Culinary Archaeology
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Culinary Archaeology" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
The great strength of foodways archaeology has always been its breadth: methodologically, temporally, spatially, and topically. At the same time, the all-encompassing nature of foodways means that the term has become so diffuse that some of the scholarship has very little to do with food at all. This session proposes that archaeologists refocus on food and cooking under the banner of “culinary archaeology.” This is envisaged as a holistic—though more circumscribed—archaeological study of food that is deeply informed by food history, experimental archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and the embodied knowledge of cooking. This session invites archaeologists working in all time periods and regions to imagine what a culinary archaeology might look like by re-centering on the kitchen and the table, on cooking and eating.
Other Keywords
Historic •
Subsistence and Foodways •
Paleoethnobotany •
Food •
Historical Archaeology •
20th Century •
Zooarchaeology •
Phytoliths •
Colonialism •
Communities of Practice
Geographic Keywords
Arizona (State / Territory) •
United States of America (Country) •
Utah (State / Territory) •
Nevada (State / Territory) •
California (State / Territory) •
North America (Continent) •
USA (Country) •
New Mexico (State / Territory) •
Oklahoma (State / Territory) •
Texas (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)
- Documents (8)
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Consuming Community: Cuisine, Community, and Resilience in Late Colonial New Mexico (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culinary Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Communities of practice are negotiated daily through the use of cuisine. In colonial settings, these communities are contested and reformed, as colonists and colonized negotiate their new found roles. Following the abandonment of the first New Mexican colony after the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, the Spanish Crown recolonized New Mexico in 1692. This second New Mexican...
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Culinary Archaeology at Hyde Park Barracks: Multi-material Analysis of Food and Dining in a Nineteenth-Century Immigration Depot (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culinary Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In history, Barbara Haber has made the distinction between academic food history and culinary history grounded in knowledge of recipes and cooking techniques. This paper uses the case study of the Female Immigration Depot (1848–1887) in Sydney, Australia, to consider what a culinary archaeology would look like. The site, at Sydney’s Hyde Park Barracks, features...
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Culinary Innovation and Political Action in a Japanese Incarceration Camp (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culinary Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During World War II, the US incarcerated 120,000 Japanese Americans in 10 incarceration camps, a process that uprooted lives, separated families, and ruptured economic and cultural networks. Incarceration also shaped the culinary practices of incarcerees constrained by institutional oversight, the goals of camp administrators, racism, and other factors. We ask how...
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Developing a Culinary Archaeology Framework for Comparative Studies of the Chinese Diaspora (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culinary Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In addition to being a primary concern for descendant community stakeholders, the identification of food ingredients, their supply, and their uses are an increasingly important avenue for investigating the health effects of labor and care practices in the late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Chinese diaspora, especially for railroad workers and at other...
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Food Futures: Culinary Archaeology and Anticipating the Future (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culinary Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Imagining what a culinary archaeology might look like involves anticipating the future. In fact, all archaeological practice is concerned with the future even if it is not stated explicitly and archaeologists working on food preparation practices are no exception. As climate change continues to impact (at an alarming rate) sites, travel, collections, data...
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Forensic Culinary Archaeology: Seeking the Longevity of Recipes and Their Flavors from Crete (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culinary Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While archaeobotanists and zooarchaeologists work very hard to gain information about the presence and frequency of past food ingredients throughout time, it has been almost impossible to get at actual recipes and flavor combinations from archaeological settings. Food archaeologists worked hard while making great strides uncovering the rich archaeological data about...
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Searching for Clues: Processing-Wear Analysis on Waterlogged Edible Plant Remains in Archaeobotanical Samples (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culinary Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeobotanical remains of several cesspits and wells from Delft were analyzed to determine if “preparation marks,” marks on plant remains resulting from specific preparation methods, are present and if these marks can be used to differentiate between kitchen refuse and consumption waste or excrement. By combining the results from archaeobotanical analysis with...
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Taking a Closer Look: Biomolecular Insights to Foodways among the Moche of North Coastal Peru (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culinary Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cuisine is essential in the construction and maintenance of local and individual identity. At the Late Moche (600–900 CE) ceremonial center of Huaca Colorada on the north coast of Peru, a rich macrobotanical and zooarchaeological assemblage suggests a cuisine reflective of the region’s environmental diversity. Dominated by maize cultivation and camelid herding,...