Kyriaki Tsirtsi is a PhD student in the Cyprus Institute and the Science and Technology in Archaeology and Culture Research Center (STARC) since October 2017 after receiving her MA in Archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean: Greece, Egypt and the Near East from the University of Aegean, GR (2017), her MA in Historical Research, Teaching and New Technologies from the Ionian University, GR (2014) and her Bachelor’s degree in History and Archaeology from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, (GR 2007). Throughout the years, after receiving her Bachelor degree, she was involved in excavations conducted by the Greek Ministry of Culture (Ephorate of Antiquities at Ancient Corinth) in the region of Corinthia in the Peloponnese and she has participated in international field projects in Greece and in Cyprus, collaborating with the Universities of Cambridge, Copenhagen, Brussels, Vienna, Toulouse and Uppsala in Europe and Dickinson College at USA, at the sites of Mycenae, Sikyon, Crete, Keros, Delphi, Pheneos (GR) and Ayia Marina-Xyliatos (CY).
For her PhD project, Kyriaki is affiliated with the Danish archaeological Project ‘Old Sikyon’ and she was awarded a 3-year fellowship by the Carlsberg Foundation of Denmark.
The reconstruction of domestic activities -by using interdisciplinary proxies- and the understanding of a settlement’s economic and social organization dated on Classical era describe Kyriaki’s principal research interests. Her PhD is focused on the agricultural products and the domestic pottery where they were processed, stored and cooked at the site of Sikyon in Greece. Through this interdisciplinary study, her PhD will be possible to reenact the kitchen rather as function with central role in the life of the settlement and nor as location, in combination with the agricultural practices and dietary habits. The way by which the Sikyonians used to store their food, the types of pots that were used in food preparation and the kind of food itself will be illuminated, providing a snapshot of the domestic and economic life of the Classical period.
Reconstructing food procurement and consumption at the 1st millennium BCE site of Sikyon
Human activities for food production, processing, storage, and preparation reflect important daily activities and structured decisions. These choices can be deciphered through the study of archaeobotanical remains. This presentation aims to unfold snapshots of daily life, and more specifically meal preparation and consumption activities, at the 1 st millennium site of Sikyon, in southern Greece. Both macrobotanical (charred seeds) and microbotanical (starch granules) remains are used to decode the agricultural and cooking activities that took place at the site. While macrobotanical remains enable us to shed light on a wide range of human-plant interactions, from resource management and environmental impact to cultural modification of plant products and the plants themselves, starch granules are a source of information concerning human dietary behavior. The interdisciplinary nature of the present study not only allows us to trace of the exploited plant resources, relationships between people and plants, and past day-to-day rural life during the 1 st millennium BCE, but also facilitates suggestions concerning the cooking and consumption of foodstuffs, relationships between people and plants, and moreover has the potential to suggest contextual interpretation within the site.