Minoan Tastes Creates Ancient Flavors from the Land, Sea and Sky of Crete
Series II: Ancient Ingredients
The dramatic making of Crete created rough and soft landscapes where people living on this island farmed, foraged, hunted, trapped, and fished. Ancient Ingredients, Series II, explores these rich and long food traditions that date back to the Bronze Age, ca. 3000-1425 BCE. Archaeologists study food remains, burnt seeds and bones, a long with environmental evidence to better understand what the Minoan people ate. Many of the foods are local to Crete, but many have been imported long distances thousands of years ago. Here you will see how people today use these similar food products that would have been available to people during the Minoan time period. I call it the “Minoan Grocery Store List.” The images were taken in the early summer in 2014 and 2015 in the eastern most prefecture of Lassithi, Crete.
Creating dialogue through exploration and documentation is the lifeblood of the collaboration between Jerolyn E. Morrison and Stella Johnson. The two women began working together on the Greek island of Crete in 2011 to document the Minoan Tastes project, and continue to do so annually. The images exhibited are from this collection and tell the story of modern people’s understanding of the past based on archaeological and environmental evidence. The period explored is Minoan life (ca. 1700-1450 BC), which is a time of growth and contact between communities within Crete and many foreign lands. People in the Aegean during this time were also recovering from the Theran eruption on the island of Santorini, which was once believed to have destroyed the Minoan civilization. The exhibition is divided into a series, and the topics are Minoan-style ceramic cooking pots and cooking, ingredients that were available during the Minoan period, and modern Cretan faces.