The Sustainable Past

In this final episode of season two, we interview each other about our work on ancient bathing and gardens and their relationship to human health and wellbeing. We explore how we might reevaluate our own practices to help with sustainability.

 Dr. Giacomo Savani, a fellow at St. Andrews is working on a new project related to female health and bathing practices in the ancient and early modern periods, and considers the role the environment played in that. 

Dr. Patty Baker, is founder  of Pax in Natura, a floral designer, and former academic, speaks about her research on ancient gardens and their impact on mental and physical wellbeing. 

 If you would like to take part in this podcast please contact us either at [email protected] or via the contact page at www.paxinnature.com

Dr. Vanessa Champion is a classicist and founder of the Journal of Biophilic Design  and The Space Doctors, who speaks with us about the term Biophilia and Environmental Psychology and how modern scholarship and ideas are grounded in historical conceptions. In this episode, there is an interplay between Ancient Greco-Roman concepts of healthy spaces and the ways in which we can use their ideas in modern design.

The Journal of Biophilic Design can be accessed here.

The Space Doctors can be accessed here. 

Dr. Ismene Miliaresis received her Ph.D. in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Virginia and her research focuses on the sustainability of heating systems in ancient Roman baths and homes,particularly at Ostia and Pompeii, and she is the Assistant Director of the Palazzo Imperiale Project at Ostia. She has worked on numerous excavations in California, on Crete at Eleutherna, at Morgantina in Sicily, at Pollena Trocchia near Naples, at Salapia in Puglia, and for four years at Villa Magna at Anagni where she supervised the excavation of the cisterns andwater systems of the imperial Antonine villa. Miliaresis has also consulted on the bath structuresat Cosa and at Carsulae. 

Today, she speaks about how her background in engineering has helped her consider many questions about the sustainability of Roman heating.

In this week's episode, we continue  with the theme of water. We have a double interview with Dr.Janne Coomans a postdoctoral candidate at the University of Amsterdam and Davide Martino, a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. Both speak about their research on water usage in the early modern period, in northern Europe and Italy. We hear more about ideas of healthy water and the means of making water available to the wider public, and discuss the ideas of a  healthy water supply in the past, ideas, we continue to struggle with today.

Janna Coomans is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University and a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam. Janna is an urban historian, and her research focuses on social history and public health in premodern cities. Her PhD thesis was published in 2021 as Community, Urban Health and Environment in the Late Medieval Low Countries by Cambridge University Press.

Davide Martino is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. His project is entitled 'Hydraulic philosophy in early modern European cities' and investigates the branch of early modern natural philosophy concerned with water, with a focus on three early modern European cities: Augsburg, Florence, and Amsterdam. His research interests include architectural history, global history, and innovative methodologies for the environmental humanities.

David Gentilcore is Professor of Modern History at Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice. He is the principal investigator of an ERC Advanced Grant entitled The Water Cultures of Italy, 1500-1900, which aims to create a new holistic approach to the study of human interactions with water over time. He’s published extensively on history of popular religion, the history of medicine and health, and the history of food and diet.

This week, we hear from Professor Laurence Totelin, who is a specialist in ancient pharmacology and botany at the University of Cardiff, Wales. She is an historian of Greek and Roman Science, Technology, and Medicine and has published wildly on of ancient pharmacology, gynecology, botany and sensory studies. She is currently working on the history of pharmacological retail; the history of plant grafting; and the history of ancient cosmetics and sexual aids, such as aphrodisiacs. With Dr. Patty Baker and Professor Helen King, she helped create a MOOC Health and Wellbeing in the Ancient World.

In this episode, Professor Totelin  speaks with us about ancient medicines, Greco-Roman classifications of pharmaceutical ingredients, and medical recipes. 

In this season, Drs. Giacomo Savani and Patty Baker interview experts on past and present environments and how they were and are perceived to be related to health. We speak with a range of specialists whose work focuses on ancient, medieval, Renaissance, Early Modern and Modern Italy. Again, we explore the possibilities of learning from the past to think about and improve the environmental crises we face today.

