Mesquite Pods to Mezcal
Mesquite Pods to Mezcal
10,000 Years of Oaxacan Cuisines
New case studies documenting ten thousand years of cuisines across the cultures of Oaxaca, Mexico, from the earliest gathered plants, such as guajes, to the contemporary production of tejate and its health implications.
Among the richest culinary traditions in Mexico are those of the “eight regions” of the state of Oaxaca. Mesquite Pods to Mezcal brings together some of the most prominent scholars in Oaxacan archaeology and related fields to explore the evolution of the area’s world-renowned cuisines. This volume, the first to address food practices across Oaxaca through a long-term historical lens, covers the full spectrum of human occupation in Oaxaca, from the early Holocene to contemporary times. Contributors consider the deep history of agroecological management and large-scale landscape transformation, framing food production as a human-environment relation. They explore how, after the arrival of the Spanish, Oaxacan cuisines adapted, diets changed, and food became a stronger marker of identity. Examining the present, further studies document how traditional foodways persist and what they mean for contemporary Oaxacans, whether they are traveling ancient roads, working outside the region, or rebuilding after an earthquake. Together, the original case studies in this volume demonstrate how new methods and diverse theoretical approaches can come together to trace the development of a rich food tradition, one that is thriving today.
A fascinating insight into the evolution of Oaxacan cuisine since pre-Columbian times...it provides worthwhile sustenance on the way to addressing contemporary challenges such as food security, sovereignty, sustainability, and cultural rights.
The authors do not simply conduct tangible analyses of bones, ceramics, residences, fields, caves, but they also strive to show how their findings relate to broader patterns of identity, inclusion (or exclusion), movement, and connectivity...[The book] artfully gives the reader a window into centuries of foodways and stuffs in Oaxaca.
Oaxaca’s culinary roots indeed reach deep into the past, as is shown by the essays in this splendid collection...With novel scholarly insights on beloved traditions, this book holds much of interest, not only for archaeologists and food studies scholars, but also for aficionados of Oaxacan cuisine.
This is the most exciting book to be published in the archaeology of food studies in a long time! What a delicious treat of cutting-edge research paired with the fascinating time depth of Oaxacan culinary traditions. From food gentrification to contemporary agrobiodiversity, this is archaeology at its best—providing rich documentation of Indigenous innovation and resilience over deep time and in the world today. This volume will be essential to anyone interested in how food is something larger than itself.
Mesquite Pods to Mescal offers a diverse array of perspectives, techniques, and information—at times dealing with the most minute archaeological traces—to present unprecedented portraits of one of the world’s great culinary regions. Starting with the most ancient contexts and moving through time to contemporary, transnational life, the chapters give a fresh, innovative perspective on the ebb and flow of ingredients, implements, and techniques that are the heart of daily life, special events, deeply held beliefs, and resilient fortitude of Indigenous Oaxacans. The authors deftly navigate the complex landscape of wild and cultivated food, drink, and medicine ingredients, and conversely, show how a 'simple' tortilla is anything but. Savor this book with a delicious cup of tejate.
Verónica Pérez Rodríguez is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Albany, SUNY.
Shanti Morell-Hart is an associate professor of anthropology at Brown University.
Stacie M. King is a professor of anthropology at Indiana University.
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Foreword. Food and the Sacred (Lila Downs)
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1. The Making of Oaxacan Foodways (Andrea M. Cuéllar, Verónica Pérez Rodríguez, Shanti Morell-Hart, and Stacie M. King)
- Part I. The Roots of Oaxacan Cuisine
- Chapter 2. Food from the Barranca: A 13,000-Year Perspective from the Yuzanú Drainage of the Mixteca Alta (Aleksander Borejsza, Arthur Joyce, and Jon C. Lohse)
- Chapter 3. Archaic-Period MRG-6 and the Deep Culinary Roots of Oaxacan Cuisine (Shanti Morell-Hart and Éloi Bérubé)
- Chapter 4. The Cooked, the Burned, and the Modified: Early Formative Cuisines and Human-Animal Relations in the Mixteca Alta (Víctor E. Salazar Chávez and Jeffrey P. Blomster)
- Part II. Oaxaca Foodways in Economic and Spiritual Life
- Chapter 5. Perspectives on Dietary Variability in the Classic-Period Valley of Oaxaca (Gary M. Feinman and Linda M. Nicholas)
- Chapter 6. Eating in the City: Investigating the Dietary Impact of Urban Life in Ancient Oaxaca (Verónica Pérez Rodríguez)
- Chapter 7. Nourishing the Ancestors among the Zapotecs of the Valley of Oaxaca during the Late Classic and Postclassic Periods (Robert Markens and Cira Martínez López)
- Chapter 8. Foodways and Diet in the Prehispanic Mixteca Alta: Ceramic and Isotope Analyses of the Tomb 1 Burial in Nduatiucu (San Felipe Ixtapa, Teposcolula) (Jennifer Saumur and Aurélie Manin)
- Part III. Disrupted, Innovated, and Resilient Cuisines
- Chapter 9. Foregrounding Food: Mixtec Cuisine, Identity, and Ritual at Tututepec, Oaxaca (Marc N. Levine and Kathryn Puseman)
- Chapter 10. Preserving Oaxacan Foodways in the Face of Conquest: A Seed Bank in the Nejapan Sierra Sur (Stacie M. King and Shanti Morell-Hart)
- Chapter 11. Oaxacan Cuisine at Achiutla during the Early Colonial Period: A Story of Resilience (Éloi Bérubé and Jamie E. Forde)
- Part IV. Living Culinary Traditions
- Chapter 12. Itacate para el Camino: Prepared Meals for Prehispanic and Colonial Travelers (Nelly M. Robles García)
- Chapter 13. Isthmus Zapotec Food: Community, Ecology, Markets, Makers (Anya Peterson Royce)
- Chapter 14. Maize Cuisine on the Move in the Twenty-First Century: Persistence and Migration of Tejate, a Traditional Mesoamerican Maize and Cacao Beverage (Daniela Soleri, María del Carmen Castillo Cisernos, Flavio Aragón Cuevas, and David A. Cleveland)
- Contributors
- Index
