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Experimental reconstruction of Roman Bread with Yvette Marks - Ep 39
685 Plays3 years ago
Archaeology & Ale is a monthly series of talks presented by Archaeology in the City, part of the University of Sheffield Archaeology Department’s outreach programme. This month we are proud to host Yvette Marks speaking on "Experimental reconstruction of Roman Bread." This talk took place on Thursday, May 27th, 2021, online via Google Meets.
Yvette is a material scientist with a focus on reconstructing ancient technologies and metallurgy. Yvette started her archaeological career with a degree in Classical Studies at the University of Liverpool before completing an MA in Archaeology at Liverpool and an MSc in Archaeological Materials at Sheffield.
In 2015 Yvette started working for Heritage Doncaster, initially as an Education Officer, then became their Assistant Curator of Archaeology. Yvette worked to enabled their collection to be more accessible; to the public, for teaching and outreach, by cataloguing and interpreting the collection. Since 2019 Yvette has worked at the University of Sheffield's Department of Archaeology as a Laboratory Manager and Teaching Technician (Archaeological Science).
Yvette is currently completing her PhD thesis, 'The inception and transmission of metallurgy: A regional approach' which focuses on the material evidence for the process of copper production in the Aegean and Balkans during the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age. This research aims to understand the material evidence from excavation and reconstruct the technological processes used to smelt and cast metal by combining experimental archaeology and analysis to test these hypotheses.
In this talk, Yvette tells us about a recent experiment she undertook with some students from Sheffield's Department of Archaeology. The experiment explored various methods used by Roman soldiers to bake bread.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast Network
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Roman Bread Reconstruction with Yvette Marks
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 39 of Archaeology and Al.
00:00:32
Speaker
a free monthly public archaeology talk brought to you by Archaeology in the City, the community outreach program from the University of Sheffield's Department of Archaeology. This month, our guest speaker is Yvette Marks from the University of Sheffield, speaking on experimental reconstruction of Roman bread. Due to the current COVID-19 restrictions, this talk is taking place online via Google Meets, so there may be some background noise or audio feedback in our recording.
COVID-19's Impact on Research and Learning
00:01:12
Speaker
The thing I'm going to be talking about today is a research project that we did as part of the experimental module for the third year undergraduate's course and the master's course. Although I'm presenting it, it was a collaborative project and I'm just sharing it on their behalf really. I came up with the question and they did the research and conducted the experiment.
00:01:32
Speaker
Before I go into Roman bread, I just wanted to thank everybody for their ongoing support over the last week with the archaeological review and the decisions that's been made. I imagine you've all seen the social media presence, the news articles, and have heard the recent decision. We'd just like to ask you for continued support as well. Chris is going to put some links in the chat for where you can find out how you can help and what you can do.
00:02:01
Speaker
And this, this isn't over as far as we're concerned and we will keep fighting it and we hope archaeology Sheffield will continue. So I just wanted to thank you all for your support before I start talking about Roman Fred. This experiment, as I said, was part of the experimental module. We started the module at the start of the academic year
00:02:21
Speaker
in lockdown, teaching remotely and I wanted something that would engage the students, get people active, get people hands-on.
Passion for Roman Britain and Bread Experiment
00:02:30
Speaker
How can you do experimental archaeology and not use your hands and not engage in a practical activity? So I ended up coming up with the experiment of
00:02:41
Speaker
inspired by all the breads that had been baked during the lockdowns that we've had over the past year. I think lockdown bingo, most people have made a bread loaf in the past year. So as Roman Britain is a big part of my research and career, I worked at Doncaster Museum for four years and there was a fort in Doncaster.
Investigating Roman Bread Features
00:03:05
Speaker
It was something I was very passionate about and it was familiar to me.
00:03:08
Speaker
So in lockdown, the experiment started initially, and we started to look at the loaves of bread which are preserved, which are carbonized.
00:03:20
Speaker
Pompeii and Herculaneum as you can see in the picture. So these loaves are quite interesting because they've got an unusual shape. They almost look a bit like a cake. They've got almost like a slice through the middle and portion slices as well. What we wanted to investigate first of all is how these loaves were formed.
