This document discusses how historical archaeologists use foodways to understand the past. It explains that archaeologists study material culture left behind to learn about past ways of life. One aspect of material culture they examine is food remains, like animal bones and cooking vessels. Studying foodways can provide insights into how people obtained, prepared, and consumed food. Factors like gender, ethnicity, and religion can be investigated through analyzing foodways. Overall, the document argues that examining food remains is a key way for archaeologists to gain a deeper understanding of past human cultures and behaviors.

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Lauren Harris
How Historical Archaeologists use Food ways to understand the Past
lharri60@vols.utk.edu
ANTH 361

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Lauren Harris
ANTH 361
Professor Smith
11/10/15
How Historical Archaeologists use Food ways to understand the Past
Picture the past being this enormous pantry, not knowing what was on the other side of
the door. Eventually, people will begin to wonder what is behind there, but they are unable to
open the door. This is where archeologists come into play. Their job is to help us get a better
understanding of the past. Historical Archaeology is a subfield of Anthropology. Historical
archaeologists study humans and their material culture in the past. There are many definitions of
archaeology, but this is a basic definition. Studying material culture is a huge part in studying
archaeology because every person has an object that they use to describe themselves, whether it
be a piece of clothing or a ceramic dish. These objects are used to describe a particular person.
Archaeologists first begin studying the past of famous people and places and then they turned to
studying people who are “forgotten”. For example, they can study slave camps or Indian camps.
There are many things that archaeologists can study. If it weren’t for these people we would not
have any information about our past including our ancestors. It is very interesting to learn how
people lived and did things in the past. We can find out this information by excavating places
and learning about how people were able to cook or socialize, because it is much different from
today. Today we have a lot more technology then people did in earlier time periods. There are
many different ways that archaeologists can study the past, by looking at different materials that
were left behind. One thing archaeologists can look at and study are different food ways that
were left behind. Food ways that they find can mean a number of different things including

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ceramics that were used to cook food, animal bones, and fire particles. Looking at food ways can
help archaeologists learn more of how people cooked and stored their food. It can give them a
better understanding on how people used the resources they had to make certain things. Food is a
major part of any living thing, because we all need food to stay alive. It is fascinating to learn
how people use their resources to create certain items, because we would not have the things we
have today if it weren’t for the inventors who have made the items in the past. There are many
different ways archaeologists use different practices to study food ways. They can look at how
different people used foods, based on gender, and ethnicity and they can look at different tools
they leave behind. By researching food through these methods, it will help us obtain a better
understanding of our past.
There are many ways archaeologists can use food ways to help understand the past. The
use of food ways in archaeology can be used as material culture, because material culture is used
to describe a person and is used to determine what a culture was like. The food remains left
behind is a key factor of why archaeologists can determine what people ate. By studying food,
archaeologists are able to determine what type of foods people were consuming. According to
the article “The archaeology of Food and Social Diversity” Katheryn Twiss talks about how food
was being studied. She says about thirty years ago archaeologists were using literature talking
about diet and subsistence that were used to study how humans were using food (Twiss
2012:357). Now archaeologists want to “explore how politics, ideologies, economics, and more
were entwined with past production, preparation, consumption, and discard practices” (Twiss
2012:357). Archaeologists are shifting the way they think about food ways because they want to
learn more reasons behind how people prepared and gathered their food than learning the diet of
a person. They can look at the regions of where the food came from. There are many places in

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the world; different people have their own way of gathering the food and using it. Many factors
can determine this. One factor would be gender. In the article “The Archaeology of Food and
Social Diversity” the author talks about gender and race of different people. Gender and Race are
a big focus in the archaeological record because they can be used to determine many different
reasons as to why people are using different food for different reasons. Katheryn Twiss states,
“Food activities as well as food intake vary by gender is well discussed in the archaeological
food literature. Gender has been a prominent issue in the social archaeological food literature
since its inception” (Twiss 2012:373). Gender is studied with food because men and woman each
have different eating habits and it is known that men eat more than women, this isn’t always the
case. By knowing the gender of the person, archaeologists can look at how much food was being
consumed and they can also look at the labor that was involved. For example, men are known to
be the hunters, they are the ones to get most of the meat and women were the ones to gather the
fruits and vegetables and cook the food. If archaeologists come across a site where they find big
animal bones, maybe from a deer, they can assume that maybe there were men at a particular site
because the people were consuming meat. Of course, certain meats can also play a part in
religion. They can also look at a site and determine what religion they were. In the article “The
archaeology of Food and Social Diversity” the author states “food use in religious activities; the
extent to which ritual food offerings differed in consumption or preparation from daily
foodstuffs; whether a particular food deposit represents the remains of ritual or more prosaic
activities” (Twiss 2012:374). For example, people who are Christian consume the lords supper
once a month, which consist of bread and wine (most of the time grape juice) if archaeologists
were to find some of these left behind they could determine that they were Christian. Religion
can be very important because they can get a better understanding of a person’s cultural heritage

