Review Test 1 — In-class

A beautifully preserved boat, made around 3,000 years ago and discovered by chance in a muddy hole, has had a profound impact on archaeological research.

It was 1992. In England, workmen were building a new road through the heart of Dover, to connect the ancient port and the Channel Tunnel, which, when it opened just two years later, was to be the first land link between Britain and Europe for over 10,000 years. A small team from the Canterbury Archaeological Trust (CAT) worked alongside the workmen, recording new discoveries brought to light by the machines.

At the base of a deep shaft six metres below the modern streets a wooden structure was revealed. Cleaning away the waterlogged site overlying the timbers, archaeologists realised its true nature. They had found a prehistoric boat, preserved by the type of sediment in which it was buried. It was then named the Dover Bronze-Age Boat.

About nine metres of the boat's length was recovered; one end lay beyond the excavation and had to be left. What survived consisted essentially of four intricately carved oak planks: two on the bottom, joined along a central seam by a complicated system of wedges and timbers, and two at the side, curved and stitched to the others. The seams had been made watertight by pads of moss, fixed by wedges and yew stitches.

The timbers that closed the recovered end of the boat had been removed in antiquity when it was abandoned, but much about its original shape could be deduced. There was also evidence for missing upper side planks. The boat was not a wreck, but had been deliberately discarded, dismantled and broken. Perhaps it had been 'ritually killed' at the end of its life, like other Bronze Age objects.

With hindsight, it was significant that the boat was found and studied by mainstream archaeologists who naturally focused on its cultural context. At the time, ancient boats were often considered only from a narrower technological perspective, but news about the Dover boat reached a broad audience. In 2002, on the tenth anniversary of the discovery, the Dover Bronze-Age Boat Trust hosted a conference, where this meeting of different traditions became apparent. Alongside technical papers about the boat, other speakers explored its social and economic contexts, and the religious perceptions of boats in Bronze-Age societies. Many speakers came from overseas, and debate about cultural connections was renewed.

Within seven years of excavation, the Dover boat had been conserved and displayed, but it was apparent that there were issues that could not be resolved simply by studying the old wood. Experimental archaeology seemed to be the solution: a boat reconstruction, half-scale or full-sized, would permit assessment of the different hypotheses regarding its build and the missing end. The possibility of returning to Dover to search for the boat's unexcavated northern end was explored, but practical and financial difficulties were insurmountable - and there was no guarantee that the timbers had survived the previous decade in the changed environment.

Detailed proposals to reconstruct the boat were drawn up in 2004. Archaeological evidence was beginning to suggest a Bronze-Age community straddling the Channel, brought together by the sea, rather than separated by it. In a region today divided by languages and borders, archaeologists had a duty to inform the general public about their common cultural heritage.

The boat project began in England but it was conceived from the start as a European collaboration. Reconstruction was only part of a scheme that would include a major exhibition and an extensive educational and outreach programme. Discussions began early in 2005 with archaeological bodies, universities and heritage organisations on either side of the Channel. There was much enthusiasm and support, and an official launch of the project was held at an international seminar in France in 2007. Financial support was confirmed in 2008, and the project, then named BOAT 1550BC, got under way in June 2011.

A small team began to make the boat at the start of 2012 on the Roman Lawn outside Dover museum. A full-scale reconstruction of a mid-section had been made in 1996, primarily to see how Bronze-Age replica tools performed. In 2012, however, the hull shape was at the centre of the work, so modern power tools were used to carve the oak planks, before turning to prehistoric tools for finishing. It was decided to make the replica half-scale for reasons of cost and time, and synthetic materials were used for the stitching, owing to doubts about the scaling and tight timetable.

Meanwhile, the exhibition was being prepared ready for opening in July 2012 at the Castle Museum in Boulogne-sur-Mer. Entitled 'Beyond the Horizon: Societies of the Channel & North Sea 3,500 years ago', it brought together for the first time a remarkable collection of Bronze Age objects, including many new discoveries for commercial archaeology and some of the great treasures of the past. The reconstructed boat, as a symbol of the maritime connections that bound together the communities on either side of the Channel, was the centrepiece.

