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The Social Archaeology of Food

The Social Archaeology of Food

The Social Archaeology of Food

Thinking about Eating from Prehistory to the Present
Christine A. Hastorf , University of California, Berkeley
November 2016
Available
Hardback
9781107153363

    This book offers a global perspective on the role food has played in shaping human societies, through both individual and collective identities. It integrates ethnographic and archaeological case studies from the European and Near Eastern Neolithic, Han China, ancient Cahokia, Classic Maya, the Inka and many other periods and regions, to ask how the meal in particular has acted as a social agent in the formation of society, economy, culture and identity. Drawing on a range of social theorists, Hastorf provides a theoretical toolkit essential for any archaeologist interested in foodways. Studying the social life of food, this book engages with taste, practice, the meal and the body to discuss power, identity, gender and meaning that creates our world as it created past societies.

    • Uses food as an entry into studies of the past - the interest in the archaeology of food is a rapidly expanding focus in all disciplines and in the public eye, and this book solidly addresses this topic
    • Provides a theoretical exposition of past and present social life using food as the key
    • Includes rich examples from the ethnographic and archaeological record, introducing the reader to essential bodies of social theory through food

    Awards

    Winner, 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

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    Product details

    November 2016
    Hardback
    9781107153363
    414 pages
    238 × 159 × 27 mm
    0.8kg
    26 b/w illus. 2 maps
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • 1. Introduction: the social life of food
    • Part I. Laying the Groundwork:
    • 2. Framing food investigation
    • 3. The practices of a meal in society
    • Part II. Current Food Studies in Archaeology:
    • 4. The archaeological study of food activities
    • 5. Food economics
    • 6. Food politics: power and status
    • Part III. Food and Identity: The Potentials of Food Archaeology:
    • 7. Food in the construction of group identity
    • 8. The creation of personal identity: food, body and personhood
    • 9. Food creates society.
      Author
    • Christine A. Hastorf

      Christine A. Hastorf is known for her contributions to palaeoethnobotany, agriculture, meaning and the everyday, food studies, political economy, and ritual in middle-range societies of the Andean region of South America. She has written and edited many articles and books, and has completed fieldwork in Mexico, California, New Mexico, Italy, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Turkey and England. She oversees an archaeobotanical laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley and directs an archaeological project in Bolivia. At the 2012 Society for American Archaeology meetings, she was awarded the Fryxell Award for Excellence in the Botanical Sciences in Archaeology.

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