Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLVIII:3 (Winter, 2018), 335–357. Adam Izdebski, Marcin Jaworski, Handan Üstündağ, and Arkadiusz Sołtysiak Bread and Class in Medieval Society: Foodways in Anatolia Since the time of Braudel, most historians have come to recognize the close link between social status and type of food consumed. As Braudel wrote about Mediterranean life, “The study of the grain problem takes us . to a greater understanding of that life in all its complexity.” The role that food and diet played in shaping the natural environment has subsequently developed into a major theme in environmental history. Further- more, economic historians have focused on human biological and Adam Izdebski is Assistant Professor of Byzantine and Environmental History at the Institute of History, Jagiellonian University. He is the author of A Rural Economy in Transition: Asia Minor from Late Antiquity into Early Middle Ages (Warsaw, 2013); co-author, with Karen Holmgren et al., of “Realising Consilience: How Better Communication between Archae- ologists, Historians and Natural Scientists Can Transform the Study of Past Climate Change in the Mediterranean,” Quaternary Science Reviews, CXXXVI (2016), 5–22. Marcin Jaworski is an alumnus, Department of Bioarchaeology, Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw, and a freelance archaeologist. He is co-author, with Piotr Wroniecki, of “Magnetic Survey of the Abandoned Medieval Town of Nieszawa,” Archaeologia Polona, LIII (2015), 85–94; with Agnieszka Tomas, of “Non-Destructive Archeological Investigations in the River Sárviz Valley (Hungary), 2012,” Światowit, X (2012), 171–175. Handan Üstündağ is a faculty member, Department of Archaeology, Anadolu University. She is the author of “Human Remains from Kültepe-Kanesh: Preliminary Results of the Old Assyrian Burials from the 2005–2008 Excavations,” in Levent Atici et al. (eds.), Current Research at Kultepe-Kanesh (Atlanta, 2014), 157–167; co-author, with Marcin Jaworski and Arkadiusz Sołtysiak, of “Continuity and Change in Cereal Grinding Technology at Kültepe, Turkey,” Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, IX (2017), 447–454. Arkadiusz Sołtysiak is Professor of Bioarchaeology, Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw. He is the author of “Cereal Grinding Technology in Ancient Mesopotamia: Evidence from Dental Microwear,” Journal of Archaeological Science, XXXVIII (2011), 2805–2810; “Ante- mortem Cranial Trauma in Ancient Mesopotamia,” International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, XXVII (2017), 119–128. This article presents research that Adam Izdebski undertook from 2012 to 2015 during his postdoctoral fellowship at Jagiellonian University, Krakow—funded by the National Science Centre, Poland (DEC-2012/04/S/HS3/00226)—combined with dental microwear data compiled by Marcin Jaworski. The authors thank Abdullah Deveci (Anadolu University), the director of the excavations in Akarçay Höyük; Zeynep Mercangöz (Ege University), the director of the excavations in Kadıkalesi; Akın Ersoy (Dokuz Eylül University), the direc- tor of the excavations in Smyrna Agora; and Oluş Arık (University of Ankara), the former director of excavations in Alanya Kalesi, for their support of studies examining human remains from the sites. © 2017 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc., doi:10.1162/JINH_a_01161 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_01161 by guest on 02 October 2021 336 | IZDEBSKI, JAWORSKI, ÜSTÜNDAĞ,ANDSOŁTYSIAK nutritional data from the past to reconstruct changes in general well-being and economic development. Foodways create connec- tions between aspects of human existence that at first glance seem completely unrelated; they also reveal the need for historians to reach beyond textual sources when biological phenomena enter their investigations. Not surprisingly, an ongoing debate among historians—featured in recent issues of this journal—concerns the consilience between historical and scientific approaches and the potential that such synergy offers for re-formulating the central questions of modern historiography. Until recently, historical studies had to rely on textual sources produced by a small, elite minority within society, thus fostering a number of methodolog- ical challenges and unanswered questions that require other types of evidence for their resolution.1 This article presents one viable approach, namely, the use of state-of-the-art bioarchaeological methods to illuminate a rela- tively recent historical period (the Middle Ages), combining tex- tual sources with research about teeth found in excavations of medieval sites in Anatolia and northern Syria (modern Turkey). In a reconstruction of eating