What is the archaeology of food?
This course explores how archaeologists study past foodways—from adaptive and social perspectives—and also asks students to consider the complex relationships between past, present and future food systems. This is a highly interdisciplinary field of study that integrates data sets from environmental science, botany, zoology, human anatomy, and geochemistry, among others. It is also a field that addresses a diversity of economic, political, and social issues from an explicitly anthropological perspective. In other words, what can we understand about past human behavior and lifeways by analyzing charred plant remains, abandoned cooking areas, old pottery, and ancient trash dumps? To address these questions, the course is divided into three units: (1) an overview of the archaeology of food, focusing on both methods and theory; (2) a case study on maize, examining its domestication and spread; and (3) a collaborative exploration of global plant histories, highlighting the Smith College collections.
- Instructor: Elizabeth Klarich