00:03:41
Speaker
So we experimented with different types of proving and needing and shaping. And then also how, I guess, decorate is quite the word, but I don't know a better word for it, but how you get them lines and that shape. So were the loaves cut in half and had been preserved after they were baked and cut in half? Was the line around the side something that was actually formed during their proving and baking?
00:04:08
Speaker
and how could the lines on the top be formed? This was to help us investigate how you can recreate techniques from the past. First of all, how we can theorize what techniques may be and how our personal experiences can inform that. I'll talk a little bit about our theories and predictions and how some of that was based on our own experience of making bread. But then also, how can we accurately recreate a method from the past and can we accurately recreate a method from the past?
00:04:38
Speaker
So we looked at these carbonized loaves and we also looked at evidence as well including
00:04:46
Speaker
So there's frescoes like this one here, where you can see artistic representations of the lobes, which are quite similar.
Ensuring Authenticity in Bread Replication
00:04:54
Speaker
So you still have the portioned marks on the top. You can kind of see the line around the side. And the students often did their own research as well. So they found many more images of these in frescoes and mosaics as well. And it's always represented to have this shape, to have the portion lines on the top of the line around the side.
00:05:16
Speaker
We also wanted to make sure that we were authentic or as authentic as we could, and we could do a whole another talk on authenticity and experimental archaeology, but not today, unfortunately. We wanted to make sure when we were replicating the bread that the bread would have similar properties, so the same grains we used and the same flour we used and different yeast we used. So if we created a line, we can say that that line would have been created in the same way.
00:05:46
Speaker
on the bread from the past because these different yeasts make loaves rise in different amounts in different ways and different flowers can cause different textures of the bread as well and all them things can have an impact on the shape of the bread.
00:05:59
Speaker
I went to a colleague of mine who's an archaeobotanist and asked what grains were grown in Roman Britain. And she came back to me and said spelt. So there was a whole article she referred me to and we all researched into. And spelt was grown in Roman Britain. And one of the benefits Britain had to the Roman Empire was our land, was our farms. And spelt would have been a huge resource that would have helped to feed the empire and the armies.
00:06:33
Speaker
and it's true what spelt looks like. Luckily for us, there's actually a company called Dubbs Farm who have reintroduced spelt back into UK soils and they pride themselves on doing so.
Challenges in Bread Making
00:06:46
Speaker
So that was really helpful of our experiment. It meant we could go to the supermarket or go online and get a bag of spelt flour, which as I said, would have been the type of flour they would have grown spelt and ground it and used that. So that was really helpful.
00:06:53
Speaker
So luckily for those.
00:07:02
Speaker
We then had to look into how we would make the beds. Most of us aren't bakers, hadn't baked much beds. We wanted to, as I said, try to be authentic. So, yeast was a huge thing we discussed in depth in the classes. Some of us had to use packet yeast because we didn't have the skills or the ability of the resources to do live yeast. But some people did use yeast status or live yeast.
00:07:32
Speaker
We did look into different experiments, so we're not the first people to recreate Roman Brandt. There's a YouTube channel, which you can see here, where he has a goal, and it's a really interesting watch. I can share the link online, or when we share the PowerPoint, we can share the link as well.
00:07:51
Speaker
And even the British Museum have had a go too. So we're definitely not the first people to do this. But I think we're going more in depth and looking at different methods and techniques and trying to investigate it more. So we researched all these different examples and looked and learned from what they did. And we created predictions. We theorized on how we thought it may have been made.
00:08:18
Speaker
I also got my parents to go off and try the experiment before we did it in class. And that was really helpful because we discovered that the recipe I was sharing, if you followed the recipe, it was far too liquid, so you needed to reduce the quantities. So lots and lots of people have fed into this experiment. This was my first attempt, and I tried to mimic methods used in the YouTube video.
00:08:43
Speaker
I'm going to go through now with some of the different methods we theorized and tried, and then I'll talk about the results. So we looked at different tools and what tools would be available. So things like string, knives, wooden spatulas,
00:09:03
Speaker
maybe a little bit of sticks, stones, flint. And initially we were all thinking that the shapes on the top would have been cut or pressed into bread with one method or another. Now, the line on the outside was more interesting because when we were making the mixture, first of all, as I said, it was very liquid and very sloppy.
