Foodways (Anthropology)

"In countless ways, the Yuchi (Euchee) people are unique among their fellow Oklahomans and Native peoples of North America. Inheritors of a language unrelated to any other, the Yuchi preserve a strong cultural identity. In part because they have not yet won federal recognition as a tribe, the Yuchi are largely unknown among their non-Native neighbors and often misunderstood in scholarship. Jason Baird Jackson’s Yuchi Folklore, the result of twenty years of collaboration with Yuchi people and one of just a handful of works considering their experience, brings Yuchi cultural expression to light."

"Yuchi Folklore examines expressive genres and customs that have long been of special interest to Yuchi people themselves. Beginning with an overview of Yuchi history and ethnography, the book explores four categories of cultural expression: verbal or spoken art, material culture, cultural performance, and worldview. In describing oratory, food, architecture, and dance, Jackson visits and revisits the themes of cultural persistence and social interaction, initially between Yuchi and other peoples east of the Mississippi and now in northeastern Oklahoma. The Yuchi exist in a complex, shifting relationship with the federally recognized Muscogee (Creek) Nation, with which they were removed to Indian Territory in the 1830s."

"Jackson shows how Yuchi cultural forms, values, customs, and practices constantly combine as Yuchi people adapt to new circumstances and everyday life. To be Yuchi today is, for example, to successfully negotiate a world where commercial rap and country music coexist with Native-language hymns and doctoring songs. While centered on Yuchi community life, this volume of essays also illustrates the discipline of folklore studies and offers perspectives for advancing a broader understanding of Woodlands peoples across the breadth of the American South and East."

EL 6 de agosto del 2014, la minera Buenavista del Cobre derramó 40,000 metros cúbicos de lixiviados de cobre, desde un represo ubicado en sus instalaciones, hacia el afluente del río Bacanuchi-Sonora. Las aguas, cargadas con metales pesados derivados del proceso extractivo, recorrieron más de 250 kilómetros en los cuales están asentadas más de 30 localidades. La afectación se cristalizó en las actividades alimentarias, comerciales, agrícolas, pecuarias, y de recolección, mismas que constituyen y estructuran el tejido social, cultural, económico y político de la vida cotidiana entre los habitantes del río Sonora.
Ante la falta de mecanismos de prevención, mitigación de riesgos, y acceso a información confiable, la seguridad de los habitantes fue dejada a merced de sus elecciones individuales. Debido a la configuración de la cotidianidad, a los requerimentos biofísicos para la supervivencia, y al valor que las sociedades y las culturas del mundo otorgan a la alimentación, la mayoría de las elecciones encontró como espacio de disputa las prácticas alimentarias, encontrándose en ellas un complejo entramado de formas de percibir, pensar, y dar sentido a la vida, al territorio, y a los vínculos interpersonales que conforman las mesas cotidianas.

Umami – how searching for the fifth taste affected Japanese cuisine
Umami is the fifth taste – among sweet, salty, sour and bitter – the one
thanks to which we can feel some of aminoacids or ribonucleotides that
build up proteins, especially glutamic acid (or monosodium glutamate).
If the protein content is high, aminoacids are detached from each other,
and their concentration is high, the food is very enjoyable to eat. Meals
with high content of monosodium glutamate are popular worldwide, but
in most cuisines meat is the main carrier of  umami , so people in most cul-
tures did not deem that meaty taste was something special. But there is
one cuisine that was devoid of meat for a long time: Japanese. What is
interesting is that Japanese cuisine invented such highly processed plant-
based products as  miso paste,  matcha tea and  dashi broth, which are not
only rich in  umami taste, but also have the right proportion of compounds
related to this taste, so the  umami sensation is the most intensive.
This paper examines the special case of traditional Japanese food with
high  umami content: those complex, mostly vegan foods which look like
designed to please the palate, not only to nourish the body. What was
a motivation to invent such foods? Was is just pleasure?

