In The Social Archaeology of Food, Christine Hastorf advocates a holistic approach to food studies that considers not only the biological and material aspects of what people consume but the symbolic and emotional significance of foodstuffs as well. The leitmotif of this volume is that food is “the meeting place of nature and culture” (p. 17), necessitating that researchers engage it from both scientific and humanistic perspectives. At a meta-level, the book might be taken as an autobiographical reflection of Hastorf's own journey toward this viewpoint—from her early academic grounding in the material sciences and paleoethnobotany to a greater appreciation for the meaningful content of human activities. Her express purpose in writing this volume is to promote the idea of treating food archaeology “as a subdiscipline in its own right” geared toward understanding past social life through the study of foodways (p. 13). As one of the leading scholars in the realm of prehistoric food production and consumption, Hastorf is well positioned to issue this call.
The book is divided into three sections, the first of which lays some of the theoretical groundwork for the two that follow. Chapter 1 briefly outlines five main themes that orient discussion throughout the book. These center on the notion of taste, and the materiality, social agency, sensuous qualities, and economics of food. Chapter 2 offers a smorgasbord of concepts and models relating to the various ways in which food has been constituted as such historically and cross-culturally. Discussion ranges widely—including such topics as gifting, structuralism, the crafting of taste, and humoral doctrines of bodily balance—with the intent of suggesting different ways archaeologists might consider the social significance of food-related evidence. Chapter 3 focuses on the concept of the meal and cuisines—what constitutes each and how they vary across cultures—toggling back and forth between contemporary ethnographic and archaeological examples.
The second section of the book shifts to the presentation of archaeological approaches to food studies. Chapter 4, the heftiest in the volume, employs a chaîne opératoire framework to expand understanding of the steps involved in transforming elements of nature into edible foodstuffs and the various methods archaeologists have used to access these. Stages identified in the food-making process include production and procurement, preparation, storage, cooking, service, consumption, and discard—with the author detailing various examples of archaeological studies that provide insights into each. Chapter 5 is concerned with the economics of food production, distribution, and prestige value. To illustrate ways of approaching these issues, Hastorf revisits findings from the Upper Mantaro Archaeological Research Project in Peru and from the site of Pacatnamu, followed by a set of historical examples from the Greco-Roman world. The final chapter in this section highlights the politics of food and the ways in which it is used to both create and register social differences and inequalities. Using ethnographic and historical examples, the author considers first the role of food in “engendering” societies and the ways men and women engage with it differentially. This is followed by a review of archaeological literature on the political significance of feasting events that relies heavily on the work of Michael Dietler and Brian Hayden and their classic volume, Feasts (2001). The chapter concludes with an extended discussion of the role of eating and drinking in the Mississippian world of eastern North America and the ways in which food practices changed in tandem with the increasing centralization of power. The emphasis throughout this section is on the importance of utilizing a comparative approach and multiple datasets in food archaeology.
The final part of the book turns to questions of identity, providing various ethnographic, historic, and archaeological examples of how food is used to create and negotiate group membership and social status. Chapter 7 considers identity at different scales—including national, community, and family. The next chapter shifts attention to the individual and the body, providing a discussion of how these are differentially conceived cross-culturally—for example, the body as partible, permeable, or closed, together with ideas surrounding the ways in which personhood is constructed. Chapter 8 closes, as do the others, with the detailed presentation of an archaeological example—in this case, focusing on research at the site of Çatalhöyük—intended to illustrate how archaeological data can inform on these topics.
In sum, this volume offers a useful review of the different angles that ethnographic studies centering the social significance of food and eating have taken, as well as what “food archaeology” has to offer. The mode of presentation throughout, which involves the intertwining of social theory with ethnographic data, historical material, and “how to” archaeological examples, is distinctive and instructional. The decided emphasis on late twentieth-century social theory and studies, however, is curious given that scholarship has continued to develop with respect to embodiment, materiality, personhood, and identity in recent decades. Nonetheless, The Social Archaeology of Food makes a well-grounded case for the significance and centrality of food in human societies past and present, and the reasons a broader orientation to food in archaeological studies should have an important place at the table.
