Cuisine in Transition: Organic residue analysis of domestic containers from 9th-14th century Sicily

From the 9th the 14th century AD, Sicily experienced a number of rapid and quite radical changes in regimes. Sicily was first ruled by the Aghlabid and Kalbid dynasties in the 9th-11th century, then ruled by the Normans in the 12th century and then the Swabians in the 13th and finally ruled by the crown of Aragon in the 14th century. This thesis used the concept of cuisine, the ways in which foods are prepared combined and consumed, as a proxy for understanding the lives of the general population of Sicily during these regimes. A multifaceted organic residue analysis approach was applied to over 240 domestic containers from different sites in western Sicily to 1) understand what foods were selected, combined, and processed in ceramics vessels and 2) how the contents of these ceramics compare in urban and rural socio-economic settings and between Islamic, Norman, Swabian and Aragonese contexts. Through a large-scale, multifaceted organic residue approach, a range of commodities were identified in the ceramic vessels including animal fats, vegetable products, fruit products, beeswax, and plant resins. In many cases a mixture of commodities were observed, reflecting both sequential cooking events and/or the complex mixtures reflective of medieval recipes. The identification and combination of similar products demonstrated shared culinary habits amongst populations in different sites and chronological periods. However, some discrete differences in pottery use has shed new light on the patterning of resource use between the sites studied particularly between urban and rural sites and changes in culinary traditions in line with transitions in regime. A reconciliation of the results of organic residue analysis with other archaeological evidence of food has provided further insight into foodways and lifeways of the people in Sicily that experienced these transitions.