Late precolonial (c. 800-1500 CE) culinary practices in the northern Caribbean have received limited investigations. Determining foodways has been integral for the study of cultures, yet there has never been a comparison of foodway dynamics in the Caribbean between the Greater Antilles (the presumed origin of people who migrated into The Bahamas) and the Bahama archipelago. The objective of our study was to analyze microbotanical residues (starches) extracted from 45 clay griddles (food preparation platters) to illuminate a partial view of the phytocultural repertoire of this region and explicate variations of the identified culinary practices. The griddles were excavated from three archaeological sites: El Flaco and La Luperona in northwestern Dominican Republic and Palmetto Junction on the western coast of Providenciales, Turks & Caicos Islands. Regarding the production of plant-based food on griddles, our produced data suggests that the people who lived at El Flaco focused on the production of maize (Zea mays L.) derivatives, La Luperona residents prepared guáyiga/coontie/ zamia (Zamia spp.) food products, and Palmetto Junction ostensibly had a focus on the production of manioc (Manihot esculenta Crantz) based foods. This survey of food-ways has exposed particular cultural niches, different adaptation strategies, and associated culinary practices. Resumen Las prácticas culinarias precoloniales (c. 800-1500 CE) en el norte del Caribe han sido investigadas de manera limitida. Determinar lasdimensiones de la alimentación ha sido fundamental en el estudio de las culturas; no obstante, en el Caribe nunca se ha realizado unacomparación de estas dinámicas entre las Antillas Mayores (el atribuido origen migratorio de humanos a las Bahamas) y el archipiélago delas Bahamas. El objetivo de este estudio fue analizar los residuos microbotánicos (almidones) extraídos Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory https://doi.

Archaeological work in Room 105 of the Casa de Bandini / Cosmopolitan Hotel in Old Town San Diego State Historic Park encountered remains of the Casa de Bandini kitchen. Excavation revealed a series of packed earthen floors and a number of ash and charcoal concentrations representing fire hearths where cooking had taken place directly on the floor. Intruding through the early floors was a brick-andsandstone drain that is contemporary with the later Bandini-era expansion of the kitchen and room additions. The hearths in Room 105 provide testimony that this very Mexican practice for food
preparation was used not only at the missions of California but also in the kitchens of the wealthiest families of the ranchero aristocracy.

This article contributes to an ongoing critical examination of feasting by developing a classification scheme that emphasizes the variable contexts in which feasts have occurred. Many recent archaeological and ethnographic accounts have focused on the political and economic roles feasts play in creating power and status differences among participants, while others have highlighted how they build community and increase solidarity within a group. My scheme reconceptualizes the term by giving two independent variables-group size and level of sociopolitical competition-equal roles in determining whether a given eating event is a feast; in turn, my dual-dimensional model facilitates more sophisticated interpretations of archaeological remains. After outlining its utility for describing and comparing eating events, this article evaluates the evidence for feasting at a precontact Native American mound site in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Botanical, faunal, and ceramic analyses of materials from the Feltus mounds (AD 750-1100) reveal fairly typical food-related assemblages, whereas the sheer amount of material, speed with which it was deposited, and size of individual specimens are exceptional. The resulting interpretation emphasizes feasting's role in creating and maintaining group solidarity at Feltus and advances understanding of noncompetitive outcomes of feasting behavior in the precontact American Southeast.

McNaughton, D. (CI), Morrison, M (CI); Bourke, H (CI), Moffatt, I. (CI), Ross, S. (CI), Sobotkova, A. (CI), Asmussen, B. (PI), Claudie, D. (PI)

Partner/Collaborating Institutions:  Flinders University, Macquarie University, Queensland Museum, The Trustee for The Western Cape Communities Trust, Chuulangun Aboriginal Corporation, Napranum Aboriginal Shire Council

