Two Approaches to the History of Ancient and Medieval Cheesemaking

American Cheese Society

November 12, 2024 Sarah S News Team DHIA, News 0

Join ACS for a webinar at 11am MT/1pm ET on Friday, November 8th.

This dynamic webinar includes two papers, by academic researchers who specialize in the history of cheesemaking. In the first paper, “Making and Eating Cheese in Medieval England and Ireland,” Leslie Lockett uses written sources, both literary and historical, to explore cheesemaking in the British Isles during the early medieval period (around 600-1200 CE). Authors in England characterized cheese as a food that was produced in great quantities, but without cultivating distinctive or pleasant flavors; Irish authors of the same time period, in contrast, prized cheese as a prestigious food, and they recorded individual names for types of cheese that were characterized by distinctive shapes and textures.

Second, Scott D. Stull’s paper, “Recreating Ancient and Historic Cheese through Experimental Archaeology,” combines material and written evidence for Neolithic European, ancient Roman, and medieval cheesemaking, such as the shapes of ancient cheesemaking vessels, analysis of lipid residues in pottery vessels, and (for more recent centuries) recipes and historical documents. All these classes of evidence inform the practice of experimental archaeology, in which ancient and historic cheeses are recreated in order to impart a more intimate understanding of the technologies of cheesemaking and the experience of consuming those cheeses.

Speakers:

  • Professor Leslie Lockett, Department of English, The Ohio State University Associate Professor of English
  • Dr. Scott Stull, Sociology-Anthropology

This webinar is free for all ACS members or $25 for non-members.

RSVP Here.

The recording will also be available on the ACS Learning Center after.





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