The Archaeology of Food and Foodways: Emerging Trends and New Perspectives

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "The Archaeology of Food and Foodways: Emerging Trends and New Perspectives" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This electronic symposium presents a cross-section of emerging trends and new perspectives on the archaeology of food and foodways. Ancient food studies comprise a field of inquiry that touches on all specializations in archaeology, including artifacts, biochemical and microbotanical residue analysis, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, isotope analysis, studies of features and activity areas, experimental archaeology, and ethnographic research. Significant advances in environmental archaeology and archaeological science have enabled us to view and study human relationships with food in more depth and detail than ever before. Meanwhile, novel interpretive approaches have rendered new foodways visible and changed our understandings of food, a substance deeply imbued with cultural, economic, spiritual, and political significance. Scaffolding from this work, scholars and culinary specialists alike have applied archaeological findings to such domains as public policy (e.g., agricultural sustainability), culinary arts (e.g., the revitalization of food traditions), and dietary regimes (e.g., the decolonization of diets). In this symposium, we explore diverse perspectives on ancient foodways, from a number of geographical regions, material analyses, and interpretive approaches.