Shanti Morell-Hart (College of William and Mary)

THEME ABSTRACT

Ancient gastronomic practices are recoverable through a variety of means, from inedible proxies such as texts and paintings, to bodily inscriptions of diet and nutrition, to actual residues and remains of foodstuffs. Worldwide, ancient foodways have persisted and transformed over time, coalescing into the contemporary practices and ingredients available in our globalized economy. Archaeological approaches to foodways have demonstrated that practices may persist though ingredients transform, and ingredients may persist though practices transform. Change is evident in such areas as transitions to famine foods, innovation in cooking methods, and introduction of new ingredients and recipes.

Modern “borrowings” from archaeological scholarship have been incorporated into the Slow Food movement, agricultural practices, and the revival of heritage foods, in the same way that these modern approaches to food have influenced our interpretations of past foodways. Critical issues include the copyrighting of foodstuff genomes, the recovery and sale of historic alcohol, the preservation and legal protection of gastronomic heritage, modern maladies that represent shifts from traditional foodways, dramatic environmental transformations linked to food practices, and nationalist movements that seek to sediment essentialized regional foodways. The importance and spatiotemporal range of gastronomic heritage invite a critical look at our reconstructions of ancient cuisine, and the impact of these reconstructions on modern foodways.

Sessions

Gastronomic Heritage

Shanti Morell-Hart (College of William and Mary, United States of America)

Abstract

Ancient gastronomy is revealed through transformations and/or continuities in foodways, using a myriad of techniques and approaches. Modern impacts of these findings may be culinary, agricultural, and even nationalist in nature, encompassing ingredients, techniques, and meanings, among other aspects. In this session, we examine modern-day applications of archaeological interpretation, with a focus on gastronomic heritage. Our approaches are three-pronged, incorporating archaeological evidence of foodways, interpretations of ancient cuisines, and implications of archaeological findings on modern modes of sustenance. The session primarily explores the following questions: Over time, why do culinary traditions persist and gastronomic novelties emerge? How are material patterns and disruptions interpreted through archaeological investigation? And, critically, what are the impacts of these archaeological interpretations on modern-day gastronomic heritage, including components, constituents, practices, and semiosis?

 

Integrated analytical approaches to investigating ancient diets

Lisa-Marie Shillito (University of York, United Kingdom); Oliver Craig (University of York, United Kingdom)

Abstract

Reconstructing ancient diet is a key focus in archaeology that has been approached using a very diverse range of methods. Archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, isotopic analysis of human bone, organic residue analysis of pottery, coprolite analysis – all of these areas of specialisation have approached the question of diet. Each provides a different type of dietary information, both in terms of the type of food being studied, and the spatial and temporal resolution of the data.

In order to fully understand past diets and the wider questions to which dietary studies can contribute, an integrated approach is proposed which combines these different lines of evidence. This session invites papers which combine multiple analytical methods to reconstructing past diets, with a particular focus on the new information that an integrated approach can provide.We encourage submissions from all geographic regions and time periods focusing on ancient dietary reconstruction. Papers dealing with the methodological problems of combining these data sets, and potential solutions, are also welcome.

 

Negotiating subsistence and beyond: Food procurement, production, and consumption as social strategies and political pathways

Cheryl Makarewicz (Institute for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology, Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel)

Abstract

Much attention has been paid to food as an avenue through which community social relations are maintained and re-configured, particularly in the context of significant episodic events such as feasting and redistribution. However, by focusing on the exceptional rather the routine, we risk overlooking the daily practices of food procurement, preparation, and consumption, which are equally important, durable pathways through which individuals and households can intentionally manipulate social relations. Foragers, agriculturalists, and pastoralists alike draw from their plant and animal resources in ways that are strategically designed to achieve social goals as well as to meet subsistence needs.

This session investigates the ways in which individuals and households manipulate daily food production practices and develop subsistence strategies that convert these resources to negotiate social landscapes and create political currency. We seek papers which employ analytical techniques that monitor dietary intake and track subsistence strategies, including zooarchaeological, paleobotanical, and stable isotopic analysis, as well as more theoretical approaches that draw more broadly from the archaeological and ethnographic records, to look at the ways in which household food practices are implicated in broader social and political change.

