Same Taste, Different Place: Looking at the Consciousness of Food Origins in the Roman World

While an enormous variety and quantity of foodstuffs were moved around the Roman Empire, the general population may not always have reflected upon or valued knowledge regarding the origin of their foodstuffs. This article looks at the methodological challenges associated with identifying a consciousness of food origins and connectivity, particularly in the non-elite. Sensory archaeology is used to demonstrate a degree of consciousness based on the physical experience of consumption and the mnemonic links forged between consumption, emotion, and memory. Focusing on the sensory experiences of non-native soldiers, archaeobotanical assemblages from Roman military sites in Germania inferior are used as case studies. The article concludes with a closer look at the frequently mentioned, yet not fully explored notion of a ‘taste of home’ in the ancient world and at what point a foodstuff no longer evoked a reflection upon its place of origin.


Introduction
this awareness have taken and how would it have varied depending upon the individual and item in question? A military legion, for example, could consist of primarily local or foreign soldiers. The difference between native and migrant is crucial when thinking about an individual's interaction and reaction to particular food items. Similarly, not all imported goods would have been treated the same way, even by a single individual. It is unlikely the consumption of imported figs from the Mediterranean and imported peppercorns from India by a military commander at Oberaden would have provoked the same reaction ( ). As will be shown, breaking down our categorizations of both people and ingredients can also help us better understand conceptualizations of connectivity in the ancient world.

Local vs True Imports
Thus far the term imported foods has been used in a broad manner and further definition is required. How far does an item need to be shipped to be considered imported? A particular number of miles? Days of travel? Across provincial boundaries? Instead of using distance as the measure, a differentiation between 'local' and 'true' imports, based on the climatic possibility of production within a wide region, will be used. Here local imports will be regarded as items that could be produced within the area (be it a hinterland, province, etc.) but for whatever reason were also imported, perhaps due to an insufficient supply. Cereals, for example, were frequently transported between and within provinces ( ; ; ; ).
Determining an awareness of the foreign nature of these goods is extremely difficult as the taste, texture and manner of consumption may have been nearly identical to the experience of consuming the locally produced version. In the Bay of Naples, bread made from imported Egyptian wheat may have tasted identical to bread made from Campanian wheat ( ; ; ). We know of course that the Romans valued goods from particular areas, even when there was a local supply. Pork from Gaul and Cisalpine Gaul was appreciated in Italy, a region that already produced pork ( ). However, differentiating between the two may have been down to the quality of an individual's palette or a verbal statement by the supplier stating its place of origin.
True imports, on the other hand, are ingredients that could not be grown or produced locally such as olive oil in ( ; ). Determining knowledge of non-local origins, in this situation, will therefore be more important and more practical than trying to determine knowledge of the specific place of origin. An individual living in Roman Britain, for example, may have grown up in Rome consuming only imported olive oil from Spain. If that individual ate Spanish olive oil while in Britain they would probably think of Rome (i.e. home) and not Spain. Thus the aim is to determine whether or not people thought of someplace else, regardless of where that place may have been and whatever real or imagined form it took.

