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Hi Naomi,
So glad you sent this. I have the Food and Drink.. title on my UCLA
Research list, thinking it was a title I didn't have. However, I have
long had the "On salt and Salt Gathering in ANE.. "
In any case appreciate you keeping an eye out for me. Did I tell
you about the woman in Crete who told me that older peopl used to store
their seeds in salt to prevent pests?
Bea
>Hello,
>
>With regard to salt, the following, this may be of some use,
>especially Potts....:
>
> From the completely misnamed through no fault of the authors [orig.
>title: Food and Drink in the Ancient Near East and North Africa]:
>
>Miller, Naomi F. and Wilma Wetterstrom
>2000 The Cambridge World History of Food, eds. K.F. Kiple and K. C.
>Ornelas, pp.1123-1139. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
>
>p. 1126:
>"Finally, the period of the later villages seems to have been the
>time when people began to use salt as a food preservative, although
>the mineral may have been used for animal hide preparatin as early
>as the seventh millennium B.C. Archaeological evidence for the
>production and procurement of salt at this time is not available
>(Potts 1984), but it is difficult to imagine that the large
>quantities of fish placed as offerings in the fifth millennium B.C.
>temple at Eridu were fresh! Certainly by the third millennium, drying
>and salting were well-known techniques of food preservation (see
>Reiner 1980). In summary, it seems that the major food-transforming
>technologies developed and spread between about 5500 and 3500 B.C."
>
>the refs cited:
>Potts, Daniel. 1984. On salt and salt gathering in ancient
>Mesopotamia. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
>27: 225-271.
>
>Reiner, Erica, ed. 1980. The Assyrian dictionary of the Oriental
>Institute of the University of Chigaco, vol. 2. Chicago. [I guess we
>should have put a page ref. here...]
>
>
>On Oct 6, 2008, at 6:34 PM, Beatrice Hopkinson wrote:
>
>> Mark,
>>
>> You must be intensely interested at Kew in environment so
>> hope you
>> don't mind my asking you a question. I'm looking at the need for
>> salt
>> for preserving food in the Bronze and Iron Age as populations
>> increased
>> and surplus food was very seasonal. Clearly with greater food
>> supplies
>> (but less variety in food products regionally) populations didn't
>> suffer
>> famines as frequently - but from a farming point of view how long
>> do you
>> think were periods between surplus food supplies.
>>
>> Hope I've posed that question correctly?
>>
>> [log in to unmask]
>>
>>> This might be of interest to some. Queries to the organisers,
>>> please - not
>>> to me! Mark
>>>
>>> Weather, Climate Change, and British Farming in Historical
>>> Perspective
>>> Saturday 6 December 2008
>>>
>>> This year's British Agricultural History Society winter conference
>>> is on
>>> 'Weather, Climate Change, and British Farming'. It runs from
>>> 10.30-4.30
>>> and includes four papers: Steve Rippon on 'Agriculture in the late
>>> Roman
>>> and early medieval landscape: environmental or social change?' Bruce
>>> Campbell on 'Harvest failure and harvest success: three centuries of
>>> English grain yields, 1211-1491' Mary Young, Karen Cullen and Chris
>>> Whatley on ' "Depauperat, dead or fled": the social and psychological
>>> impact on Scottish rural communities of the turbulent weather
>>> suffered in
>>> the later seventeenth century.' And John Martin on 'The bleak
>>> midwinter of
>>> 1947: causes and consequences'.
>>>
>>> Venue: Wolfson and Pollard Rooms, Institute of Historical
>>> Research, Malet
>>> St, London.
>>> Contact: Dr Jane Whittle [log in to unmask]
>>> Website: http://www.bahs.org.uk/
>>>
>
>-------------------------------------
>Naomi F. Miller
>University of Pennsylvania Museum
>MASCA-Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology
>3260 South Street
>Philadelphia, PA 19104
>--------------------------------------
>tel: (215) 898 4075; FAX: (215) 898-0657
>http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~nmiller0/
>
>
>
>
>
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