00:09:27
Speaker
And it was hard to keep it in a ball shape. So I assumed that the method of using the string was to hold the door together, keep it in a ball, and then that created the line. And almost me being a bad example for an experiment, once I got that idea in my head, I really wanted to stick with it. But I'll come back to that in a minute.
00:09:53
Speaker
We had about 18 students across the two modules and everybody went off and tried different methods of forming and shaping and then we compiled the results and then
Exploring Bread Shaping Techniques
00:10:05
Speaker
we then use them results to pick which we thought was the more realistic method. So now I'm just going to take you through some of the photographs and methods that we tried. So the first one was string and string. So string was to shape the door into that dorm shape to hold it together and to create that line around the outside. And then also the lines on the top are formed by getting a piece of string, holding it tight and pulling it almost like a cheese wire into the door to make them
00:10:36
Speaker
indentations. You can see this one does look quite similar to the examples we've seen, but the lines are defined. So this one we're really happy with.
00:10:50
Speaker
This one is free form and then carved with a knife. So this one, the door was turned into shape just by hand molding, just by kneading and then forming into a, a dome. And then all the lines carved with a knife. So you can see this, this one isn't as tall. It hasn't risen as much, but again, that could be due to the yeast used, but the lines aren't as defined.
00:11:17
Speaker
This one was freeform and cut with scissors. Again, different types of a blurt. The line on the outside has disappeared completely and the impressions on the top are not very severe. So this one wasn't as close as what we wanted.
00:11:35
Speaker
This one was based on a trial and error and an adapting experiment as we went along. So this one, the lines were put in with a knife 10 minutes after the bread went into the oven, so not straight away. One of the things that we found in experimentation is when you put the lines in and then you bake it, as it rises, it can almost reclose the lines. It can make it bloat and cover the indentations you've done.
00:12:05
Speaker
So this one, you can see the string on the left-hand side has created that indentation. The lines on the top, they're quite severe, so they're not the kind of curved shapes we see in the image. So maybe that's not as correct as we want it either.
00:12:23
Speaker
So this one was a mixture of multiple methods, so a mixture of cutting and indentations.
Revising Bread Shaping Theories
00:12:28
Speaker
But this one, as you can see, it's split, so it's proved so much whilst it's cooked. It caused them cuts to split. And we get this often in modern loaves, if you score lines onto the top as it rises in the oven, it can open up and have that effect. So that's interesting as well.
00:12:50
Speaker
This one was free-form string and a sharp knife. And again, as you can see, the pattern that seems to be reoccurring with the knives, it's a very harsh mark on the top, which doesn't seem to follow what we see in the representations. This is another one. This is an example where when it's grown in the oven, it's actually closed the cuts up. So it's closed the definition up.
00:13:16
Speaker
So this one was freeform in a sharp knife and again you can see the lines have disappeared. This was shaped with string and a sharp knife. This is getting closer. And then we've got freeform in a wooden spatula. So the wooden spatula really didn't create a lasting effect. It really did disappear once it was baked.
00:13:40
Speaker
And then this one was string and a knife. So again, you can see the lines have disappeared. Now, I don't know if you remember me saying a few minutes ago that I was adamant string was used around the outside and some sort of non-cutting device to ship up. And then a student in the course went off and spoke to a baker.
00:14:07
Speaker
in Spain and I said you know I'm researching this bread this is this is what it looks like this is what I'm thinking and the baker came back and said that he would if he was to make that that bread he would use two bowls of dough one on top of the other.
00:14:25
Speaker
and the student trialled it and this is what they got and you can see the line on the outside looks very realistic, it looks similar to the evidence we have and then they did cut with a knife on the top.
00:14:42
Speaker
Now, around the same time, when I mentioned this to people, because everybody's probably heard about this experiment over the past few months, I heard of something called a country loaf, which I'd never heard of. So some colleagues of mine and my parents came to me with this, a country loaf.
Planning Roman Bread Oven Experiments
00:15:01
Speaker
So a country loaf is two bowls of dough, one placed on top of another, and then a piece of wood or something put through the middle to hold them in place.
