Tasting the Past: Sensory Archaeology and Roman Foodways

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• Erica Rowan, Royal Holloway University of London
• Thursday 13 November 2025, 16:00-17:30
• McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research Seminar Room.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Akshyeta Suryanarayan.

Interacting with food is a deeply engaging multisensory experience. It is also a necessary experience, taking place, hopefully, multiple times per day. The basic human need to eat and easy access to ingredients in the modern world has led to the popular practice of re-constructing Roman dishes. Such experiments can lead to a better understanding of ‘what Roman food tasted like’, or ‘what it was like to eat in the Roman world’, yet without any theoretical underpinnings, it remains an academically limited and highly subjective experience. Applying sensory archaeology to such experiments and to our enormous body of archaeological evidence for Roman dietary practices, enables us to take a more nuanced approach to Roman foodways and ask more complex questions. This talk will explore the way the theories and methods of sensory archaeology have been applied to Roman foodways and the results of such interdisciplinary research. It has thus far opened to door to studying more ephemeral experiences such as homesickness and nostalgia, and the experiences of minority groups and the marginalized.

The link to join the lecture online is here: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/3693237776111?p=raZyEwVDtKHkBu2fP9

This talk is part of the Department of Archaeology - Garrod seminar series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Arch seminars
• Computational and Digital Archaeology Lab (CDAL)
• Department of Archaeology - Garrod seminar series
• McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research Seminar Room

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