Grain Size Variation and Culinary Traditions: Insights into Prehistoric Food Globalization in Eurasia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Food and Foodways: Emerging Trends and New Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Over the past 15 years, research into prehistoric food globalization has shed light on the timelines, routes, and tempos of crop diffusion across the Old World. This diffusion not only involved the spread of plants but also the reproduction and transformation of cultures, technologies, and ideologies associated with staple crops in diverse ecological and socioeconomic settings. Recent studies have delved deeper into this complex process, exploring culinary traditions, agricultural strategies, and labor organizations, among other factors. In our study, we examined published morphometric data on foxtail and broomcorn millets, wheat, and barley from the late fourth to the first millennium BC. Our findings reveal a consistent cross-taxonomic trend in grain size changes along a longitudinal axis. Grains tend to compact when moving eastward and enlarge when moving westward across Eurasia. We argue that this phenomenon reflects profound differences in culinary traditions between Eastern and Western regions, rooted in Upper Paleolithic practices. Western Eurasian culinary traditions historically favored larger grains for grinding and baking, whereas Eastern Eurasian culinary practices preferred smaller grains suited for steaming and boiling. This culinary preference likely played a crucial role in shaping the observed grain size variations across Eurasia in our study.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Archaeology of Food and Foodways: Emerging Trends and New Perspectives   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40103.0