00:15:11
Speaker
And then, all of a sudden, I changed my theory and I changed my conclusions. And this made so much sense. So I was adamant for two, three weeks that I believed the method for shaping the door was the string because the door was sloppy and it was going to fall over. It made the line. And that was based on what I'd seen in my experience. And meat comes with string rounded to hold it in place. To me, it felt like it fit.
00:15:41
Speaker
And then as soon as I was shown something from a different culture, a different scenario, somebody else's skills and experience and profession, it made sense. And I don't think I've ever been so shocked at my conclusion changing. And I think that this is a really good example to show when we're creating reconstructions and interpreting that it's really important not to have a bias based on your experience and to try
00:16:08
Speaker
and seek examples from modern craft, modern technologies, ethnographies and other things as well.
00:16:16
Speaker
So in the module, we all came together and we discussed the results of these experiments. And I think we mostly agreed that the layman, the line around the side was formed by two balls of door being placed, one on top of the other and other. But rather than with the country law, one being smaller than the other, they were closer in size. And then we decided that the
00:16:42
Speaker
the lines on the top were formed not by slicing but by putting something in so it could be a knife but rather than slicing you're pushing the dough down and it needed to go two thirds of the way down into the bread in order for that shape to keep after it baked.
00:17:03
Speaker
Luckily around this time, things started to get better with the pandemic. We were allowed to start teaching again and allowed to start teaching while in person again. We were still being teaching and allowed to start teaching outside. That meant we could start to plan the next element to take place in the field. So then we developed
00:17:24
Speaker
the next stage of the experiment which was the bed ovens. So as I've mentioned already, I worked at Doncaster Museum for four years and I always try to get real archaeological evidence that we can use in our modules for these experiments. So we're creating real research and we're conducting new experiments and new data.
00:17:47
Speaker
So because we'd be looking at the beds, we obviously wanted to have a go at baking our bread more authentically than in our ovens at home. So I contacted Paul Brooklyn who used to work at the Museum and the University and he worked at the Museum in the 70s and 80s when lots of rescue excavations were taking place.
00:18:07
Speaker
when the Ring Wars was being built around the area where the Roman fort used to be. So if you've ever been to Doncaster, there's the St George's Church and actually a small part of the Roman fort wall still survives in the church grounds in the garden.
Reconstructing Roman Ovens
00:18:24
Speaker
And the fort went from St George's Church across to where Primark is today. So actually Primark's in the area where the entrance where to the fort is. So if you do go into Primark in Doncaster, you're walking in the same steps as women soldiers were around 2000 years ago.
00:18:42
Speaker
So when we were doing these rescue excavations, and it was a rescue excavation, it wasn't how it is now where a survey and exploration is done before something's built. This was as the roads were being built, the museum's archaeologists would rush out and try and record and rescue as much archaeology as they could. There was two ovens found. So this is the first one, and this is the one that we decided to look at and reconstruct.
00:19:13
Speaker
So you can see there is one, two, three, three layers of clay which forms the base of the oven and it curves up at the sides. And these have stones placed around them to support them. So this shows multiple use. So these ovens were used in the same spot over and over and to the point where when the oven didn't work a new one was built. And we had dimensions.
00:19:38
Speaker
But that's all we had for this oven. We had the fact that it was an oven, the fact that it was associated with the Roman fort, and we had some dimensions. There was also another example, which was built into the rampart of the fort. And we find this in a number of sites across the UK associated with Roman fort where they've used the incline of the fort to build that oven into, which makes it easier and will
00:20:08
Speaker
help the heat retention of the oven. Because I am the health and safety officer for the department as well, I thought it would be much safer and easier not to try and build an oven into a hill. So we did go with the first oven, this one.
00:20:25
Speaker
So we looked at other examples of ovens, but we also looked at other examples of pyrotechnology constructions in the area. So we looked at the pottery kilns at Rossington, Cantley, and Rossington bridge compensation as well, because the way they build their kilns would be similar to how they'd build their ovens. Although the kiln is a much larger pyrotechnical technology, it's still a clear structure
00:20:54
Speaker
built to obtain heat. So we were able, I was able to borrow some material from the museum from some of the kilns at Rossington Bridge Pumping Station to look at the fabric. And the fabric is a clay that has had dried organics such as straw or chaff added to it and quartz or like sand or crushed up stone.
