Last week (6-11 of May) the archaeobotany team working on Roman foodways was invited to present their work in Poland. The visit started in Warsaw, where they were hosted by Prof. Aldona Mueller-Bieniek at the University of Warsaw. Marie Curie Fellow, Dr Patricia Vandorpe, delivered the talk ‘Defining foodways across the Roman Empire using archaeobotanical evidence: from Italy to the northern provinces’ on behalf of the team (Alexandra Livarda, Federica Riso, Patricia Vandorpe). Afterwards, they were given a tour of the archaeobotany laboratories of the university, and they paid tribute to the statue of Marie Sklodowska-Curie, who was born in the city.
On the 8th of May, the team moved to Łódź to attend the 6th conference of Colloquia Ceranea, organised by the Waldemar Ceran Research Centre for the History and Culture of the Mediterranean Area and South-East Europe “Ceraneum”, University of Łódź. There, on the 9th of May, they delivered an invited talk titled ‘Culinary trajectories in the Roman Empire through archaeobotanical evidence: from Italy to the northern provinces’ (Alexandra Livarda, Federica Riso, Patricia Vandorpe) in the session on archaeology of ancient alimentation. The talk included information on the project ‘Urbanisation, commerce and foodways in the Roman world’ directed by Dr. Alexandra Livarda and Prof. Hector Orengo and results of the MSCA projects PlantNetGem (led by Dr Vandorpe) and NetFoodIt (led by Dr Riso).
The team enjoyed discussing their work and results and the trip ended with a lot of new food for thought to take along! Hasta la próxima!
Funding information:
Dr Federica Riso, Project NetFoodIt (Horizon MSCA-2021-PF-01, Proposal number 101065142): Networking food plant imports in Roman Italy. Supervisors Dr A Livarda, Prof H Orengo (https://netfoodit.icac.cat/)
Dr Patricia Vandorpe.,Project PlantNetGem (Horizon MSCA-2021-PF-01, Proposal number 101063192): Exploring the process of urbanisation in the Roman provinces of Germania through the study of food plant commerce. Supervisors Dr A Livarda, Prof H Orengo (https://plantnetgem.icac.cat/)
Dr Alexandra Livarda, RYC-2017-22105, Agencia Estatal de Investigación.
From left to right: Drs Patricia Vandorpe, Federica Riso and Aldona Mueller-Bieniek outside the University of Warsaw
Drs Patricia Vandorpe and Federica Riso during the presentation at the Ceranea conference at Łódź
