CACHE Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow Emlyn Dodd

CACHE was very pleased to welcome our first Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow this year, Dr Emlyn Dodd. The Centre hosted Emlyn from 7th September to 5th October 2020 to carry out the research project “Viticulture and oleiculture of the Roman and Late Antique Cyclades: A study on knowledge networks, agricultural expertise and technological diffusion”. Through an interdisciplinary lens combining archaeological science and historical and socio-cultural methodologies, this project analyses agricultural technology and networks of knowledge and production relating to wine- and olive oil-making in the Cycladic islands from the Classical and Hellenistic eras, through the Roman period and to the end of Late Antiquity.

Emlyn’s project expands on his recent monograph Roman and Late Antique Wine Production in the Eastern Mediterranean (Archaeopress, 2020) and his work as Greece Fellow at the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens (AAIA) in 2019–2020. Using archaeological data collected while at the AAIA, including the locations of amphorae, counterweights, vats, agricultural zones, and other finds, Emlyn aims to construct an online GIS-mapped database of artefacts related to viticulture and oleiculture in the Cycladic region. This database will support a quantified productivity analysis of sites in the area, and help to clarify such issues as the dissemination of technical knowledge and the role of smaller sites within the broader regional economy. During his fellowship, Emlyn consulted with CACHE members to receive interdisciplinary support and identify areas for future collaboration and applications of the database. Initial results of his research project will be published in an article entitled “Wine and olive oil across the ancient Cyclades: A preliminary report and new thoughts on the development of Greek and Roman press technology” in the forthcoming volume of Mediterranean Archaeology. Emlyn will also be convening the conference session “From field to table: Food and beverage production, processing, and consumption”, together with CACHE Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr Sophia Aharonovich, at the inaugural meeting of the Mediterranean Archaeology Australasian Research Community (MAARC) in January 2021.

Emlyn received his PhD from Macquarie University in 2018. During his candidature, he was the resident Macquarie-Gale Scholar at the British School at Rome in 2015–2016. In addition to his postdoctoral fellowship at the AAIA, Emlyn has recently been announced as the recipient of an Humanities Travelling Fellowship from the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a Richard Bradford McConnell Fund for Landscape Studies Award from the British School at Athens, to continue his research into ancient agricultural knowledge networks in the Cyclades. He has participated in archaeological fieldwork projects in Greece with the AAIA, in Turkey with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and in Italy with the British School at Rome and Macquarie University. He also currently works as Program Manager for the Centre for Social Justice & Inclusion at the University of Technology Sydney, designing outreach programs for school students.

You can follow Emlyn on Twitter for updates on his research.

Dr Emlyn Dodd excavating a wine press vat (c. 400 CE) on the slope of the Imperial temple at Antiochia ad Cragum, Rough Cilicia (modern south Turkey) in 2015