IPAMAA's Abigail Staub successfully defended her dissertation "Power in the ‘Pistrinum’: A Vernacular Approach to Amuletic and Apotropaic Risk Management Strategies in Roman Imperial Baking Contexts" on Tuesday, May 26th.
Abigail describes her research as follows: "This dissertation project investigates the dynamic and variable riskscapes that encompassed industrial Roman bread ovens, and the highly creative shrines, ritual assemblages and apotropaic materials deployed at or around them, as a response to perceived uncertainty. As baking became increasingly professionalized across the Mediterranean, ovens– and especially their openings– emerged as vulnerable thresholds in their own right, requiring amuletic action. Utilizing case studies from Pompeii and Vindolanda, the project explores how bakers navigated a constellation of risks—including conflagration, bodily strain, animal management, and precarious social dynamics—through locally-informed, diverse ritual interventions. Centering vernacular experience and creative difference, the dissertation restores nuance, agency, and embodied complexity to the lives of the laborers and enslaved people working at and around the bread oven."
Our warmest congratulations, Dr. Staub!