 

Archaeology of salt: approach to an invisible past

Marius-Tiberiu Alexianu, (Al.I. Cuza University, Romania); Olivier Weller, (NRS: UMR 8215, France); Robin Brigand, (Chrono-environment laboratory (UMR 6249), France); Roxana-Gabriela Curca, (Al.I. Cuza University, Romania)

Abstract

Common salt is an invisible object of archaeological research, but ancient texts, history, ethnography, and our everyday life confirm that Man and the Animal can not live without it. Salt is a primordial reference of humanity. This “fifth element” is universal in the double sense, diachronically and diatopically. How archaeology and related disciplines or sciences can approximate this soluble good, this invisible past? The archaeology of salt already has a respectable status (and history), but the answers are perpetually in progress.

Shortly, this is why the salt related archaeological research themes are intriguingly various: explorations, exploitation techniques, exploitation and use tools, transport and storage containers, human and animal feeding, conservation, barter, commerce, human and animal mobility, salt resources control, conflicts, professions related to salt exploitation and uses, etc.

All these themes already constitute a study object for an impressive number of interdisciplinary archaeological approaches. This number is continuously increasing, because the study of an universal element, only with indirect archaeological visibility, requires a holistic approach. All the papers presented in this section will became, undoubtedly, a valuable contribution to these asymptotic efforts to elucidate the role and the importance of salt worldwide in past societies that have been archaeologically investigated.

 

What are we bringing to the table? An open discussion on palaeodietary proxies

Jessica S Smyth (University of Bristol, United Kingdom); Lucy J Cramp (University of Bristol, United Kingdom)

Abstract

Never before has such a wide range of analytical techniques been available to archaeologists investigating past subsistence. Data obtained from the examination of plant and faunal remains and ethnohistorical studies – for a long time the major contributors to our understanding of palaeodiet – have more recently been complemented by developments in the field of biomolecular archaeology. In theory this should put archaeologists on a more secure footing, aiding more robust and informed conclusions about ancient foodways; in practice, the inherent (often unacknowledged) biases in each approach can create difficulties in reconciling interpretations across disciplines. Clearly, one way of counteracting this is to place carefully-constructed research questions at the forefront of any multi-proxy palaeodietary study, but we also need to engage more directly with the unique capabilities of each approach, their strengths as well as their limitations.

This forum is structured around five short presentations by specialists in the fields of zooarchaeology, archaeobotany, lipid analysis, isotopic analysis and anthropology, with a view to exploring the taphonomic, methodological and interpretative assumptions underpinning the various proxies. Participation is encouraged from colleagues in these and related fields, but also from archaeologists interested in exploring the various pros and cons of current analytical techniques.

 

Mind the gap? Bridging the divide between cattle as ‘good to eat’ and ‘good to think’

Julie B. Dunne (University of Bristol, United Kingdom)

Abstract

The domestication of animals and the transition from hunting to herding marks both a milestone in the transformation of human-animal relationships and a human change in ‘being’ in the natural world. Throughout this time, cattle play a multivalent role, not only for their economic and technological significance to prehistoric people but also their symbolic value in human-animal relationships. Cattle and their products can be regarded as social currency, being used to construct and define social animal and human relationships.

This session seeks to explore the complex interdependent relationships existing between humans and their cattle, and invites multidisciplinary perspectives which attempt to bridge the gap between the study of these animals as sustenance and as semiotic metaphors. In exploring this divide (across both temporal and spatial frameworks), can we identify ways that cattle are implicated in cultural transmission and the links where ideas and representations of animals shape personal and collective identity?

 

Negotiating subsistence and beyond: food procurement, production, and consumption as social strategies and political pathways

Cheryl A Makarewicz (Christian Albrechts University, Germany)

Abstract

Much attention has been paid to food as an avenue through which community social relations are maintained and re-configured, particularly in the context of significant episodic events such as feasting and redistribution. However, by focusing on the exceptional rather the routine, we risk overlooking the daily practices of food procurement, preparation, and consumption, which are equally important, durable pathways through which individuals and households can intentionally manipulate social relations. Foragers, agriculturalists, and pastoralists alike draw from their plant and animal resources in ways that are strategically designed to achieve social goals as well as to meet subsistence needs.

This session investigates the ways in which individuals and households manipulate daily food production practices and develop subsistence strategies that convert these resources to negotiate social landscapes and create political currency. We seek papers which employ analytical techniques that monitor dietary intake and track subsistence strategies, including zooarchaeological, paleobotanical, and stable isotopic analysis, as well as more theoretical approaches that draw more broadly from the archaeological and ethnographic records, to look at the ways in which household food practices are implicated in broader social and political change.