habits, we discuss the kinds of food that different social groups tended to consume, focusing particu- larly on access to bread, an ideal proxy for links between social class or status (understood broadly as occupation, place in the society, and wealth) and foodways. As a staple in the ancient and medieval Mediterranean, bread found its ways into textual sources as both a symbol and a topic. Medieval assumptions about bread 1 Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (New York, 1972), I, 570. For biology and economic history, see Richard H. Steckel, “Biological Measures of Economic History,” Annual Review of Economics, V (2013), 401–423; for environ- mental history, Neil M. Maher, “Body Counts: Tracking the Human Body Through Envi- ronmental History,” in Douglas Cazeau Sackman (ed.), A Companion to American Environmental History (Malden, Mass., 2010), 163–180; Richard C. Hoffmann, An Environmen- tal History of Medieval Europe (New York, 2014); for the consilience of science and history, Michael McCormick, “History’s Changing Climate: Climate Science, Genomics, and the Emerging Consilient Approach to Interdisciplinary History,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLII (2011), 251–273; John Haldon et al., “The Climate and Environment of Byzantine Anatolia: Integrating Science, History and Archaeology,” Ibid. XLV (2014), 113–161; Izdebski et al., “Realising Consilience: How Better Communication between Archaeologists, Historians and Natural Scientists Can Transform the Study of Past Climate Change in the Mediterranean,” Quaternary Science Reviews (Special Issue: Mediterranean Holocene Climate, Environment and Hu- man Societies), CXXXVI (2016), 5–22—the subject of a review essay by Timothy Newfield, and Inga Labuhn, “Realizing Consilience in Studies of Pre-Instrumental Climate and Pre-Laboratory Disease,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLVII (2017), 211–240. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_01161 by guest on 02 October 2021 BREAD AND CLASS | 337 shed light on general stereotypes about food and the social hierar- chy, whether in Christian or Islamic society. As it turns out, the stereotypes favored in the written sources are only partially true: The conclusions that emerge from the research herein show that social-biological reality was much more complex than the written sources suggest.2 Research on enamel microwear patterns in human teeth has been used successfully to reconstruct the diet of extinct hominids and to trace the transition from foraging to farming. Past research also applied this method to more fine-grained problems, such as the development of sophisticated grinding tools in late antiquity, as well as the timing of the weaning process. This approach derives from the observation that particular facets on molar crowns have specific functions during the mastication process. Some of them, mainly external ones, are in contact with their counterparts during the first (vertical) phase of mastication, while others (mainly facets close to the grooves) are affected during the second (horizontal) phase, the grinding of food particles between upper and lower teeth. Therefore, hard particles—mineral grit and at least some plant phytoliths—can leave traces on these facets; both the size and pattern of these traces is determined by the size and number of these particles. Although initially the analysis of enamel microwear patterns met with enthusiasm, the limitations of the method soon became evident. Many kinds of food (meat or dairy products) do not have much of an effect on enamel; external mineral grit is primarily responsible for observed damage on the enamel surface. None- theless, in specific cases, the damage is enough to permit insight into food-preparation practices in past human populations, espe- cially those that relied on ground grains—flour in particular—for the vast portion of their calorie intake. Enamel microwear is par- ticularly helpful in the study of Mediterranean Graeco-Roman and medieval foodways. Since all our tooth samples come from detailed excavations, we are able to determine the social status of individuals involved and thus to make connections between their 2 For the role of bread in medieval societies in general, see Hoffmann, Environmental History, 115–116; Remi Esclassan et al., “A Panorama of Tooth Wear During the Medieval Period,” Anthropologischer Anzeiger, LXXII (2015), 185–199; Clark Spencer Larsen, Bioarchaeology: Inter- preting Behavior from the Human Skeleton (New York, 2015). Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JINH_a_01161 by guest on 02 October 2021 338 | IZDEBSKI, JAWORSKI, ÜSTÜNDAĞ,ANDSOŁTYSIAK socio-economic status and the kinds of bread that they consumed. In more technical terms,