On 28th June, the FoodCult Team presented a panel at the ‘Food Systems’ conference hosted by the Institute for Sustainable Food at the University of Sheffield. Through six integrated papers we showcased recent results from the project with a focus on a case study from Carrickmines Castle.
On 24th May, Susan gave a keynote lecture at the Posthumus Conference, hosted at the University of Antwerp. The conference theme was ‘food inequalities’ and the lecture focused on the the value of interdisciplinary research and practice based approaches to understanding diets in the past.
On 17th April 2023 Susan presented a keynote lecture at a BrIAS Workshop on
‘Dietary Dilemmas: Influences on Consumer ‘Choice’ in Preindustrial Societies’. The workshop was organised by Prof. Dr. Beat Kümin & Prof. Dr. ir. Frits Heinrich as part of a collaboration between Department of History & Food GRP, University of Warwick and the Brussels Institute of Advanced Studies. The paper focused on food and religion in early modern modern Ireland and presented findings from across the workpackages, exploring the significance of religious ideas and practices on consumption and social interaction in early modern Ireland.
On 2nd February, Susan will present a talk on ‘Bere and Brewing History’ at the IBH seminar. The seminar is focussed on working with heritage barley, and the talk will share the FoodCult teams’s experience of recreating sixteenth century beer with bere.
On 6th January 2023 the FoodCult team presented a panel of 7 papers at the SHA annual conference in Lisbon. These papers represented individual ongoing workpackages, but also our efforts to integrate our approaches towards developing a deeper understanding of diet and food culture in Ireland.
Marc Meltonville, FoodCult’s ‘Brewer in Chief’, will present a paper featuring our recent research at the ‘Ale Through the Ages’ Conference at Williamsburg VA. The paper, ‘Beer & Roses, building a Tudor brewery’ reflects on the process of recreating historic beers and the challenges of authenticity. The conference runs from 11-13th November.
On 16th October 2021, Susan presented some initial findings from the FoodCult Brewing Project at the National Monuments Service Nexus: People and Places Through Time Conference. The lecture is now available as an online podcast.
We are pleased to announce that we will be presenting preliminary results from the project at two forthcoming conferences.
27th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists
The conference takes place online and in Kiel, Germany. Meriel will present a paper on the emerging evidence for plant remains in the Mapping Diet database. This will focus on cereals and fruits to highlight the challenges and benefits of an interdisciplinary approach, key gaps in knowledge, and how the FoodCult project is addressing these issues.
Some of these preliminary results will also appear in a forthcoming publication:
McClatchie, Flavin and O’Carroll, “Unearthing a new food culture: fruits in early modern Ireland” in Valamoti et. al. eds. Cooking with Plants in Ancient Europe and Beyond: interdisciplinary approaches to the Archaeology of Plant Foods (Sidestone Press, forthcoming 2021)
4th Annual National Monuments Service archaeology conference: “Nexus: People and Places Through Time”
On the 18th October, Susan will present the preliminary results from the Brewing project which is due to run from 1st-19th September. The paper will focus on the interdisciplinary methods used by the team to recreate sixteenth-century beer, our findings with regards to the brewing process, and the quality of the end product, in nutritional terms.
On Tuesday March 23rd 2021, Susan will join food historians Allen J Grieco and Peter Scholliers in a panel discussion on ‘Food and Drink Cultures Through the Ages’. The discussion will be moderated by Beat Kümin, Professor of Early Modern European History and GRP thematic lead for ‘Food Cultures’ at the University of Warwick.
On January 8th, Dr Meriel McClatchie will discuss ‘Investigating ancient foodways through environmental archaeology’ with The Royal Society of Antiquities of Ireland. Meriel’s paper will feature some interesting new findings in relation to fruit consumption in early modern Ireland, as revealed by the FoodCult database. It will also explore the benefits of interdisciplinary research for historians and archaeologists.
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