Introductory description

Foucault while writing his History Of Sexuality was happy to concede that to the ancients food was overwhelmingly more of a concern than sex, and over the past decade a number of scholars have shown an interest in this important area of study. This concern is manifested most obviously in four particular areas: the Symposium, with all its social and cultural practices, Religion, The Body and Medicine.
A course focussed on food and drink provides the most natural environment, therefore, for the study of some central issues in ancient Greek history, society and culture. Food, drink and the body constituted a privileged zone for constructions of identity and difference: differences between Greeks and Barbarians, gods and men, men and women, humans and animals, social and political distinctions. Practices of equal participation in the sacrificial banquet and medical anxiety about maintaining balance (isonomia) informed political ideologies, while the private symposium, the drinking-party, was a pre-eminent site for the forging of social bonds in the Greek world. The agricultural cycle complemented the cycle of waging war and trading overseas. An inability to maintain control of the routes of the grain-trade led to Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian War and remained a critical concern of foreign policy thereafter.
The relevant material is diverse and includes some important corpora: sympotic vases, medical writings, sympotic literature. The diversity of the material and the centrality of the subject mean that students will be able to deploy a particularly diverse range of approaches: comparative anthropology, reconstructions of the ancient environment from economic models, the study of skeletal remains, structuralist approaches to myth, cultic practices and death, Foucauldian approaches to regimen and self-discipline, new approaches to iconography.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

This module uses the notion of the Material Body as a site for the thematic study of some areas of ancient culture, which are sometimes treated separately in modern scholarship, but which are closely related symbolically and structurally in the ancient world: food supply and nutrition, commensality, the body.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• be aware of recent scholarly approaches to food and drink
• appreciate the changing significance of food and drink
• understand the contribution made by different types of source material to the study of this topic
• learn how to examine primary texts and material data closely

Indicative reading list

Generic Reading lists can be found in Talis

Specific reading list for the module can be found on

Subject specific skills

Knowledge
On completion of the module students should be able to show knowledge of:

• the foodways of the ancient Mediterranean
• the diverse materials which allow us to know about the foodways of the ancient Mediterranean
• comparative material and anthropological and sociological theories relevant to the contextualization and analysis of the foodways of the ancient Mediterranean

Analysis and Critique
On completion of the module students should be able:

• to critically assess a wide range of diverse materials as a source of information on the place of food and drink in ancient Mediterranean culture and society
• to construct their own arguments based on their assessment of modern debates and ancient materials on food and drink in ancient Mediterranean culture and society
• to communicate their ideas in the form of written essays, and in oral presentations to the group
• to work with other members of the group, identifying differences of approach and emphasis, defending and/or modifying their arguments, and cooperating to produce a new synthetic analysis

Transferable skills

• critical thinking
• problem solving
• active lifelong learning
• communication
• teamwork and working effectively with others
• information literacy
• ICT literacy
• intercultural learning and diversity awareness
• professionalism