eTopoi Publishes its first conference volume. Susan Pollock’s publication “Between Feasts and Daily Meals. Toward an Archaeology of Commensal Spaces” is the first conference volume to be published in the electronic journal eTopoi. It focuses on the social phenomenon of communal eating and drinking in diverse cultures.
The papers collected in this special theme issue of eTopoi are the products of a two-day, international conference held in Berlin on 31 May – 1 June 2010 and sponsored by Topoi. The conference brought together scholars from a range of disciplines, including ancient and modern history, archaeology of Western Asia, South America, and Europe, and Assyriology. Two themes played a prominent role in the papers and discussions: foregrounding the central role of commensality in social life and investigating the relationships between feasts and quotidian meals.
The eTopoi journal was founded in 2011. As an Open Access journal it offers all of the Cluster’s researchers the opportunity to publish their results in the form of articles, research reports and special conference volumes. The latest research results are being disseminated both within and beyond Topoi in a very timely manner through this medium and others, enabling the research to make a direct contribution to current discussions. The first regular bound volume was published in 2011; alongside two conference reports, it brings together contributions to the field of Renaissance rhetorical theory, geo-archaeological studies in the Sudan, architectural history research on the Roman Pantheon and spatial representations on Greek coins. A supplementary special volume contains reports prepared by the Topoi Research Groups on the results obtained in 2010, offering an outstanding overview of current research in the Cluster. More eTopoi editions are in the works; the next few weeks will see the publication of a special volume featuring extended abstracts from this month’s Berlin-based Landscape Archaeology Conference.