【Feature】
★This is the first monograph focusing on the archaeology of cooking and food preparation in prehistoric and historic contexts around the world. It will attract archaeologists, social anthropologists, sociologists, and other scholars who study cooking and food preparation or subsistence issues.
★The book includes several papers that were originally presented at the 2005 Society for American Archaeology meeting. These studies not only explore the techniques and methods of cooking and food preparation but also analyze the role of cooking activities in social relations, health, and technological progress.
Although the archaeology of food has long played an integral role in our understanding of past cultures, the archaeology of cooking is rarely integrated into models of the past. The cooks who spent countless hours cooking and processing food are overlooked and the forgotten players in the daily lives of our ancestors. The Menial Art of Cooking shows how cooking activities provide a window into other aspects of society and, as such, should be taken seriously as an aspect of social, cultural, political, and economic life.
This book examines techniques and technologies of food preparation, the spaces where food was cooked, the relationship between cooking and changes in suprahousehold economies, the religious and symbolic aspects of cooking, the relationship between cooking and social identity, and how examining foodways provides insight into social relations of production, distribution, and consumption. Contributors use a wide variety of evidence-including archaeological data; archival research; analysis of ceramics, fauna, botany, glass artifacts, stone tools, murals, and painted ceramics; ethnographic analogy; and the distribution of artifacts across space-to identify signs of cooking and food processing left by ancient cooks.
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【Author】
Sarah R. Graff is an Honors Faculty Fellow at Barret, The Honors College, Arizona State University.
Enrique Rodríguez-Alegría is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. |