A Sensory Approach
These methodological challenges will be addressed by taking a sensory approach. While there are very few biological universals and food cultures and habits can vary enormously, it cannot be denied that for all able-bodied humans, eating is a synaesthetic experience whereby all the senses are engaged at the same time. Food is smelled, seen, touched, tasted and heard ( ; ). Eating is also an intimate and personal act of incorporation that (hopefully) takes place several times a day. Depending upon the type of food, eating can be an intensely enjoyable or repulsive experience, evoking physical and emotional reactions ( ). This daily repetitive act creates a deeply ingrained link between food, the senses, and emotion, leading to feelings of joy, comfort and pleasure but also perhaps anger and hatred. As a mnemonic device it aids in the construction of memories that are stored, often subconsciously in the body, and can be recalled whenever a similar consumption experience takes place ( ; ; ).
Anthropological work on food, memory and the individual experience remains a relatively new avenue of research ( ). Traditionally work has focused on historical dietary changes, female relationships with food and the use of food in the creation of nationalism and national identities ( ). Similarly, in archaeology the focus has been on subsistence strategies, nutrition, ecological relationships and food as a symbol ( ). The sub-field of the archaeology of the senses has grown exponentially in recent decades, especially in the area of food and drink consumption. While the focus tends to remain on prehistory, in the last few years there has been an increased interest in the Graeco-Roman period (e.g. ; ). Edited volumes by Bradley ( ) and Rudolph ( ) respectively explore various sensory aspects of smell and taste in antiquity. Chapters by Livarda ( ) and Wallace-Hadrill ( ) have explored imported foods from the sensory perspective but not with the aim of assessing a consciousness of connectivity.
Here the intention is to focus on two aspects of food consumption, namely the basic physical sensory experience and the mnemonic links forged between food and memory during an individual's lifetime. Firstly, the fact that eating is a synaesthetic experience means that from the purely sensory perspective, eating something out of the ordinary is difficult to miss and would provoke a bodily reaction. However, familiar foods eaten in unfamiliar settings or with an unusual group of people can also mark the experience out as different. For example, the consumption of distinctive or non-ordinary foods, such as meat in a largely vegetarian diet and/or in an unfamiliar space was one of the ways ancient societies ensured commensal feasting events were demarcated as special ( ). Consuming food during ritual or burial events had a similar effect ( ).
The second feature is the link that is created between food, memory and place. As Hamilakis ( ) states, The distinctive sensorial identity of a place is created by the range of foods consumed on a daily basis and the sensory experiences associated with those consumption experiences. Eating an imported food in the Roman world would therefore be noted as something outside the sensorial boundaries of the place, provoking both a physical and emotional reaction in the consumer and leading to thoughts of 'someplace else'. As will be shown, the place would of course depend upon an individual's current location and their existing collection of food memories.
As this is the first publication of its kind to tackle this question, we must begin from a relatively simple starting point.
Consequently, the article will look only at the sensory experiences of non-native soldiers stationed on the Lower Rhine Delta and at the nearby military forts at Oberaden and Neuss. These are geographical regions where the cultivation of many 'traditional' Roman foods was not possible and evidence for imports is in abundance. By looking at soldiers it will also be possible to take a closer look at conceptualization of connectivity through the frequently mentioned, yet not fully explored notion of a 'taste of home' in the ancient world. The notion of home, as defined by and in relation to food has only been recently been explored by the wider food studies community ( ). Since the aim is to explore the nonnative experience of consuming imported goods, the focus will be on the first period of occupation where many of the legionary and auxiliary soldiers were recruited from outside the region ( ). The later auxiliary camps, at least until the Batavian revolt, are believed to have been occupied by locally recruited troops ( ).