00:21:21
Speaker
And these are all things to help the structures. The organics burn out as you fire the kiln or the oven and allows it to expand and contrast. It creates little voids, which means if the ceramic wall cracks, once it hits a void, the energy of the crack disperses and hopefully it will stop it from falling apart. And the silicon quartz allows the players to identify making it a stronger material. So we
00:21:45
Speaker
We assumed, although you've got to be careful with assuming, that a similar material would have been used for the ovens as well. And, you know, we know they were growing lots of organics nearby, so there was plenty of dried organic waste to use. And there was plenty of sand from the River Donne, which was nearby, so you get the river sand. So it's not too far of a stretch to believe that.
00:22:10
Speaker
So once we had an idea of the material a clear would be made out of, we had to look at other ovens in the UK as in Roman Britain from other contexts because as I said, we had very little evidence really from the site we were looking at.
Types and Construction of Roman Ovens
00:22:24
Speaker
So we looked at some abroad as well and from other countries.
00:22:29
Speaker
And we looked at some from Britain, and I don't have time to go into loads of detail, but if you are interested, I'm happy to share these papers with you. But what came from these papers in summary is that in Roman Britain, there's two types of red oven. There's a larger stone-built oven associated with some of the bigger thoughts, such as those on Hadrian's Wall, where there'd be a stone platform or base, a dome, and then they'd have an archway flute at the front.
00:22:57
Speaker
And then there was the most simpler oven which seemed to be associated with either the household or smaller thoughts, which was a clear dome, which is more like the one we got at Doncaster. So you can see from the picture, it wasn't a substantial stone structure. There was a couple of stones around it supporting it. But it was a clear floor and presumably a clear dome that doesn't survive.
00:23:20
Speaker
So because many of the people in the group had never worked with clients such a way before or conducted an experiment in this way, we looked at other examples. So we wanted to make sure we had evidence and ideas to base our reconstruction off. So we had a look at some examples of other clay ovens that had been built.
00:23:40
Speaker
So this was a really good blog and Chris is going to share the PDF of the podcast. I've put links to all the places that this information comes from if you are interested to look into it. So this example is from Early Works. It's a blog and you can see that they have put a stone to create the base, but then it is a clay-formed oven.
00:24:06
Speaker
You can see on the next picture that they helped form the oven by using sand. So once they got the initial clay for the wall formed, they filled the internal space with sand and that's what they used to help form their clay structure. So I don't know if any of you have had a go at coil building pots or even pinch potting.
00:24:32
Speaker
Clay has a tendency to want to sag or droop or fall in on itself. So having that sand, just make sure that when you're creating the dome shape, it has something to rest on. And then, as you can see in the next pictures, the principle, the idea is that once the clay is dry to the level hard, once it's partially dry, you can then dig out the sand and the clay will hold its shape enough for you to fire it.
00:25:01
Speaker
Just some more photos of this example. You can see on the picture on the left, they've dug out the sand at that point and they're firing it and then used a wooden door.
00:25:16
Speaker
The other main example, examples we use came from Graham Taylor. So Graham Taylor is a potter that you should all look upon first book. He's absolutely amazing. He creates replica pottery, predominantly Roman. He's done some pots for me when I worked at the museum, Anglo-Saxon and Viking.
00:25:40
Speaker
He also does experimental archaeology as well and so he's done clay pottery kilns and then he got asked by a museum to do a bread oven and because he'd done pottery kilns he felt that he could turn his skill to a bread oven.
00:25:58
Speaker
So you can see he's even recreated similar lofts that we're looking at and he's done it a clay oven too which is bigger than the last one but mostly clay. He used a different technique to form his oven and this was a willow frame. So you can see on the picture here it's got
00:26:23
Speaker
has got a lot of clay on at this point but the rather than putting sand on the inside and putting the clay over the sand and that keeping it in place this has had a willow frame and weaved and then the clay has been put over that. So
00:26:39
Speaker
We went and looked into whether we thought this would be realistic for Roman Britain and we believed as a group that both methods were plausible. There would be organic material similar to willow available that could have been used to create the structure and there would have been sand available and we know sand was used in the clay material too. This is just what it looked like during the process too.
