[Sca-cooks] book on raising and consuming animals in Roman Italy
Sandra Kisner
sjk3 at cornell.edu
Mon Oct 10 07:09:58 PDT 2005
This an excerpt from the BMR review of a relatively new book on "Production
and Consumption of Animals in Roman Italy." I'm not sure how much interest
there is in it here (except maybe for Adamantius, who may already have it,
for all I know), but if anyone is interested I can send them the uncut
review off-list, or you could go to the BMR website.
Sandra
****
(From BMCR 2005.10.15)
Michael MacKinnon, Production and Consumption of Animals in Roman Italy:
Integrating the Zooarchaeological and Textual Evidence.
Portsmouth, RI Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2004. Pp. 264. ISBN
1-887829-54-7. $79.50.
Reviewed by George W. Houston, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
(gwhousto at email.unc.edu)
Word count 2320 words
-------------------------------
To read a print-formatted version of this review, see
http//ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2005/2005-10-15.html
-------------------------------
Seldom has the title of a book been more accurately descriptive.
MacKinnon's (henceforth M's) goal is to assemble as complete a picture as
possible of how animals were raised and used in Roman Italy. To accomplish
this goal, he has assembled a database of the faunal remains (primarily
bones and teeth) from 97 Italian sites, most of them dating in the period
from the second century BC to the third century AD. He also summarizes what
we learn from ancient textual sources, especially but by no means
exclusively the writers on agriculture. The result is a composite -- in M's
terms, an "integrated" -- picture of Italian husbandry and the Roman diet.
The book does not advance our understanding of Roman animal husbandry, nor
of the Roman diet, in any major way, but it provides many interesting
details and it is important as an experiment in method, for it illustrates
clearly the potential inherent in the study of faunal remains as well as
the problems involved in using zooarchaeological and textual evidence.
<snip>
The four chapters that follow are the heart of the book. They deal with
cattle (Chapter 4), sheep and goats (5), pigs (6), and butchery, meat
preservation, and cooking (7). Each chapter consists of three parts. First,
M sets out and analyzes, in relentless detail, the zooarchaeological
evidence. Second, he assembles a composite picture of ancient practices and
preferences as they emerge from written texts. The third section is an
"integration" of the zooarchaeological and textual evidence, in which M
discusses where the two types of evidence supplement one another, agree, or
conflict. My comments will deal with these three types of material.
<snip>
Conclusions: M deals in this book with just four animals, primarily as
sources of meat, although he often provides statistics on other taxa as
well. There are good reasons for his decision, but it has serious
consequences. We are not learning much about the Roman diet as a whole, but
about the preferences over time for one or another of the four animals. The
historical conclusions that can be drawn are in general unsurprising. A few
examples: bovines generally lived beyond three years (p. 80; they could be
used for several years as draft animals); adult bulls were rare (p. 80;
they are less tractable than cows or castrated males); the Romans did
recognize and raise two or more breeds of these animals (cattle, p. 85;
pigs, pp. 154-55; note M's statement on p. 243, "perhaps the greatest value
of integrating zooarchaeological and textual data comes in terms of the
analysis of animal breeds and the recognition of breeding improvements";
but note also that even this evidence has not yet helped us identify the
specific breeds); many and perhaps most animals were butchered outside of
urban areas, the meat then being brought in as whole or partial carcasses
(despite the lack of refrigeration), p. 184; cattle were an important
source of meat, pp. 189-94; and in general meat was desired as a part of
the diet, p. 217. These are all interesting points, but they make a rather
modest contribution to our knowledge of ancient Italy.
<snip>
-------------------------------
The BMCR website (http//ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/) contains a complete and
searchable archive of BMCR reviews since our first issue in 1990. It also
contains information about subscribing and unsubscribing from the service.
More information about the Sca-cooks
mailing list