Figure 1
Map of the Lower Rhine Delta and the surrounding region showing sites discussed in the text. Black squares represent other Roman forts and sites in the area (Modified from Antiquity À-la-carte. Reproduced under CC BY 4.0 License).
The first camp, designed to hold two legions, was constructed between 19 -16 BC near Nijmegen. In 12 BC the camp was abandoned. Twenty years later three new camps were constructed at Vechten, Meinerswijk and Velsen ( Unfortunately, we do not have a full list of the legions stationed at these camps during this time but the evidence does point to primarily warmer Mediterranean origins. At Neuss it is thought that the soldiers came from the southern and eastern provinces ( ; ). We know that the Legio V Alaudae was stationed at Velsen but as the legion was not newly formed it is difficult to make any conclusions regarding the origins of the soldiers ( ). Although the evidence is scant, inscriptions, coins, and weapons suggest that the auxiliary soldiers at Velsen came from Gaulish, Spanish, Illyrian and eastern units ( ). A Daco-Thracian unit may have been stationed at Oberaden ( ). Thus these men were stationed in a region that was determinedly climatically different from their place of origin.
Archaeobotanical sampling, combined with extensive and intensive zooarchaeological, palaeo-ecological and geomorphological regional data means that we can reconstruct the diets of the soldiers living in the Lower Rhine Delta with a high degree of accuracy ( ; ; ). In other words, we can reconstruct the distinctive sensorial identity of that place as experienced by the soldiers. Based on palynological data and macrobotanical sampling at both the military and civilian sites, we know that locally available foods included six-row barley, emmer wheat, millet, flax, gold-of-pleasure, and beef while fruit available for collection included bilberry, blackberry, dewberry, elder, hazel, raspberry and sloe ( ). The Romans introduced edible varieties of celery and beet. Carbonized finds of non-local weed seeds including corn cockle and cornflower suggest that bread wheat and spelt were imported from Gaul ( ; ).
Similarly, while pig bones dominate the zooarchaeological assemblages at both Nijmegen and Velsen, pork may have been imported from nearby areas with more suitable pig rearing habitats. At Velsen 80% of the avifaunal assemblage was composed of chicken, while the remaining 20% was made up of peacock and a range of wild birds. All of these birds, however, would probably have been considered luxury goods at the time and therefore not part of the average soldier's diet (  ;  ;  ). Similarly, while amphorae evidence demonstrates that wine, olive oil and fish sauce were also imported to the forts in Germania inferior they were not recovered in quantities to suggest widespread regular consumption (  ;  ;  ; ). At Nijmegen, the recovery of fish bones from twelve species, including local taxa such as eel, pike and catfish, and migratory species including salmon were found, suggesting that soldiers did have access to a wide range of fish ( ). Consequently, the range of available meat products did not differ significantly from those available in more southern regions of the Empire, although the consumption of fish may have been a new experience for soldiers who grew up in inland locations. A range of wild greens and seeds were undoubtedly consumed, but this practice would have taken place throughout the Empire ( other hand, the narrow range of agricultural goods produced by the local population meant that the daily diet would have probably felt, if not somewhat limited then at least a bit bland for soldiers who had grown up in the more southern regions of the Empire. ( ).
It is worth pausing then, to think about the composition of the diet of these soldiers when they still lived in their home territories. The ever growing body of archaeobotanical and isotopic evidence from the Roman world increasingly suggests that even the non-elite, non-poor ate a varied diet, so variation in the socio-economic background of the soldiers should make little difference to our assessment ( ; ; ). Finally, we must assume that wine, olive oil and fish sauce were also frequently consumed. The amount of meat eaten would have depended upon availability and income ( ). Thus individuals ate a diet that was not only highly varied with regards to taste, texture, smell and sight but one that consisted of ingredients that, for the most part, could not be grown in the northern provinces.
As a result, the consumption of any of the true imports by any individual, regardless of military rank, would have created a distinctive sensory experience that would have been impossible to ignore. Since cooking in military camps was done at the level of the contubernium and camps did not possess central kitchens soldiers would have had a large degree of control over how they consumed or prepared imported goods ( ). Non-routine circumstances, such as a religious festival, may have helped to mark the occasion as special. However, even in the absence of any out-of-the-ordinary occurrences, the vast difference in the smell, taste, sight, touch and even sound of the item, relative to any regularly provided food would have provoked a strong bodily reaction and ensured that the consumer knew the food was not from the area. The bitterness of an olive, the soft oiliness of a walnut, the sweetness of a fig and the spicy heat of black pepper were unlike any of the locally available items. Therefore, it can be argued that the distinctive synaesthetic experience for a soldier at Neuss, Oberaden or the Lower Rhine Delta, of eating one of these foods, ensured that the consumer reflected, if just for a moment, upon somewhere else and was therefore consciously connected to another part of the Roman world. Where, however, was that place? Was it real or imagined? The imported goods recovered from these military sites differed in their place of origin as well as their cost, and crucially, not all experiences would have been the same.
imported wine, olive oil and fish sauce found at the Red Sea ports does suggest that even lower-rank soldiers had access to imported goods (Tab. Vindol. II 184; ; ; ; ; ).