00:27:08
Speaker
So that takes us to our experiment. So we had to decide on what variables we were going to test, what our aims and objectives were. And it's so easy to try and look at too much. We didn't want to take on too many things. So we decided to recreate the dimensions of the oven from that first photo I showed you from Doncaster and reduce it fully from clear, as the archaeological evidence suggests.
00:27:35
Speaker
And then the first variable we wanted to test was which method was more successful for producing an oven. So was it the sand farming or was it the welfare?
00:27:49
Speaker
We then wanted to also test some experiential sides of the experiments. That means what it felt like. So how hard was it to build the clay and to work the clay and build the oven? How long would it last? How much manpower or woman power, people power would go into building it? How many bread loaves could you break? Would it feed an army? Would it feed a person? All these different things.
00:28:14
Speaker
And also that went to look at the working parameters of the oven. As I said, so how long did it take to heat up? Was it big enough to cook a loaf? Could you cook multiple lofts in succession? Or was it just a one loaf oven? And we looked into how to cook in a clay oven too. So we researched oven ovens and pizza ovens too. We looked at whether you
00:28:37
Speaker
Heat the oven up as you would a pizza oven, so you put dried wood into the oven, set it on fire, heat it up for an hour or two and then take the wood out, take the fire out of the oven completely and just cook with the residual heat.
00:28:54
Speaker
And often that's how pizza ovens are used and that's how bread ovens are used. Or now with more larger pizza ovens, often the wood is pushed to the side and some things are cooked while it cools down and then once it's at the correct temperature, bread is cooked. Another thing that you can probably see from this picture is the ovens are not much larger than the bread loaves. So actually leaving wood on fire in the ovens could be problematic.
00:29:23
Speaker
So we split our group into two teams. I'm sure our team names were Sam Team and Willow Team, maybe because we had more inventive names originally, but I couldn't remember them, so this is what we reverted to. So we had two different teams, and this also helps with social distancing.
00:29:44
Speaker
We did keep two metres, we wore masks, even though outside. And if people are closer than two metres, it was a short period of time when the practical had to happen, but it wasn't prolonged. Our people were in household bubbles. We did have a number of students who lived together, so they were able to work more closely.
00:30:05
Speaker
I'll just walk you through the making of these two ovens.
Challenges in Oven Construction
00:30:11
Speaker
So first of all, the sand farming. You can see here, we did similar to the example we looked at where we created the bottom of the clay wall.
00:30:24
Speaker
And then we added sand into a dome. And this is wet sand, a bit like building a sand castle. We then put a layer of wet newspaper between the sand and the clay. I'm sure there would have been some sort of wet organic material placed on the Roman one. Maybe it's not the cheap newspaper I picked up on the way to the experiment, but there would have been something to enable that divide to easily get the clay out from the oven.
00:30:53
Speaker
and the oven was left with the sand in for two days, no three days swimming, and then the sand was taken out. So I'm just going to show you, I think I've got a little time lapse video of the forming of the willow oven. I don't want to have one of the sand oven unfortunately because they haven't failed.
00:31:17
Speaker
So the sand oven, as I said, was left for three days and the sand was taken out and then a wood fire was lit, a low temperature wood fire lit in the oven, slowly dry and then bake the clay. You don't want to put a fire in that's too hot too quickly because it will just cause the clay to crack in the oven to fail.
00:31:38
Speaker
So the Willow team, I do have a time lapse of this one being made. So this was built in a similar way. So the clay was worked in the same way. So the clay was put old, which means putting water on it and stamping it on it and straw and sand added and other inclusions you don't want taken out. Once it's malleable by stamping on it, you would then start to need it by hand.
00:32:07
Speaker
and needing it slightly different to wood bread you want to get the air out of clear in order to use it and then it was formed so it was formed similar to a coil building technique where bricks were made and then smoothed together but with the willow frame obviously they were placed over and around the willow frame so as the willow frame of them was being made we realized that in order to get the correct shape on the outside inside
00:32:38
Speaker
we needed to cover the willow with the clear. So I'm just going to show you as I set a time lapse of that now. We did have one slight issue with the willow firm and that was my fault. I didn't realise the willow had to be soaked before being woven. So it was more difficult to weave the firm than it should have been. But this was able to happen as they used softer parts and more bendable parts of the willow. Luckily we had some very large pieces that we could use.
