Rekindling Ancestral Choctaw Cuisine: A Collaborative Application of Archaeology for Community Consumption

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.

The Pine Hills of Mississippi is an understudied research area in archaeology with even less work done in collaboration with Indigenous descendant communities (both resident and removed). The current project was undertaken in collaboration with the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma to better understand earth-oven technology in the archaeological record of their homeland with the goal of rekindling cooking techniques and traditions for their community. The approach presented here incorporates information from the tribe, both past and present, including oral traditions, ethnohistorical documents, and place names. From an archaeological perspective, clay sandstone features that may represent cooking facilities, associated artifact assemblages, and lithic debris from a representative archaeological site in the ancestral Southern District will be examined through the lens of Choctaw culture. In developing this type of research collaboration, the theme of decolonization and Indigenous ontologies emerged, which adds value to the methods, analysis, and broader impacts of the work itself for both archaeologists and descendant communities. Specifically, this project demonstrates the application of Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) principles in archaeology can inform cultural revitalization of a living people.

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): 38966.0