Foodways & Daily Life in Medieval Anatolia. A New Social History by Nicolas Trépanier (review)

Foodways touch on many aspects of daily life—agriculture, cuisine, diet, health, religion (including fasting), and trade. Trépanier’s engagingly written study of fourteenth-century Central Anatolia is based primarily on passing references in contemporary written sources that are relevant to these subjects—narratives (hagiographies and chronicles) and waqfiyas, which, as legal documents that established charitable foundations, were preserved and sometimes recopied. Trépanier mines these sources, taking into account how social relationships of the writers and presumed audiences may have biased the information contained therein. A smattering of archaeological evidence informs some of the discussion. The study provides a detailed analysis of textual sources, but it does not reach broader conclusions.

Having chosen a topic that is admittedly limited by time, space, and available documentation, Trépanier teases out information from documents the original purpose of which bears little relationship to the subject of interest. He asks, for example, did a food item or culinary practice receive mention because it was common, because it was odd and noteworthy, or because it was simply a literary convention? His method is to compare sources to determine whether or not such mention reflects a medieval reality. Unfortunately, Trépanier occasionally leaves readers “to conjecture” and “imagine” what “no source ever mentions”; the documents, for example, are “all but silent” about the effect of plundering armies on peasants’ means of production (60). Nevertheless, such authorial modesty invites confidence in Trépanier’s more assertive interpretations, such as when he makes the surprising discovery in the written sources that alcohol consumption was not uncommon, at least among the Muslim upper classes (101). Even a seemingly fanciful story about a cat that fasts to death in mourning for its master provides insight, in this case about the custom of distributing sweets at a funeral (13).

There are only a few archaeological sites in Central Anatolia with fourteenth-century excavations, and most of the findings from them are not widely known, even to archaeologists. Trépanier consults this evidence primarily to document the presence of particular crops and domestic animals, and, to some extent, to describe the way in which they were managed. Although he discusses the relative importance of mutton and beef in both texts and archaeological deposits, he misses a recent botanical report from Gordion, which documents the presence of summer crops of rice, cotton, and foxtail millet (84).¹ The material evidence of summer crop cultivation suggests that inhabitants practiced summer irrigation, even if no document mentions it.

In principle, archaeological evidence would be able to provide answers to some of the questions that Trépanier raises in the text. For example, animal bones from a rural settlement could confirm or refute the apparent absence of shepherd dogs in the texts that Trépanier consults (36). Similarly, amphora and residue analysis could deepen our textual understanding of who had access to wine (79). Archaeology excels in the interpretation of features in space. Trépanier discusses a few pyrotechnical installations (73), but further excavation might eventually resolve his question of whether medieval Anatolia had professional bakers (67); the distribution of ovens could distinguish commercial and domestic production. Given the importance of home and hearth, more archaeological research will improve understanding of these socially salient features. At a larger scale, the size and wealth of domestic remains might show whether rich people and poor people lived in the same neighborhoods, and whether “houses belonging to the urban elite . . . [had] their own stockpiles” of food (67).

Medieval archaeology has the unrealized potential to complement the documentary sources. As more excavations become available, we can only hope that archaeologists will apply their reasoning with as much nuance and love of subject as Trépanier has done.