Ancient Foodways
Ancient Foodways
Integrative Approaches to Understanding Subsistence and Society
How archaeology can shed light on past foodways andsocial worlds
Throughvarious case studies, Ancient Foodwaysillustrates how archaeologists can use bioarchaeology, zooarchaeology, archaeobotany,architecture, and other evidence to understand how food acquisition,preparation, and consumption intersect with economics, politics, and ritual.Spanning four continents and several millennia of human history, this volume isa comprehensive and contemporary survey of how archaeological data can be usedto interpret past foodways and reconstruct past social worlds.
Thisvolume is organized around four major themes: feasting and politics; sacrifice,ritual, and ancestors; diet, landscape, and health; and integrative methods.Contributors weave together multiple threads of evidence relating to plants,animals, craft production, and human health and reconnect the material remnantswith behaviors, practices, and meanings. The case studies show the varied andcreative ways that multiple sources of evidence can be used to shed light onpast foodways.
AncientFoodwaysdemonstrates how environmental and cultural factors shaped past subsistencestrategies and cooking practices and the role food played in shaping culturalidentity and exchange networks, while also examining how food productionmethods can lead to environmental destruction and the detrimental role ofdietary constraints on human health.
“Shows thatintegrating subsistence and foodways data is critical for a deeperunderstanding of the social, cultural, political, and religious implications ofthe plants and animals people ingest. An important volume.”—Tanya M. Peres,coeditor of Unearthing the Missions of Spanish Florida
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