing/menu%20byzance_final.pdf.

Auteur

CNRS, UMR 5138 “Archéologie et Archéométrie”, Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, 7 rue Raulin, 69365 Lyon cedex 7, France, yona.waksman@mom.fr

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