Jo Day

Botany meets archaeology: people and plants in the past

This paper explores the close links between botany and archaeology, using case studies from the ancient Mediterranean. It explains the kinds of palaeobotanical remains that archaeologists can recover and the methods used to analyse them. The importance of iconographic and textual evidence is also underlined. Examples of key research areas that focus on ancient plants are discussed: diet and palaeoeconomy; medicines, poisons, and psychotropics; perfumes, cosmetics, and dyes; and prestige.

Making sense of the Greek past

At first glance, these appear to be two very different books, one focusing on the pomp and splendour of Byzantium, the other using case studies from Minoan Crete to support the author’s call for a paradigm shift within archaeology. Yet a shared concern underlies both volumes: how to explore the embodied experience of being human in the past. The recent development of sensory archaeologies (e.g. Skeates 2010; Day 2013) has shown that closer attention to past corporeal experiences can pay dividends. Archaeology is not alone in this interest, and sensory studies are now flourishing in the humanities, influenced at least initially by the seminal work of members of the Concordia Centre for Sensory Studies (e.g. Classen 1993; Howes 2003). Hamilakis provides a thorough discussion of this background and of key theoretical developments in Western understandings of the senses in the first three chapters of his monograph, important context that is surprisingly lacking from the editors’ introduction in Experiencing Byzantium.