Organizer of Rostovtzeff Lecture IV: Baking Up Western Civilization and Some African Alternatives

Dorian Q. Fuller, Professor of Archaeobotany, University of College London

THE TENTH ANNUAL M.I. ROSTOVTZEFF LECTURE SERIES
FEEDING CIVILIZATIONS: A COMPARATIVE LONG-TERM CONSIDERATION OF AGRICULTURAL AND CULINARY TRADITIONS ACROSS THE OLD WORLD

Baked bread is both basic to west Asian civilization and distinctive of it in the global context. The origins of cereal agriculture in Western Asia preceded the development of cooking pots, but instead processing focused on production of flour and breads. This is most obvious in the widespread archaeological distribution of ovens from southeastern Europe through the Indus and up the Nile to Nubia. It is also reflected in the relative prominence of querns for grinding, as well as new archaeobotanical techniques for identifying crumbs of bread or crusts of porridge. At first bread may have been the distinctive new cereal food, unlike anything that was easily cooked from wild gathered foods. But later bread lent itself to portability, and therefore to sharing among traders, travellers, and across the echelons of society. It complemented the cheeses and butters that pastoral producers might also make portable. Bread could be shared as offerings to distant gods alongside odours of incense and roast sacrificial meats.

Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, NYU
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028