Panem Bonum Fert: The Panis Quadratus as an Archaeologically Defined Cereal Grain Consumption Metric in First-Century Rome

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This study is focused on cereal grain consumption in ancient Rome and the food value of the commercially produced Roman bread product, the Panis Quadratus, in the Roman daily diet in first century AD. While some Roman-era cereal grain consumption estimates have been published in recent decades, no study has yet attempted to consider the assemblage of carbonized Panis Quadratus loaves, excavated primarily from one commercial bakery at Pompeii, as an archaeologically defined source of cereal grain consumption data. Taking into account these previously published scholarly estimates, this study aims to determine if an archaeologically defined model can test existing non-archaeologically based estimates and contribute further to the conversation of cereal grain consumption in the Roman daily diet. This study uses an interdisciplinary methodology of quantitative, compositional, and morphological analyses of original archaeological specimens, coupled with experimental archaeology and mathematical modeling to produce a daily cereal grain consumption estimate for an average Roman consumer. The results of this study have shown that testing consumption estimates based on non-archaeological sources against an archaeologically defined model, which is based on a fully processed cereal grain product, provides a more realistic estimate of cereal grain consumption in first-century Rome.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33475