Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Warner.

This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of animal bones is an important contributor to many areas of archaeology, specifically in areas such as domestication, climate change, human/environment interactions, etc. However, when looking at the broader lens of anthropological theory as well as the burgeoning food studies movement, archaeology evidence is only...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharyn Jones.

This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Taking inspiration from post-humanist theory, I frame my work about human life both past and present in a way that attempts to avoid traditional concretized definitions of humanity and culture that envision these subjects as separate from nature or the environment. Post-humanists view humanity as only part of a much bigger and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Livarda. Hector A. Orengo.

This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There are many different ways to approach food and food culture as windows into past lifeways. In this paper we discuss how food plant evidence, landscape data, and new technologies can be combined to provide new approaches that allow the study of webs of communication that can explain variable socioeconomic settings through time...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Eusebio.

This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The cultural aspects of science and technology—the science, culture, and art in everyday life—can be demonstrated through food and foodways. Foodways is the chaîne opératoire of what happens to food and associated materials from their acquisition until their discard. It is also a series of cultural formation processes, where...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christine A. Hastorf. Melanie Miller.

This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological studies of ancient foodways focus on understanding subsistence practices in terms of the movement of species over space and time, human/plant/animal strategies, ecological transformations, periods of abundance/famine, economics, and politics. The values that foods are imbued with, the meaning and significance they...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Logan. Sophie Reilly.

This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Why do we do food archaeology, and what can we use it for? In the last few decades, social archaeology has strongly shaped approaches to food in the past, directing our attention to how food is used to create social boundaries and values. More than ever before, archaeology is now facing the challenge of making ourselves relevant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Chiou. Di Hu. Andrew Warnes. Psyche Williams-Forson.

This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To food scholars, meals serve as microcosms of the world at large. Those interested in disentangling the complex relationship between food and structural inequality must simultaneously engage many dimensions of social life including class, race, ethnicity, gender, status, ritual, and religion. Since Kimberlé Crenshaw's...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shanti Morell-Hart.

This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Drawing from long-established fields in anthropology (structuralist, semiotic, identity-oriented, subsistence-focused, human ecological, and many others), food scholars have actively developed hybrid perspectives and novel pursuits. Here, I focus on four: modeling foodways linguistically, theorizing gastropolitik, situating the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tanya Peres.

This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Gastropolitics are the creation and maintenance of social and political relationships through the making and consuming of meals. Archaeology allows us to recover the residues of meals and associated culinary equipment from secure contexts. Foodways data, when integrated with other data classes such as paleodemography and spatial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Oas.

This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The fundamental importance of food to mind, body, and society makes foodways important to our understanding of past social phenomenon. In this presentation, I highlight the importance of engaging with the social dimensions of food to address the multifaceted relationships between broader changes in the environment and political...