Dietary preferences of the inhabitants of ancient Akrai/Acrae (south-eastern Sicily) during Roman times and the Byzantine period

Résumé 0

This paper presents new insights into the ancient inhabitants of Akrai and seeks to confront the Roman literary tradition and iconography with bioarchaeological data and archaeological artifacts. The paper also contributes to the debate regarding the nature of the Roman diet – with the traditional view (based solely on written and iconographic sources) emphasizing luxurious consumption, extravagant feasts and exoticism. These considerations apply only to the newly available data from recent studies of the ancient town of Akrai/Acrae, located in the interior of south-eastern Sicily, in a strategic location atop a naturally-fortified hill. Although the town has a very long history (it was founded as a Greek colony in the middle of the 7th century BC), the discussion pertains solely to the Roman Empire and Byzantine periods. The chapter is mainly concerned with the osteological material, supplemented by descriptions of certain botanical and archaeological artifacts which provide a complementary picture of the diet. The osteological evidence is also used to address the possible relationship between diet and landscape. Our main findings are that the diet of the inhabitants of Akrai/Acrae was not as varied and elaborate as it is illustrated in ancient written sources and iconography. The diet was based primarily on meat and other products of domesticated animals (especially cattle, sheep and goats, and less frequently pigs and chickens), supplemented by local wild mammals and birds, and by commonly-available plants, and was only slightly diversified by seafood produce from the sea.