Abstract book ISBN:
978-80-907270-3-8 (EuropeanAssociation of Archaeologists); 978-84-9168-140-3 (Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, vol. 1); 978-84-9168-143-4 (Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, vol. 2)
Title:
Empowering daily meals: Gender, Power and Cultural Entanglements in Empúries, northeast Catalonia (5th-4th centuries BC)
Content:
In recent years, food, foodways and culinary traditions have become a solid line of research in the study of diasporic or colonial contexts and in the analysis of cultural contacts between migrant communities and native peoples. Despite its relevance, in Ancient Mediterranean studies these inquiries have focused mainly on consumption practices and materialities related to extraordinary foods and, particularly, Mediterranean wine. These studies have stressed out the centrality of wine ingest and the materialities associated to its service and consumption in the creation of cultural entanglements, the negotiation of power relationships and social networks as well as the politics of masculinities. On the contrary, the analysis of culinary practices, traditions and materialities related to ordinary food –such as local porridges– have been belittled in the study of cultural contact, gender ideologies, collective identities and power relationships within colonial and migrant communities. They are practices and materialities traditionally related to the domesticity and the feminine sphere, therefore considered as conservative, passive and unrelated to historical, social, economic and power dynamics.
The aims of this communication are twofold. First, to call this dualism between consumption and cuisine in question, and to evidence that this duality has been mostly constructed on colonial and gender-biased perspectives. Secondly, through the study of Empúries’ culinary practices and their associated materialities to highlight the active participation of ordinary food in the economic, social and identity politics of this emporion as well as to empower those people who cooked their daily meals, mostly some Ampuritan women.