Building a Deeper Understanding of the Archaeology of Food through Photographs and Critical Reflection

Summary

This is an abstract from the "AI-Proof Learning: Food-Centered Experimental Archaeology in the Classroom" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The archaeology of food is rarely revelatory of an individual’s diet or of individual meals. Instead, it is usually indicative of a community’s procurement and processing patterns, consumption patterns, cooking methods, and disposal practices. But how can we teach students to understand this distinction and to look for and investigate these larger patterns in their own lives and in the archaeological record? In this session, I’ll suggest that photo documentation of and guided reflection upon a meal they eat can encourage our students to start thinking more deeply about the archaeology of food and all it can (and cannot) reveal. By reflecting upon what they ate and why they ate it, where the various ingredients came from, the labor put into the meal, what is left behind for future archaeologists, and where those various components end up, students can think critically about both their individual role in our food system and their connection to larger cultural systems. This single exercise beautifully reveals the complexity of our students’ lives and enables them to better seek out evidence for complexity in the lives and societies of past peoples, ever impacted by identity, environment, infrastructure, and economics.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• AI-Proof Learning: Food-Centered Experimental Archaeology in the Classroom   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37854.0