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and how they practiced it. Learning about religion, gender and race is important because it can
give us a better understanding of how people learned how to do things.
Ethnicity is a major part of archaeology. It is hard for archeologists to determine how to
look at ethnicity. They can tell by the different areas people are in. There are certain places
where archeologists can determine what ethnicity a person is from. Each type of ethnicity has a
certain food group that they like to eat and that is specific to their region. If archeologists find
evidence of that particular seed of a plant or food they can determine what ethnicity was there
and occupied the space. An example of ethnic groups would be Chinese and Japanese groups.
Many people think that they are in the same group, because they are both in Asia, but that does
not mean that they are the same group of people. They both have unique foods that they eat.
According to the article “Factors Influencing the Dining Habits of Japanese and Chinese
Migrants at a British Columbia Salmon Cannery” Douglas E. Ross explains the eating habits of
Chinese and Japanese eating habits because he states “People invest distinct meanings in
different aspects of their material world, and each can offer unique insights into their lives”
(Ross 2011:68). The material culture he is describing is there eating habits. They have such a
diverse way of eating that expresses how they live their lives by eating certain foods that are
unique to their ethnic group. Ross is doing his research on the” turn of the 20th century salmon
cannery in British Columbia” (Ross 2011:68). Ross starts first by looking at the unique eating
styles of Japanese people. They have had many different periods of which they eat different
things, just like the Chinese people. The Japanese eat seasonal and fresh food most of the time. A
major difference between the two groups was that the Chinese diet does not consist of “milk and
dairy” products. (Ross 2011:70). When archaeologists are researching the area they can tell
which ethnic group was at which place based on the foods they are eating, that are unique to their

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diet. Ross also looks at the different ceramics they were using. For example, Ross states “As in
China, Japanese ate meals with chopsticks, requiring food to be prepared in small pieces, but
they did not share the Chinese habit of eating soup with a porcelain spoon” (Ross 2011:69). The
spoon is also an indicator that Chinese people were living in a certain location, because they
spoon is still common today. When I go to a Chinese restaurant today and order wonton soup
they always give me the big porcelain spoon, which you do not find in a Japanese restaurant.
Ross was able to look at the ceramics that both groups were importing from their places of
origins. This case study can help future archaeologists on how to distinguish different ethnic
groups. There are so many different ethnic groups today that it is important to study and know
their culture. By studying Chinese and Japanese people at first people think they are similar, but
when you begin learning and studying more about the group you can begin to distinguish the two
groups which can help in the field when wanting to look at a particular site.
Archaeologists can look at different tools and determine how they were used. For
example, many people were making and using tools for many different purposes. Archaeologists
can find different tools when they are excavating a site. For example, they can find stone flakes
that can be considered a tool; because when tools were made long ago they had to use an object
to keep sharpening their tool. The left over pieces are considered flakes. One major tool that was
used were stones. The stones were used to grind up grains. These grains could be used to make
bread and cereal (Ebeling and Rowan 2004:108). According to the article, “The Archaeology of
the Daily Grind: Ground Stone Tools and Food Production in the Southern Levant,” the authors
discuss certain tools people used for stone grinding. “ With tools such as mortars, pestles,
grinding slabs and handstones, villagers of the later Neolithic period (10,300-4500BCE) were
well equipped to process the large amounts of grain necessary to feed their families (Ebeling and

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Rowan 2004:110). It is incredible to see that from many years before our time, our first known
ancestors were able to use stone tools in order to eat their food. They knew that they needed to
eat to survive, so they had to do whatever it took to get their food. Later on pottery came into
play as tools for culinary purposes. I can agree with this because we use certain types of pottery
for certain holidays to serve food on. For example, at Christmas time, most people serve their
meals on fine China. Also, when we make soup we serve it in a bowl to keep it in one place.
These types of pottery can also tie with preparation and social morals as well. There can be many
uses for pottery that can be helpful to know when researching an archeological site. As we have
learned in class it is important to know as much information as you can before looking at the site,
because when you come across an artifact it is easier to determine what it was and how it was
used. That is why it is important to know that there are many types and uses for pottery. For
example, according to the article “Profiling nineteenth- century Australian potteries: Approaches
to provenancing ceramics and identifying potting practices” the author states “Locally- made
colonial ceramics were advertised in the early nineteenth century as domestic and utilitarian
ware, such as dairy and food preparation vessels, water carafes and filters, toilet wares, garden
urns, tableware, and ginger beer bottles” (Kelloway and Birmingham 2010:35). It is important to
know the different types and uses for each ceramic. It is also important to know the different
ways that the ceramics were made and the glazes they used. As we have learned in class that
there are many different ways the ceramics can be fired, at different temperatures, which allows
it to be in a different category and the different types of glazes that are used. Many different
people use a number of ways to make their ceramics which can be unique to a particular area.
There are many ways that archaeologists can use food ways to understand the past. Our
body needs food to survive, everyone needs to eat. Today we have many different tools, and

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store vessels to store our food. Back then people did not have very many items to use. They had
to be creative and use what they found or made. Then when time started to change, we see a shift
in the types of dishes people were using. For example, people of elite status would have nice
dishes with patterns on it. If archaeologists find those particular dishes they can infer that it came
from a person with money. They can use that particular dish to understand that this was a time
where elite people would throw nice parties or just have nice dishes to use for dinner. Time is
always changing, and treads are coming and going that’s why it is an archaeologist’s job to
recover the past and learn how items were used. Who knows hundreds of years go by and
archaeologists could be looking at the food ways we are used to using.

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Works Cited
Ebeling, Jennie, R and Rowan,Yorke,M
2004 June. The Archaeology of the Daily Grind: Ground Stone Tools and Food Production in the
Southern Levant. American School of Oriental Research.67:2.108-117.
Kelloway, Sarah and Birmingham, Judy
2010. Profilinng nineteenth-century Australian potteries: Approaches to provenancing ceramics
and identifying potting practices. Australasian Society for Historical Archaeology.28. 35-42.
Ross, Douglas, E
2011. Factors influencing the Dining Habits of Japanese and Chinese Migrants at a British
Columbia Salmon Cannery. Society for Historical Archaeology. 45:2. 68-96.
Twiss, Katheryn
3 May 2012 The Archaeology of Food and Social Diversity. Springer Science + Media LLC.
357-374.
October 2010. The First Butchers. ScientificAmerica.com. 21.