Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Authors:Christine A. Hastorf Pages: 5 - 15 Abstract: Food plays a central role in human life, both past and present. For much of human history, obtaining a sufficient amount of food was a daily priority. Eating not only engages the senses, but it is a vital form of social engagement, creating important and crucial social and familial bonds. The various steps and stages required in the procurement, production, preparation and consumption of food all leave their traces in the archaeological record. Much of the material culture we encounter at archaeological sites, from the macro to the micro, can in some way be connected to food. Archaeologists continue to develop new techniques and technologies that bring us closer to the ways in which people interacted with food, in its many variant forms, in the past. This thematic essay does not seek to provide a thorough review of archaeological food studies, but rather, in the words of Levi-Strauss, to provide something, like food, that is ‘good to think with’. The goal is to present some of the traditional research questions and methods surrounding food, along with explorations of some newer perspectives. It highlights the importance of environmental archaeology and archaeological sciences, and demonstrates how the integration of macro- and micro-remains, through microscopic techniques and the analysis of residues found on ceramics, can aid in our understanding of a wide range of foodways practices, from fermentation to storage, cooking and consumption. Now is the time to reorient both past and future research, to more clearly address the rich and engaging topic of what and how our ancestors ate, why they did so, and what every part of this great process might have meant to them. PubDate: 2022-01-13 DOI: 10.1558/aff.16902 Issue No:Vol. 1, No. 1 (2022)
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Authors:Crystal A. Dozier, Grace E. Tsai Pages: 16–3 - 16–3 Abstract: This project recreated 16th century wine following Charles Estienne’s recipe in L’agriculture et Maison Rustique (1570). The primary goal was to better understand enology from this period, through scientific analysis of wine made in a historical manner. The resulting wine had an ABV of 9.74%, 216.7 kcal per 12 fl. oz., and a pH of 3.8, with volatile aromas common in modern young white wine. A secondary goal was to compare pollen profiles from the wine and the vineyard from which the wine was produced. The wine contained Vitis as a major pollen type, unlike sedimentary samples from the vineyard. Together, we conclude that a wine produced in a traditional manner may be enologically compared to modern wines, and that the palynological characteristics will include Vitis but may not reflect vineyard conditions. The implications for the archaeological record as well as our understanding of 16th century European wine traditions are discussed. PubDate: 2022-01-13 DOI: 10.1558/aff.17752 Issue No:Vol. 1, No. 1 (2022)
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Authors:Adam King, Sheldon Skaggs, Terry G. Powis, Christina M. Luke, George J. Micheletti, Kong F. Cheong, Nilesh W. Gaikwad Pages: 34–5 - 34–5 Abstract: The material plays a fundamental and active role in the social lives of people, from objects like containers or buildings to food and other consumables. In this paper, evidence from absorbed residues are used to explore the contents of an Ulúa-style marble vase found in a royal courtyard at the ancient Maya site of Pacbitun in west-central Belize. Those results indicate that the vase once held concoctions containing cacao, willow and possibly vanilla. Significantly, the results also confirm residues of the important Maya ritual drink balché, in an ancient container. By placing the vase and its contents in the history of Pacbitun, we demonstrate the important role of this object and its contents in dedicatory rituals practiced in this region; we argue that subsequent disturbance of the context and the vase in antiquity points to the fragmentation of kingship. PubDate: 2022-01-13 DOI: 10.1558/aff.20708 Issue No:Vol. 1, No. 1 (2022)
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Authors:Ayushi Nayak, Nicole Boivin, Patrick Roberts Pages: 54–8 - 54–8 Abstract: Today, over half of the people living in South Asia are employed in an agricultural sector that supports one of the most densely populated regions on Earth. Yet the origins of agriculture in this environmentally and culturally diverse region have received relatively little attention compared to other parts of the Old World. Narratives of agricultural origins have frequently been monocausal, treating this massive landmass as a single entity. Recently, multidisciplinary applications of diverse methods (including archaeobotany, systematic radiometric dating, stable isotope analysis, and ancient DNA) have facilitated more nuanced insights into the origins, as well as the social and environmental consequences, of different farming foodways in prehistory. Here, we review the current application of these techniques across the Indian Subcontinent, focusing on the insights they have provided into cultivation and herding practices, dietary reliance on particular foods and culinary techniques, demographic turnover, changing settlement patterns, and the environmental impacts of agricultural practice in the Holocene. We argue that such approaches are essential if we are to properly understand the diverse drivers of different farming practices, as well as their demographic, ecological and dietary outcomes on the production and consumption of food in different parts of South Asia. Only then can we begin to discuss the prehistoric origins of the culinary and agronomic diversity that characterises this region today. PubDate: 2022-01-13 DOI: 10.1558/aff.13983 Issue No:Vol. 1, No. 1 (2022)
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Authors:Björn Reichhardt Pages: 85–1 - 85–1 Abstract: In this photo essay, I illustrate ethnographic encounters with dairying practices and dairy microbes in various regions of Mongolia. Drawing on fieldwork conducted during two consecutive summers, this essay focuses on the sociocultural role of microbial starter cultures in producing diverse dairy products (such as fermented mare’s milk) and in cross-generational knowledge transfer. The Mongolian word for starter culture is khöröngö, which also means capital and heritage. In this context, a sociocultural anthropological approach sheds new light on starter cultures as mobile entities of value across space and time. PubDate: 2022-01-13 DOI: 10.1558/aff.15577 Issue No:Vol. 1, No. 1 (2022)
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