The desire for regular soldiers to consume such items has often been presented as soldiers searching for a taste of home (Bakels and Jacomet 2008: 552). Livarda ( ) states that Mediterranean and exotic seasonings 'followed' the army and, 'What also seems clear is that an extra effort was possibly made, especially in the more politically unstable first phase of the Roman occupation in the north, to access produce from "back home."' Both she and Hamilakis ( ) argue that the familiar taste and smell of the foods would have, subliminally and often subconsciously lent emotion and physical support to the soldiers while simultaneously providing a feeling of security and enjoyment. Although soldiers may not have been consciously aware of these benefits, it is clear that eating something from 'back home' generated positive feelings. The degree of psychological awareness is not in question here. Neither is the idea that the soldiers did indeed desire a taste of home. Instead I wish first to clarify what is meant by home, as it is not often explicitly stated in archaeological literature on food, and secondly demonstrate the way the links between food, home and emotion require us to re-assess notions of connectivity for migrants living in the Roman world.
The direct connection between home, the nuclear family and the physical space of a house is a late 18 century middle-class concept where one could retreat from the public into the privacy of their own home ( ).
Today, in anthropological research, home has been much more broadly defined as a bound physical place and/or an imagined place with wide geographical boundaries including locality, region and nation ( ). As Mallett ( ) states, '…it can be a dwelling place or a lived space of interaction between people, places and things; or perhaps both…Home can be singular and/or plural, alienable and/or inalienable, fixed and stable and/or mobile and changing…Home can be an ideological construct and/or an experience of being in the world.' She goes on to state that home can be associated with positive feelings of comfort and security or negative feelings of oppression, marginalization and estrangement. It is a highly emotional place intimately wrapped up in an individual's definition of the self. This broad and less Euro-centric definition of home works well for studies of the Roman world where the domus, the familia, and the division between public and private were much more fluid concepts than they were in the 18 century ( ; ).
If the home is a highly emotive place that generates memory and identity, so too is the act of food consumption. As stated earlier, the repetitive act of eating creates powerful memories ( ; ; ). Taste and particularly smell are associated with episodic memory, meaning that the smell of a particular food will evoke the place, people, time of year, and emotions associated with the original generators of that smell experience. The olfactory pathways in the brain differ from the other sensory pathways. They are much more closely related to the primitive, emotion-laden parts of the brain and consequently smell is remembered much more synaesthetically than colours, objects or sounds ( ; ; ). Secondly, as is well known, food plays a large role in the creation of identity (  ;  ;  ; memory, nostalgia, change, and the search for a sense of past and belonging ( ; ; ). Numerous anthropological studies focusing on colonization, past and current forced migration, and modern immigration have all similarly found that acquiring and consuming foods from home, both privately and as a group, is one of the most powerful and symbolic ways a migrant can obtain a sense of connection to their home or home community ( ; ; ). Studies have also found that when placed in an unfamiliar environment food takes on a hyper-significant role and a common symptom of culture shock is a preoccupation with food ( ; ). It is also one of the most frequent tools used to mitigate homesickness ( ). Since the home does not have to be a physical place, consuming 'food from home' can also link migrants to imagined communities where the people in those communities are eating the same items ( ).
The ). In other words, the experience and the memories evoked were impossible to ignore even if they were not consciously explored or reflected upon in detail by the individual. Thus it is highly unlikely any non-local soldier could have eaten one of these imports without evoking the memories or emotions associated with a different time and place. The experience (perhaps thoughts of Rome rather than home) would have been very different for the later local soldiers who occupied the camps.
This conclusion, while perhaps seemingly obvious, has important implications for our understanding and conceptualizations of connectivity and community in the Roman world especially when the solider is both military man and migrant. When conceptualizing connectivity and the individual experience, it may be worth placing the local and the migrant, whether soldier or civilian, and their respective experiences in starker contrast. While both native and non-native individuals could feel connected to a wider imagined 'Roman' community, unlike the local individual, the migrant soldier also had a home community to consider. There is an additional layer of connectivity to contemplate when looking at the migrant, and one that raises a host of other questions (that it is unfortunately beyond the scope of this article to answer). How did notions of space, time and geography differ between local and migrant? In what ways did concrete knowledge of another place influence the migrant's view of the Roman Empire or the world as a whole? Food had the power to connect a migrant to a world probably unknown to the native. Moreover, if we imagine for a moment that most soldiers were not from the city of Rome itself, then a host of other communities were often considered and potentially deemed to be of far greater importance than Rome, which only serves to further decentralize the capital ( ). Finally, the fact that the same ingredient when consumed by a local individual and a migrant, would provoke vastly different psychological and emotional reactions furthers the notion that conceptualizations of connectivity in the ancient world were formed on an individual basis ( ).

