A Stored-Products Revolution in the 1st Millennium BC

Abstract

Keeping plants and animals beyond their natural shelf life is a central human challenge, both as a matter of immediate survival and for the social and economic opportunities that stored foods offer. Understanding different food storage and preservation strategies in the past is key to a whole series of other research agendas, but remains challenging, not least because the evidence is patchy and hard to interpret. The paper below joins growing efforts to address this long-established challenge and surveys a host of changes in preservative treatments and food storage facilities across the Mediterranean and temperate Europe during the 1 st millennium BC. While in most cases, the observed changes have a deeper prehistoric pedigree, nevertheless their mutually-reinforcing intensification at this time constitutes a real revolution, with far-reaching consequences.