The Menial Art of Cooking : Archaeological Studies of Cooking and Food Preparation

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. __The Menial Art of Cooking__ is the first archaeological volume focused on cooking and food preparation in prehistoric and historic settings around the world and will interest archaeologists, social anthropologists, sociologists, and other scholars studying cooking and food preparation or subsistence.

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.

The Menial Art of Cooking is the first archaeological volume focused on cooking and food preparation in prehistoric and historic settings around the world and will interest archaeologists, social anthropologists, sociologists, and other scholars studying cooking and food preparation or subsistence.

Introduction: The Menial Art of Cooking / Enrique Rodríguez-Alegría and Sarah R. Graff Culinary Preferences : Seal-Impressed Vessels from Western Syria as Specialized Cookware / Sarah R. Graff Food Preparation, Social Context, and Ethnicity in a Prehistoric Mesopotamian Colony / Gil J. Stein The Habitus of Cooking Practices at Neolithic Çatalhöyük : What Was the Place of the Cook? / Christine A. Hastorf Cooking Meat and Bones at Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey / Nerissa Russell and Louise Martin From Grinding Corn to Dishing Out Money : A Long-Term History of Cooking in Xaltocan, Mexico / Enrique Rodríguez-Alegría Cooking for Fame or Fortune : The Effect of European Contact on Casabe Production in the Orinoco / Kay Tarble de Scaramelli and Franz Scaramelli Crafting Harappan Cuisine on the Saurashtran Frontier of the Indus Civilization / Brad Chase Vale Boi : 10,000 Years of Upper Paleolithic Bone Boiling / Tiina Manne "Hoe Cake and Pickerel" : Cooking Traditions, Community, and Agency at a Nineteenth-Century Nipmuc Farmstead / Guido Pezzarossi, Ryan Kennedy, and Heather Law Great Transformations : On the Archaeology of Cooking / Kathleen D. Morrison. Contents 6 Figures 8 Tables 12 Acknowledgments 14 Contributors 18 Introduction. The Menial Art of Cooking 22 1. Culinary Preferences 40 2. Food Preparation, Social Context, and Ethnicity in a Prehistoric Mesopotamian Colony 67 3. The Habitus of Cooking Practices at Neolithic Çatalhöyük 86 4. Cooking Meat and Bones at Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey 108 5. From Grinding Corn to Dishing Out Money 120 6. Cooking for Fame or Fortune 140 7. Crafting Harappan Cuisine on the Saurashtran Frontier of the Indus Civilization 166 8. Vale Boi 194 9. “Hoe Cake and Pickerel” 222 10. Great Transformations 252 Index 266