Big Data on the Roman Table - 06-07/07/2016, Leicester (England)
Eating and drinking are core activities around which interactions within and between households and communities are structured. As a vital sphere of socio-cultural practice, greater knowledge of everyday food consumption practices can better inform understandings of social connectedness and disconnectedness in the Roman world. Artefacts associated with eating and drinking have been recorded by archaeologists over many decades and are the largest component of ‘big data’ from the Roman world. They include mass-produced terra sigillata fine wares and more numerous local imitations and off-shoots, as well as metal and glass wares and utensils. These under-utilised data provide fine-grained information on Roman food-consumption practices essential for a bottom-up approach to varied experiences of phenomena such as imperialism and globalisation. An artefactual approach permits analyses of representative cross-sections of societies throughout the empire, and more understanding of the lives of people less well recorded in the written sources (e.g. women, children, ordinary soldiers, non-élites, provincials), while also incorporating more visible groups such as urban elites. Current knowledge of everyday consumption practices for the majority living in the Roman Empire remain uneven. Little is known about how, where and with whom most people ate their meals, or what aspects of this social practice might have conveyed a universal sense of shared behaviour.
FECHA/DATE/DATA: 06-07/07/2016
LUGAR/LOCATION/LUOGO: Innovation Centre, University of Exeter (Exeter, England)
ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Pim Allison (University of Leicester); Martin Pitts (University of Exeter)
INFO: web
INSCRIPCIÓN/REGISTRATION/REGISTRAZIONE: inscripción online / registration online / registrazione online
PROGRAMA/PROGRAM/PROGRAMMA:
Tuesday 5th July
Workshop dinner, 6pm, Côte Brasserie (upstairs), 19-21 Cathedral Yard, Exeter, Devon, EX1 1HB
Day 1, Wednesday 6th July
9.00am Welcome& aims (Martin Pitts)
Session 1. Table settings in the Roman world
Part 1: Funerary contexts in the Roman west
9.10am Table wares in funerary objectscapes. Styles of consumption in the Roman west Martin Pitts (University of Exeter)
9.40am Pottery in burials. A discussion on vessel function(s)
Xavier Deru & Alice Dananai (University of Lille)
10.10am Are ceramic grave groups proxy for table settings? Statistical and other approaches to identifying table settings in Roman Britain
Edward Biddulph (Oxford Archaeology)
10.40am Morning break
Part 2: Fine wares from Republic to Empire
11.00am Fine ware “table settings” in Republican Hispania Citerior: defining social-cultural trends?
Jordi Principal (Museud'Arqueologia de Catalunya)
11.30am A Terra Sigillata Revolution? Changing Dining Practices in Roman Mediterranean France (1st c. BCE – 2nd c. CE)
Benjamin Luley (Gettysburg College)
12.00pm Finally cleaning up the mess, after all those centuries. A study of the pottery left behind in a presumed schola at ancient Sagalassos (SW Turkey)
Jerome Poblome&Johan Claeys (University of Leuven)
12.30 pm South Gaulish Terra Sigillata - problems of vessel identification
Allard Mees& Geoffrey Dannell
1.00pm Lunch
Session 2. Developing approaches to vessel use
2.30pm Measuring use wear on black gloss pottery from Rome through 3D surface analysis
Laura Banducci (Carleton University)
3.00pm Domestic patterns of table ware consumption in Roman Celtiberia. An analytic approach
Jesús Bermejo Tirado (York University, Toronto)
3.30pm Afternoon break
3.50pm Pottery distribution and function at the Flavian castra and canabae at Nijmegen
Vincent van der Veen (Radboud University, Nijmegen)
4.20pm Calculating vessel volume as a means of understanding what could have been consumed from drinking vessels
William Baddiley (University of Birmingham)
Day 2, Thursday 7th July
Session 3: New approaches to collating, analysing and visualising data
9.00am Organic residue analysis and Roman pottery: past, present and future applications for understanding vessel use
Lucy Cramp (University of Bristol)
9.30am Tableware from the large Augustan camp on the Hunerberg, Nijmegen
Ryan Niemeijer (Radboud University, Nijmegen)
10.00am Was there a Leicester way of eating?
Martin Sterry and Nick Cooper (University of Leicester)
10.30am Morning break
10.50am Building an inter-site ontological database using ‘legacy data’
Pim Allison, Daanvan Helden, &Yi Hong (University of Leicester)
11.20am Classifying and visualising Roman pottery using computer-scanned typologies
Jacqueline Christmas & Martin Pitts (University of Exeter)
11.50am Exploring automated pottery scanning
Jeremy Levesley, Tyukin, Nick Cooper andPim Allison (University of Leicester)
12.20pm Lunch
Session 4: New data-sets
1.30pm Large Data or Small Data? Fine Ware Finds at Kom al-Ahmer near Alexandria, Egypt
Mohamed Kenawi (Alexandria University)
1.45pm Roman fine wares on the Danube frontier. The example of the Roman colony of Mursa
TinoLeleković (Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb)
2.00pm Tableware from Žutalokva, Roman Dalmatia (Croatia)
Ivana OžanićRoguljić (Institute of Archaeology, Zagreb)
Session 5. Reflexions, conclusions and future directions
2.15pm Research on the Roman Table: data standards, methods and aims
Sarah Colley (University of Leicester)
3.00pm Reflections on the workshop
Steve Willis (University of Kent)
3.30pm Afternoon break, followed by open discussionled by Pim Allison and Martin Pitts