Eating Colonialism: Consumption and Resistance in the Indigenous American South, Sixteenth through Early Nineteenth Century

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Columbian Exchange Revisited: Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives on Eurasian Domesticates in the Americas" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

There is no one way that European domesticates were understood by Indigenous groups throughout North America. In the American Southeast, Spanish explorers and colonists introduced peaches, watermelons, and pigs during the sixteenth century, yet only peaches and watermelons were understood by most Native groups as food appropriate for Native bodies; pigs were rejected and considered unsuitable for Native bodies well into the eighteenth century. In this paper, we explore the symbolic qualities of pigs within Southeastern Native cuisines from the sixteenth through early nineteenth century and propose that despite their culinary similarities to bear and bear oil within many Indigenous cuisines, the symbolic association between pigs, European bodies, and European colonial efforts led many Native groups to resist pork consumption as an act of sovereignty intended to keep Native bodies “Native.”

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Columbian Exchange Revisited: Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives on Eurasian Domesticates in the Americas   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40234.0