Overview

A synthesis of culinary practices of prehistoric Greece based on plant food ingredients In Plant Foods of Greece, Greek archaeologist Soultana Maria Valamoti takes readers on a culinary journey, reconstructing the plant foods and culinary practices of Neolithic and Bronze Age Greece. For more than thirty years, she has been analyzing a large body of archaeobotanical data that was retrieved from nearly twenty sites in mainland Greece and the Greek islands, with an additional analysis of other sites as referenced by published colleagues. Plant foods were the main ingredients of daily meals in prehistoric Greece and most likely of special dishes prepared for feasts and rituals. Valamoti’s approach allows an exploration of culinary variability through time. The thousands of charred seeds identified from occupation debris correspond to minuscule time capsules. She is able to document changes from the cooking of the first farmers to the sophisticated cuisines of the elites who inhabited palaces in the first cities of Europe in the south of Greece during the Late Bronze Age. Along the way, she explains the complex processes for the addition of new ingredients (such as millet and olives), condiments, sweet tastes, and complex recipes. Valamoti also addresses regional variability and diversity as well as detailing experimentation and research using occasional input from ancient written sources. Comprehensive and synthetic coverage encompasses bread/cereals, pulses, oils, fruit and nuts, fermented brews, healing foods, cooking, and identity. In addition, Valamoti offers insight into engaging in public archaeology and provides recipes that incorporate ancient plant ingredients and connect prehistory to the present in a critical way. A definitive source for a range of food scientists and scholars, it will also appeal to foodies.

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Reviews

"Plant Foods of Greece provides a regional biography that compiles archaeobotanical and ethnobotanical data for reconstruction of vegetarian components of diets in prehistoric Greece. It is an important contribution, since such regional overviews in the field of archaeobotany are widely lacking. It has the potential to become the definitive book on prehistoric culinary plant use in Greece."" —Wiebke Kirleis, author of Atlas of Neolithic Plant Remains from Northern Central Europe"

Plant Foods of Greece provides a regional biography that compiles archaeobotanical and ethnobotanical data for reconstruction of vegetarian components of diets in prehistoric Greece. It is an important contribution, since such regional overviews in the field of archaeobotany are widely lacking. It has the potential to become the definitive book on prehistoric culinary plant use in Greece. --Wiebke Kirleis, author of Atlas of Neolithic Plant Remains from Northern Central Europe

Author Information

Soultana Maria Valamoti is professor of archaeology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and leader of PlantCult, a program funded by the European Research Council on the role of plant foods in shaping the prehistoric cuisines of Europe.

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