True exotic imports
It is now time to look at the true luxury imports; namely the peach, watermelon, rice and black pepper. These ingredients would have been rare and expensive even within the Mediterranean during the late first century BC to early first century AD. Archaeological, archaeobotanical and literary evidence reveal that the Romans only started to

Local Cultivation
So far we have examined a very particular group of individuals; non-locals in a foreign environment eating either familiar or unfamiliar imported foods over the course of only a few decades. While it is beyond the scope of the article to examine all circumstances surrounding the consumption of true imports throughout the Roman world and across multiple centuries, it is worth briefly addressing one additional point of interest.
One agricultural practice that is linked to but that can alter the sensorial identity of a place is local cultivation. Over the course of many centuries, several items, once imported and potentially luxury exotic foods, were introduced and then grown locally in many parts of the Roman Empire ( ; ). The introduction of the peach into Italy, discussed above, is a prime example ( ). After a short period of time some of these foods became inexpensive, widely available and consequently part of the local cuisine and fully integrated into the diet. At what point did these items lose their non-local associations? When did they cease to evoke a sense of someplace else? At what point did people no longer care or entirely forget that these items were once foreign imports?
More modern examples include the tomato in Italy and the potato in Ireland, ingredients used in many 'traditional' dishes and central to the food identities of their respective countries ( ; should not expect that whatever notions of foreignness or connectivity that were originally associated with these items remained the same for hundreds of years. Just as diet changed so too would an item's link to another place and time.

Conclusions
This article has been a methodological exploration into the ancient awareness of food origins. Sensory archaeology was used to demonstrate a degree of consciousness based on the physical experience of consumption and the mnemonic links forged between consumption, emotion, and memory. The synaesthetic experience of eating a true imported item, a food whose smell, taste and texture were outside the distinct sensorial identity of a place would have created a strong enough physical and psychological reaction to lead to at least a moment of reflection upon its nonlocal origins. This conclusion is relatively straightforward, but that moment of reflection is more complex than it first appears and it is vital that we begin to take both consumer and product into greater consideration. As has been shown, not all imports would have provoked the same reaction and each item must be considered carefully within its wider geographical and historical framework. Moreover, there needs to be a greater consideration of the individual, their place of origin, and the range of episodic memories they may have accumulated during their lifetime. As the case of the soldiers stationed on the Lower Rhine Delta and at Oberaden and Neuss has shown, their migrant status would have significantly impacted their reactions to particular items. If the item was a luxury import, and an infrequent part of the diet, reflection may have been on the exotic unknown or the location of a previous sensory experience involving that food. However, for a familiar item, consumed often during childhood, eating it may have led to thoughts of home and provided a sense of connectivity to a real or imagined community. Thus very different places Gaining a taste of home was a complex emotional, psychological and physical experience and deserves a closer examination than we have previously allotted it. While home could take any number of forms, detailed knowledge or consideration of a distant geographical place(s) makes us question and re-assess notions of geography, connectivity and the strength of community in the ancient world. What impact does that additional knowledge have on the migrant's understanding of the shape and size of the world? Perhaps obtaining a taste of imperial power, Rome or a globalized world was not always the aim ( )? Have we been unfairly prioritizing the economic and social value of a food over its personal and emotional value? Knowledge of the precise geographical origins of a foodstuff, its cost and wider cultural associations may in fact have been less important than, or overridden by, the desire to achieve a sense of connectivity.
In the final section the impact of the local cultivation of new foods on the distinctive sensorial identity of an area is briefly explored. An awareness of food origins would have shifted as the origins of the foods themselves changed and we should not assume a static reaction to imports over several centuries or even decades. Food is a powerful generator of memories that can linger or change over time and widespread changes to those memories can have significant cultural impacts. While culture dictates much of our interaction with food, it is clear that reactions to all foods, and in particular imported items, is an individual experience. While the personal experience in antiquity is difficult to capture, this article has shown that it is not impossible and instead is a fruitful avenue of research that should be pursued further. Moreover, we should continue to explore, on an individual level, the way people in antiquity not only conceptualized but actively strived, through food, to achieve a sense of connectivity. . 

Notes
For other examples of a varied non-elite diet see ; ; ; .  Although the rarity of almond at early military sites suggests that it may have been considered a luxury good at this time ( ; ).  This of course was not necessarily the reason or only reason for acquiring or purchasing these foods.  For modern scholarship on the topic see ; ; ; .  For more recent work see ; ; .  Sixteen Camulodunum 184 wine amphorae from Crete and Asia Minor, along with two Dressel 43 Cretan wine

Livarda 2018
1 amphorae and one Camulodunum 189 probably carrying fruit from the Levant were recovered from the pre-Flavian levels at Nijmegen ( ). Although there is not time to go into any great depth on the origins of the amphorae these finds raise the interesting question of whether or not the officers or soldiers knew the origins of their fruit and wine. Since some of the soldiers may have been from the eastern provinces, these particular wine varieties might have been familiar. 