1 No matter how much we talk about tasting our favorite flavors, relishing them really depends on a combined input from our senses that we experience through mouth, tongue and nose. The taste, texture, and feel of food are what we tend to focus on, but most important are the slight puffs of air as we chew our food - what scientists call 'retronasal smell'.

2 Certainly, our mouths and tongues have taste buds, which are receptors for the five basic flavors: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami, or what is more commonly referred to as savory. But our tongues are inaccurate instruments as far as flavor is concerned. They evolved to recognise only a few basic tastes in order to quickly identify toxins, which in nature are often quite bitter or acidly sour.

3 All the complexity, nuance, and pleasure of flavor come from the sense of smell operating in the back of the nose. It is there that a kind of alchemy occurs when we breathe up and out the passing whiffs of our chewed food. Unlike a hound's skull with its extra long nose, which evolved specifically to detect external smells, our noses have evolved to detect internal scents. Primates specialise in savoring the many millions of flavor combinations that they can create for their mouths.

4 Taste without retronasal smell is not much help in recognising flavor. Smell has been the most poorly understood of our senses, and only recently has neuroscience, led by Yale University's Gordon Shepherd, begun to shed light on its workings. Shepherd has come up with the term 'neurogastronomy' to link the disciplines of food science, neurology, psychology, and anthropology with the savoury elements of eating, one of the most enjoyed of human experiences.

5 In many ways, he is discovering that smell is rather like face recognition. The visual system detects patterns of light and dark and, building on experience, the brain creates a spatial map. It uses this to interpret the interrelationship of the patterns and draw conclusions that allow us to identify people and places. In the same way, we use patterns and ratios to detect both new and familiar flavors. As we eat, specialised receptors in the back of the nose detect the air molecules in our meals. From signals sent by the receptors, the brain understands smells as complex spatial patterns. Using these, as well as input from the other senses, it constructs the idea of specific flavours.

6 This ability to appreciate specific aromas turns out to be central to the pleasure we get from food, much as our ability to recognise individuals is central to the pleasures of social life. The process is so embedded in our brains that our sense of smell is critical to our enjoyment of life at large. Recent studies show that people who lose the ability to smell become socially insecure, and their overall level of happiness plummets.

7 Working out the role of smell in flavor interests food scientists, psychologists, and cooks alike. The relatively new discipline of molecular gastronomy, especially, relies on understanding the mechanics of aroma to manipulate flavor for maximum impact. In this discipline, chefs use their knowledge of the chemical changes that take place during cooking to produce eating pleasures that go beyond the 'ordinary'.

8 However, whereas molecular gastronomy is concerned primarily with the food or 'smell' molecules, neurogastronomy is more focused on the receptor molecules and the brain's spatial images for smell. Smell stimuli form what Shepherd terms 'odor objects', stored as memories, and these have a direct link with our emotions. The brain creates images of unfamiliar smells by relating them to other more familiar smells. Go back in history and this was part of our survival repertoire; like most animals, we drew on our sense of smell, when visual information was scarce, to single out prey.

9 Thus the brain's flavor-recognition system is a highly complex perceptual mechanism that puts all five senses to work in various combinations. Visual and sound cues contribute, such as crunching, as does touch, including the texture and feel of food on our lips and in our mouths. Then there are the taste receptors, and finally, the smell, activated when we inhale. The engagement of our emotions can be readily illustrated when we picture some of the wide ranging facial expressions that are elicited by various foods - many of them hard-wired into our brains at birth. Consider the response to the sharpness of a lemon and compare that with the face that is welcoming the smooth wonder of chocolate.

10 The flavor-sensing system, ever receptive to new combinations, helps to keep our brains active and flexible. It also has the power to shape our desires and ultimately our bodies. On the horizon, we have the positive application of neurogastronomy: manipulating flavor to curb our appetites.