The Role of Precooked Staples in Everyday Life in Antiquity: Some Documentary Evidences for the Case of χόνδρος

Authors

  • Antonino Pollio Università di Napoli "Federico II"
  • Gianluca Del Mastro Università di Napoli "Federico II"

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13135/1825-263X/1900

Keywords:

Chondros, athera, wheat, barley, papyri

Abstract

Different species belonging to the genus Triticum, and, to a lesser extent, Hordeum, can be processed yielding a product that the ancient Greeks called χόνδρος. In this paper the production methods of χόνδροc in circum-Mediterranean countries during Antiquity will be described.  Several documentary sources attest a very ancient use of χόνδρος that we find mentioned in Graeco-Egyptian papyri as early as the third century B.C. These documents have been analyzed in parallel with Greek literary sources. In particular, attention has been centred on some passages of Greek comedy (Aristophanes and other authors) that echo a debate born in Rome in the second century AD around the origin and uses of χόνδρος.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Antonino Pollio, Università di Napoli "Federico II"

Antonino Pollio is a graduated in Biology from the University Federico II of Naples. From1984 to 1989, he worked as a visiting professor of Botany in the University of Salento, Lecce, Italy. In 1991, he started his career at the Department of Plant Biology of the University Federico II of Naples, and since 1998, he became a professor of Botany at the same University.

 

Pollio’s research is both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary. His research expertise includes ethnobotany and history of plant uses in Antiquity, and he has paid  a special attention to the medicinal plants quoted in the so called Corpus Hippocraticum, and in other Ancient and Medieval texts. In collaboration with A. De Natale and G.B. Pezzatti, he has  built a relational ethnobotanical databases of the Campania region (Southern Italy) on the basis of information gathered from different historical sources, including diaries, travel accounts, and treatises on medicinal plants, written by explorers, botanists, physicians, who travelled in Campania during the last three centuries. Moreover, ethnobotanical uses described in historical herbal collections and in Ancient and Medieval texts from the Mediterranean Region have been included in the database. He has also devoted studies on some distinguished physicians and  botanists of XVI and XVIII century, as Prospero Alpini and  Jacob Plenck.  Antonino Pollio has also experience working with museums and collections of botanical records.

Gianluca Del Mastro, Università di Napoli "Federico II"

Gianluca Del Mastro is Assistant Professor in Papyrology at the University of Naples. He was educated and has specialized in the humanities and is occupied with the study of ancient manuscripts, archaeology, the history of Classical scholarship, and digital humanities, especially in the field of cultural heritage. He received an MA in Multimedia and Cultural Heritage (Naples-Zernike Science Park, Groeningen, Holland) and participates as a member in seversl projects. He studies the production and diffusion of ancient manuscripts in the Mediterranean Basin, especially in Campania. He has received awards for research on ancient texts and on the textual history of ancient texts. His creation and management of databases, digital books, and other digital tools permits him to plan and create other such instruments for every variety of cultural asset.  He was a visiting scholar at Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah) in 2003 and received his PhD in Greek and Latin Philology. Between 2007-8 he was ricercatore at ILIESI-CNR. His specific area of specialization is papyrology (he did additional coursework at University College London). He has published about 70 academic works (a list is available at https://www.docenti.unina.it) and has worked on the restoration and edition of both Graeco-Egyptian and Herculaneum papyri, publishing papyri from many collections and especially Herculaneum papyri, whose restoration he has also participated in. Further, he has planned the restoration of the Derveni papyrus, which is preserved at the Museum of Thessaloniki. He participates in the Université Paris - Sorbonne and CNRS project for the study of the Herculaneum papyri given to Napoleon and conserved in Paris. He is the editor of the Thesaurus Herculanensium Voluminum and of Χάρτηϲ, Catalogo Multimediale dei Papiri Ercolanesi.

References

Badr, Amr, Karl Müller, Ralf Schäfer-Pregl, Ha El Rabey, Sigi Effgen, H. H. Ibrahim, Carlo Pozzi, Wolfgang Rohde and Francesco Salamini. 2000. “On the origin and domestication history of barley (Hordeum vulgare).” Molecular Biology and Evolution 17:499–510.

BL: Berichtigungsliste der griechischen Papyrusurkunden aus Ägypten VIII, IX, XII Leiden 1992, 1995, 2009.

Battaglia, Emanuela. 1989. “Artos.” Il lessico della panificazione nei papiri greci. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

Canali De Rossi, Filippo. 2004. Iscrizioni dello Estremo Oriente Greco. Un repertorio (“Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien, 65”). Bonn: Dr. Rudolf Habelt.

Cohen, Andrew C. 2007. “Barley as a Key Symbol in Early Mesopotamia.” In Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context. Festschrift Irene J. Winter (“Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 26”), edited by Jack Cheng and Marian H.Feldman, 411-422. Leiden-Boston, Brill.

Crawford, Dorothy J. 1967. “A Ptolemaic Petition on Stone.” Chronique d’Égypte 42:355-359.

Crowther, Alison. 2012. “The differential survival of native starch during cooking and implications for archaeological analyses: a review.” Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 4:221–235.

Edgar, Campbell C. 1925. Zenon Papyri. Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire, I. Cairo.

