FORMER Taree High School student Jeremy Carr has been awarded the Britta Petzl Memorial Prize for his completed ancient history thesis.
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Jeremy was travelling in the United States when he found out the news.
"It was honestly a huge surprise to win," said Jeremy.
"I hadn't checked my university email in weeks and I was in San Francisco when I finally did and realised I had an email."
Jeremy, a student at the University of Sydney, focused his thesis on food in 5th century BC Greece.
Using the ancient text Herodotus' Histories, Jeremy looked at how how dining practices affected one's identity in the eyes of the Greeks.
"For instance, vegetarianism had "noble savage" connotations while lavish feasts were associated with tyranny," he explained.
On the process of writing a thesis Jeremy said the work load "came in waves".
"Sometimes I was really productive and managed to draft a chapter within a couple of weeks, but sometimes I was just stuck," he said.
"Editing was particularly difficult. However, I really enjoyed writing it overall."
Jeremy feels as though he has only scratched the surface of the topic and would like to look further into drinking practices of the period. "I was constantly running into fascinating new information," said Jeremy.
Two surprising pieces of information he couldn't fit into his thesis was "...that the werewolf myth originated in ancient Greece and had significant cultural impact - it was one of the myths that forbade cannibalism."
"Secondly, some Greeks believed that beans had souls and therefore refused to eat them."
To celebrate the completion of his thesis Jeremy and friends from university are currently doing a trip around the United States for two months.
"For me, this is the end of my undergraduate years; for them it's the last holiday before they're qualified teachers. Though ancient Greece is my main area, I've studied a bit of US history in my degree," he said.
"At the moment I've been reading a lot about 1920s America and this trip has been scratching the itch to learn more about it."
The Britta Petzl Memorial Prize in ancient history was established in 1996 by a donation from the Petzl family in memory of Britta Petzl. It is awarded annually for the best thesis in ancient history written by a student enrolled in fourth year honours provided the work is of sufficient merit.