Experiencing Foodways and Community in Southeast Asian Archaeology

Summary

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 there are resulting food and material culture remains from every step. From the past to the present, many of the foodway activities are being done as a community. Present-day cultural diversity and identity revolve around cuisine, which comprises the preparation and consumption of food. However, most of the studies in Southeast Asian archaeology are geared towards addressing food acquisition practices or subsistence strategies associated with other big picture questions (e.g., environments, migrations, and foraging-farming transition). As a result, it is not clear how food items were prepared and served that would allow for evaluating the importance of food in maintaining identity based on shared foodways. To address how foodways and being part of a community were possibly experienced by the people in ancient Southeast Asia, the perspectives of practice theory and community of practice are being advocated to get closer to their identities and daily lives.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33231