Evers, Anthony and Mark Nesbitt. 2006. “Cereals.” In The encyclopedia of seeds: science, technology and uses, edited by M. Black, J. D. Bewley and P. Halmer, 65-70. Wallingford: CABI.

Fournet, Jean-Luc. 1989. “Les emprunts du grec à l’égyptien.” Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris 84.1:55-80.

Frazer, James G. 1995. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. New York: Touchstone Books.

Harlan, Jack Rodney and Daniel Zohary. 1966. “Distribution of wild wheats and barley.” Science 153:1074-1080.

Harrauer, Hermann. 2010. Handbuch der griechischen Paläographie (“Bibliothek des Buchwesens 20”). Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann Verlag.

Hunter, Richard L. 2004. Eubulus. The fragments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 19381.

Kruit, Nico, and Klaas A. Worp. 2000. “Geographical Jar Names: Towards a Multi-Disciplinary Approach.” Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete 46.2:65-146.

Matijašić, Ivan. 2011. “Su un frammento di collocazione incerta di Ellanico di Lesbo: FGrHist 4 F 192.” Revue de philologie, de littérature et d’histoire anciennes 1, Tome 85:139-147.

Milano, Lucio. 1993. “Mehl.” Reallexikon der Assyriologie 8:22-31.

Morrell, L. Peter, and Michel T. Clegg. 2007. “Genetic evidence for a second domestication of barley (Hordeum vulgare) east of the Fertile Crescent.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104:3289-3294.

Oliveira, Hugo Raphael, Huw Jones, Fiona Leigh, Diane Lorraine Lister, Martin K. Jones and Leonor Peña-Chocarro. 2011. “Phylogeography of einkorn landraces in the Mediterranean basin and Central Europe: population structure and cultivation history.” Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 3:327–341.

Özkan Hakan, Andrea Brandolini, Ralf Schäfer-Pregl and Francesco Salamini. 2002. “AFLP Analysis of a Collection of Tetraploid Wheats Indicates the Origin of Emmer and Hard Wheat Domestication in Southeast Turkey.” Molecular Biology and Evolution 19:1797–1801.

Pestman, Pieter W. 1981 (ed.), A Guide to the Zenon Archive (P.L.Bat. 21), Pap.Lugd.Bat. XXI A-B. Leiden: Brill.

Piperno, Dolores R., Ehud Weiss, Irene Holst, and Dani Nadel. 2004. “Processing of wild cereal grains in the Upper Palaeolithic revealed by starch grain analysis.” Nature 430:670-673.

Salamini, Francesco, Hakan Özkan, Andrea Brandolini, Ralf Schäfer-Pregl, and William Martin. 2002. “Genetics and geography of wild cereal domestication in the Near East.” Nature Reviews Genetics 3:429–441.

Sarpaki, Anaya. 2009. “Harvest Rites and Corn Dollies in the Bronze Age Aegean.” Hesperia Supplements, 42, Essays on Ritual and Cult in Crete in Honor of Geraldine C. Gesell: 59-67.

SB: Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Ägypten III, Berlin and Leipzig 1926-1927.

SEG: Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum. Leiden: Brill 1982.

Seider, Richard. 1990. Paläographie der griechischen Papyri, III. Stuttgart: Hiersemann.

Shewry, Peter R. 2009. “Wheat.” Journal of Experimental Botany 60.6:1537-1553.

Spaeth Stanley, Barbette. 1994. “The Goddess Ceres in the Ara Pacis Augustae and the Carthage Relief.” American Journal of Archaeology 77:65-100.

Tester, Richard F., John Karkalas, and Xin Qi. 2004. “Starch-composition, fine structure and architecture.” Journal of Cereal Science 39.2:151-165.

Tosi, Renzo. 1991. Dizionario delle sentenze latine e greche. Milano: Rizzoli.

Valamoti Soultana, Maria and Konstantinos Kotsakis. 2007. “Transitions to agriculture in the Aegean: the archaeobotanical evidence”. In The Origins and Spread of Domestic Plants in Southwest Asia and Europe, edited by Sue Colledge and James Conolly, 75-91. London: University College London Institute of Archaeology Publications.

Valamoti Soultana, Maria. 2011. “Ground cereal food preparations from Greece: the prehistory and modern survival of traditional Mediterranean 'fast foods'.” Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 3:19-39.

Walters, Peter. 1973. The Text of the Septuagint. Its Corruptions and Their Emendation, edited by David W. Gooding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Zeeman, Samuel C., Jens Kossmann and Alison M. Smith. 2010. “Starch: its metabolism, evolution, and biotechnological modification in plants.” Annual Review of Plant Biology 61:209-234.

Downloads

Published

2016-12-08

Issue

No. 20 (2016)

Section

Prelude / Preludio

License

Gli autori che pubblicano su Kervan accettano le seguenti condizioni:

  1. Gli autori mantengono i diritti sulla loro opera e cedono alla rivista il diritto di prima pubblicazione dell'opera, contemporaneamente licenziata sotto una Licenza Creative Commons - Attribuzione che permette ad altri di condividere l'opera indicando la paternità intellettuale e la prima pubblicazione su questa rivista.
  2. Gli autori possono aderire ad altri accordi di licenza non esclusiva per la distribuzione della versione dell'opera pubblicata (es. depositarla in un archivio istituzionale o pubblicarla in una monografia), a patto di indicare che la prima pubblicazione è avvenuta su questa rivista.