Hardly a meal is eaten without bread in Morocco. Despite a nutritional transition mirroring the global trend towards more sugar, fat and animal protein, cereals, largely in the form of bread, remain highly valued and the unchallenged staple food. At the same time bread is politically sensitive, for the legitimacy of the government historically rests on the provision of cheap flour and bread to its urban citizens. Notwithstanding a general tendency towards economic liberalization, the production, distribution and consumption of wheat are still controlled by the government, not least due to continuing urbanization and persistently high rates of poverty, which have contributed to political revolutions in neighbouring countries. In this context, what cereals are eaten and how they are made into bread is meaningful not only culturally, but also economically and politically. To capture the multiple values of bread and to analyze their material and symbolic entanglements, I think of poor and recently urbanized Moroccans as 'cereal citizens'. Based on the premise that bodily practices are central to the creation of meaning and value, I argue that, in selecting cereals and making bread, recently urbanized poor Moroccans craft an ambivalent sense of belonging that celebrates their rural origins while accepting their dependence on cheap, largely imported wheat. In doing so, they assert themselves as political subjects, and their daily practices of bread-making can be considered a civic practice.

Food is an essential part of human existence and directly linked to the cultural behaviour of individuals, groups, and institutions. In their commentary on food studies, Mintz and Du Bois (2002, p. 8) noted that war has been relatively neglected as a research focus. This thesis investigates British and colonial soldiers’ comestibles during the Waikato campaign of the New Zealand Wars, a regional conflict that commenced in 1863. It is the first major investigation that has been carried out on this subject in New Zealand and one of the few investigations worldwide on soldiers’ comestibles during a war.
    The thesis addressed three questions: what did soldiers eat and drink during the campaign; how was food security ensured; and what foodways practices indicated status. The questions address themes that are at the core of foodways research (Dery 1997, Bray 2003, Cool 2006, Andersen and Moltsen 2007, Peres 2008, and Eichelberger 2010). Food security was of specific interest because the Waikato campaign followed the disastrous Crimean War and took place during a time of British military supply system reform.
    Cognitive archaeology and middle-range theory guided the research process. A middle-range methodological approach was used to address the research questions in three distinct data sources—the official records, eyewitness accounts, and the archaeological record. Each source was compiled as an independent record of comestibles using the same criteria; a middle-range technique used by Binford (1987), Leonie and Crosby (1987), Leonie and Potter (1988) and Smith (1996).
    The criteria were based on underlying food culture rule sets (Leach 2008, 2010). The rule sets were modified and used to construct a food culture research framework that addressed the range of data available in the sources. The framework structured the investigation. 
    Among the findings was evidence that the War Office supply and transportation system reforms had little impact on food systems during the campaign in New Zealand. More unusual findings included the link between food security and luxury foods (a finding not identified in the military food research of Dery 1997, Cool 2006, or Eichelberger 2010).
    The research also indicated a variety of food practices were used to indicate status. Many of the foodways status symbols were embodied in the mess system—a system of hierarchal separation. For example, the mess building or tent was a daily visual reminder of the military hierarchy, e.g. commissioned officers’ messes, sergeants’ messes, enlisted men’s messes. Military hierarchy is directly linked to military control and discipline.
    The ideas and hypotheses presented are pertinent to future archaeological investigations at military sites in New Zealand and overseas. The research methodology and the foodways research framework also have applications for comestible research at other sites such as railway camps, abandoned towns, mining camps, as well as for regional analysis of foodways at contemporary pre-historic sites.

In this article, we will focus on gender and food among children in Danish home economics classes; more specifically, children aged 12-14 (6th and 7th graders in the Danish school). The aim of the study is to investigate whether the traditional gender representations found in studies of children’s food media are replicated in children’s food practices in a school setting. The article concludes that gender is not as manifest as other studies have indicated, notably those on media representations of children and food. This is not to say that gender distinctions were absent but that they were expressed in more subtle ways. Also, the article highlights the importance of paying attention to different kinds of food practices, and how they might be gendered differently by the same subjects. The article calls for more research in the field and more broadly on the complex relationship between gendered media representation and social practices in everyday life.