Session: #128

Discussion session (with formal abstracts)

Fermentation is a well-established practice in many human societies, suggesting that such food processing may have been widely exploited by ancient societies. It has certainly been a key parameter in the preservation and storage of food, but it may also have been sought as an alternative to cooking to modify food, create new flavours and textures. Written sources attest to the taste of historical societies for this type of product (e.g. wine and vinegar, beer, fish sauce and garum, etc.).
As fermentation causes changes in food products similar to those of natural degradation, it is often difficult to detect this type of process in archaeological remains. In addition, fermented products can be made from a wide variety of foods (vegetables, fruits, cereals, milk, meat, fish, etc.), which can result in different archaeological remains (specific forms of pottery, storage structures, alterations in ceramic surfaces, botanical and faunal remains, molecular residues in the pottery sherds, etc.). There is therefore currently no archaeology of fermented products, but a multitude of approaches, often independent and rarely integrated.
This session is intended to present different methods of study of fermented products currently employed in archaeology (ceramology, archaeobotany, use-wear analysis, organic residue analysis, ethnoarchaeology, etc.), with the aim of developing an interdisciplinary approach, so as to explore as precisely as possible the fermentation processes used by ancient societies.

Fermentation, Food practices, Conservation, Recipes, Consumption

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Léa Drieu (United Kingdom) ¹

Pauline Debels (France) ^2,3