Consuming Landscapes

Landscape and foodways studies in archaeology and beyond have increasingly touched on social questions, but the former have mostly expanded our understanding of the management of past environments, while the latter have focused on discourses of social identity. This session aims to combine these two, often separate, perspectives in order to investigate how foodways and landscape are, and were, entangled. 'Consuming Landscapes' refers to the multiple ways in which historical trajectories of food, especially their relationship with particular geographies are used, called upon and restructured in a social discourse. We welcome contributions across disciplines that investigate how people perceive and engage with their landscapes in different periods and places as revealed by the production, movement, consumption and/or disposal of food. Such a framework can be particularly productive in the examination of the ways social networks and power relationships are created, transformed, and altered along with territorial appropriation, expansion and conquest, and in highlighting ideologies related to such geographical movements. We hope to bring together contributions from a wide range of specialists to expose and encourage a continuing interdisciplinary dialogue to foster the emergence of a more integrated practice in the study of food, and social and cultural landscapes.