Culinary Archaeology at Hyde Park Barracks: Multi-material Analysis of Food and Dining in a Nineteenth-Century Immigration Depot

Summary

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 desiccated underfloor occupation deposits beneath the floors throughout the building with remarkable preservation of organic artifacts that provides a unique opportunity for multi-material analysis of animal bone and macrobotanical remains in addition to glass, ceramics, and metal. Tacking between archival documents and archaeological material, how does re-centering the kitchen and the table shift the interpretation of food and dining practices for newly arrived female immigrants?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Culinary Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36252.0