In this final episode,  Dr. Giacomo Savani and Dr. Matthew Mandich speak about their recent workshop on “Antiquity and the Anthropocene” and their research on Roman Baths and Roman/Modern urban planning respectively. Then, Dr. Giacomi Savani interviews Dr. Patty Baker about her work on ancient floral design and medicine.

Dr. Matthew J. Mandich holds a PhD in Roman Archaeology from the University of Leicester (UK) and is currently undertaking a Master’s at the University of San Francisco (USA) in Urban and Public Affairs. His research is founded on the archaeological, topographical, and historical study of ancient Rome and his current interests focus on the comparative study of ancient and modern urbanism, cities, and empires. He is especially interested in exploring how humans can live in close proximity to one another in environmentally, economically, and socially responsible ways. A recent publication is Ancient City, Universal Growth? Exploring Urban Expansion and Economic Development on Rome's Eastern Periphery. He is also a co-founder and an editorial board member of the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal.

Dr Patty Baker is an affiliated scholar and adjunct instructor in the Department of History at Virginia Tech, United States, and founder of a new online teaching website, Pax in Natura, that uses crafts and floral design to teach people about Greco-Roman relationships with the environment to help explore environmental issues today. Her main area of research is ancient medicine and health and its relationship to the environment. She is also a floral designer and is currently working on a project that explores ancient floral design to help flower designers develop sustainable practices.  A recent publication is “Identifying the Connection between Roman Conceptions of ‘Pure Air’ and Physical and Mental Health in Pompeian Gardens (c.150 BC–AD 79): a Multi-sensory Approach to Ancient Medicine.” World Archaeology 50 (3): 404-17.

Dr. Giacomo Savani is a post-doctoral research Fellow in the School of Classics, University College Dublin, Ireland and a visual artist. He is currently investigating the study and reception of Roman baths in Italy, France, and England from 1500 to 1700. In 2017, he wrote and illustrated the educational book Life in the Roman World: Roman Leicester (2018). His art is inspired by environmental change and was displayed in the online exhibition linked to the workshop Antiquity and the Anthropocene.

Artwork: Roman Floral Crown, Created by Dr. Patty Baker

Music:  played by Daniel Veesey  Sonata 8 Pathetique III Rondo Allegro, Beethoven. Royalty Free for public use from Pixabay  Pixabay

In this episode, we interview Professor Kathryn Gleason who speaks about the archaeology of ancient Roman Gardens.

Professor Gleason is a member of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Cornell in the United States. Her work focuses on the archaeology of Roman Gardens, and she has worked in the Bay of Naples and in Israel. Her research explores an extensive system of plant trade and hydrological engineering that was needed to construct Roman gardens. Her recent publication is the edited volume entitled Gardens of the Roman Empire with Cambridge University Press and there is a dedicated website related to the project which can be found here.

 Artwork: Hand-tied roses by Dr. Patty Baker.

Music: Music: played by Daniel Veesey  Sonata 8 Pathetique III Rondo Allegro, Beethoven

Royalty Free for public use from Pixabay Pixabay

Professor Jason König speaks to us about ancient Greco-Roman literature on the environment, in particular ancient relationships with mountains.

Professor Jason König is the assistant director of the Center for Ancient Environmental Studies at the University of St. Andrews. He is currently working on ancient representations of landscape and the environment. The main focus of this is a book on the representation of mountains in ancient literature and culture. The project is supported by a Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant, entitled ‘Mountains in ancient literature and culture and their postclassical reception’. He is also exploring the opportunities and challenges involved in bringing ancient Greek and Roman literature into dialogue with approaches from ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. A recent co-edited volume is entitled Mountain Dialogues from Antiquity to Modernity with Dawn Hollis for Bloomsbury.


Artwork: "Unititled" by Dr. Giacomo Savani

Music: Music: played by Daniel Veesey  Sonata 8 Pathetique III Rondo Allegro, Beethoven. Royalty Free for public use from Pixabay  Pixabay