00:33:05
Speaker
but I did make it more difficult for them. So you can see there the frame and then the clear going around. The team who did this has a very in detailed map of the willow where they put the beams going across which is really helpful.
00:33:24
Speaker
So the weather was probably the best week of weather we've had all year, the only week we've had, no rain and sunshine. So when I went out with a few of the students three days later, the clay was never hard. So we weren't able to fire them. The sand oven, we were able to dig out the clay and the sand all at once. We didn't have to dig half out, let the clay dry more and leave it a bit longer.
00:33:51
Speaker
it was really good, it dried. The willow firm one had a little bit of cracking and probably to do with the willow being inside the clay but it still withheld its shape and was still stable and still worked. One of the discussions we had is that
Baking Bread in Reconstructed Ovens
00:34:10
Speaker
A week of warm sunny weather in Britain is not common, as we've all discovered this last month. Therefore, if we had have had usual British weather, would the sand oven, would that have worked as well? Would it have dried? Would we have got the sand out? Would it have slumped? So that is something to think about. So I'm just going to quickly talk to you about baking the bread in these ovens and then what we learned.
00:34:39
Speaker
So we used the methods from our first part of the experiment to make some loaves, to bake in these ovens. So at this point, we were recreating the earlier experiment, which all experiments should be repeatable, and the more you repeat it, the more confident you have your results and the better they are.
00:35:02
Speaker
And as I said, we were trying to test a number of things. So how long did it take to heat the oven? Once it was heated, how long could we cook in it for? How long did the loaf of bread take to cook? Did we have to heat it up in between? So firstly, I'm just going to show you baking in the sand oven. So you can see it's preheating it and a loaf ready to go in.
00:35:25
Speaker
You can also see that the ovens were decorated purely just that seems to happen every time you do an experiment and that can tell you probably a lot about human nature and what we do with experiments as a whole of a talk in that as well.
00:35:41
Speaker
Again, I believe we used the same techniques for forming the bread for both ovens. The internal diameter was comparable. I know the external size looks different. It's just because of the methods of making it. We tried to cook multiple loaves over the three-hour period of this experiment.
00:36:04
Speaker
You can see this loaf is a little bit carbonized on the outside and that's to do with the small interior of these ovens. As I said, it's hard to keep embers in the oven with the size of it.
00:36:17
Speaker
So these were the two best loaves that were made from each oven. So you can see the willow one on the left and the sand one on the right. And you can see we've got that line around the outside. We have the definition on the top, and we have successful loaves of bread that were built in a replica oven, which I think is absolutely fantastic. I can almost hear you all cheering and clapping. I know you've got to have your mics on mute, but we were really, really pleased and excited over this.
00:36:45
Speaker
We did try to do multiple loaves. The first loaf for each I think was the most successful. This is the next picture to remind me that we did science, archaeology of science. So we had temperature readers for each oven and we had a thermocouple which is a temperature reader in each oven so we could see the temperature and record the temperature and we've got very detailed
00:37:11
Speaker
Data for that and what we what we discovered with this is that the first loaf worked best because you had that residual heat so that the ovens actually got up to about 7-800 degrees with that wood fire and then when the fire was taken out the temperature obviously reduces so the first loaf cooked quite successfully
00:37:32
Speaker
And then we did try to cook the second loaf without reheating the oven. And I think both teams found that this was not successful, that the temperature was too low, it was taking too long. We then reheated the ovens up.
00:37:45
Speaker
and managed to get a third loaf out. These ovens, because of the size, can only get one loaf from the residual heat. And they're not really big enough to keep the embers in at the side. So our initial thoughts were, well, could this be another for a Roman army? Why would it only cook one loaf? Why is it not bigger?
00:38:12
Speaker
a lot about calorie intake, rations, food, what were people eating. You're not eating a full loaf of bread for your meal. You're going to have something with it. You're going to have, you know, the soup, the stew, the grill. This is something, you know, you dip your bread in your soup. So perhaps each person was given
00:38:29
Speaker
a portion, you know it's pre-partioned up for you, each person was given a portion of the bread to have with their meal. There could have been more than one oven and some of the students did lots of research into soldiers jobs and roles and there would have been one soldier whose responsibility it was to cook certain aspects of the meal. There's lots more work to be done here to understand how these ovens were used at the thought of Don Caster but
00:38:59
Speaker
It's not implausible to think that the oven was fired up once a day and in it a loaf of bread was cooked. So what did we learn? There's no point doing an experiment without learning things. So we learned the possible methods for shaping the bread. So as I said, the first experiment looked at which methods we felt were more authentic or could have been used to shape the bread.
00:39:28
Speaker
We tested two different methods of forming the ovens. Now both methods worked. The willow methods did produce more cracks but we did patch them and once patched they didn't crack again and the oven withstood a firing and then a second firing where we cooked in it for over three hours. So that was a plausible method. As I said I think the sand method might not have been as successful
00:39:55
Speaker
if the weather was worse, but they're both realistic methods that could have happened, could have took place in Rome and Britain.
00:40:02
Speaker
We learned that realistically, one loaf of bread can be cooked in an oven per heating, so per preheating, but you could reheat the oven up afterwards and keep going. It depends if you're just cooking one loaf for that day or if you're cooking, you know, you're not going to be able to have a very successful bakery business if that's your only oven and all you're selling is bread. But that doesn't seem to be the purpose of these
Conclusions on Oven Durability
00:40:26
Speaker
ovens. It seems to be to substitute a diet that contains other food.
00:40:33
Speaker
We believe that they were used by the soldiers, but as I said, there would be one soldier cooking in them for his group. I'm sorry, I don't know the better term for a group of soldiers in a moment.
00:40:47
Speaker
And then multiple hues. So as I said, we did fire the oven to preheat it. And then we fired the oven for three hours. We also, they're still there. One of them is fully intact still. And the other one has now been repurposed for distilling experiments. But they've survived this weather. They've been reheated in. We've got PGR students doing
00:41:13
Speaker
for their theses out there and they've been cooking their breakfast and lunching them so they're still working. So they are multiple use. A lot of people often theorise that ceramic constructions like smelting furnaces, halves, ovens, kilns are one use. And something experiential that we learn from these experiments is it takes a long time to properly work and prepare clay and build a ceramic structure like this.
00:41:42
Speaker
Why would you rebuild it if you can keep it? You don't go and buy an oven every day or every week to cook your food. If something will last, then you will build it to last. You'll put more time and effort into how something remains.
00:41:58
Speaker
So as I said, we left the ovens, and three weeks later, this is what they looked like. So this was the willow oven. So you can see it looks a little bit wetter, and you can see how wet the ground is around it. But it's still completely intact. And then the lines you can see are just superficial cracks on the surface where we've been packed in there, not substantial cracks that go through the oven.
Reflections and Acknowledgments
00:42:25
Speaker
It's been unprotected out in Sheffield and rained on heavily. And this was after the huge thunder and lightning storm we had with hail and everything. And it's still there. And it still works. It still heats up. And this is the sand one as well. So again, it looks a little bit wet, but it's still intact and it still works. So I really don't think these are one use. I think they're multiple use.
00:42:56
Speaker
Yeah, so I hope it's been a very quick journey through the experiment. I hope you've understood what we tested and what we learned and also just
00:43:09
Speaker
The amazing things we can do in our modules here in the department, this is real research being led by the students. They did the research, they took it, they designed it, and we've learned so much from it. So if any of the students are here listening, thank you so much for your passion and your hard work, and I hope you all enjoyed.
Closing Remarks and Contact Information
00:43:29
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Archeology in Ale. For more information about our podcast and our guest speaker, please visit our page on the Archeology Podcast Network, or visit the show notes attached to this episode. You can get in touch with us at Archeology in the City on Facebook, WordPress, Instagram, or Twitter. If you have any questions or comments, we'd love to hear from you. See you next time.
00:43:57
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV Traveling America, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, in the Archaeology Podcast Network. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.