Resources for instructors

In the introduction, I lay out the central questions of the book. Part 1 explores how food shaped us as humans, emphasizing paleoanthropological and evolutionary methods and tools. Part 2 investigates the role of food in past human societies, and integrates archaeological, bioarchaeological, and ethnographic perspectives. Overall, I am interested in why humans (and human ancestors) ate what they did and how studying food helps anthropologists understand what it means to be human. I also sketch out some of the ways anthropologists have addressed food choice and cuisine, contrasting symbolic and structural perspectives with cultural ecology and political approaches.

Teaching ideas: I usually assign essays by influential thinkers such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Mary Douglas, Marvin Harris, Mary Weismantel, Michael Pollan, or Christine Hastorf as the jumping-off point for class discussion.

How do humans eat differently from our close primate cousins such as chimpanzees? This chapter integrates observations of primate diet and feeding behavior with paleoanthropological data on Australopithecus and early Homo diet prior to 2 million years ago. I focus especially on the role of meat and debates over hunting vs. scavenging as a primary means of meat acquisition. I also discuss whether the Paleo diet, as popularly practiced, is based in valid reconstructions of human evolutionary pasts.

Teaching ideas: I generally ask students to follow the Paleo diet and write an essay reflecting on this experience.

There's room to expand on primate diet and behavioral ecology through activities such as observing primate feeding behaviors, using dental morphology and other evidence to infer diet in different primate (or hominin) species, or spending more time on behavioral ecology and optimal foraging strategy.

This chapter could also open out to a broader discussion of how gender factors into reconstructions of the past, and how feminist critiques of science led to new approaches and questions.

When did humans start to cook, and how did cooking impact human evolution? This chapter explores the influential work of Richard Wrangham, who argues that fire and cooking are implicated in the emergence of Homo erectus, bigger brains, pair bonds, and the sexual division of labor. I contrast this idea with Kristen Hawkes' Grandmother Hypothesis, which centers the relationship between mothers, daughters, and their offspring in Homo erectus evolution.

Teaching ideas: This is a great place to do some experiential learning around food. Students can experience the differences between raw and cooked foods such as carrots, learn about the central role of tubers across cuisines by taste testing yuca, jicama, yams, sweet potatoes, etc, or explore how fermentation has been harnessed to chemically process foods by trying ferments like sauerkraut, miso, kefir, kimchi, etc. If you have access to a kitchen or lab, this would be a great time to compare how fermenting, chopping, and roasting a food like cabbage transforms it in different ways.

How did food become cuisine, not simply dietary adaptation? This chapter compares Neandertals to Homo sapiens in order to better define what we mean by culture, domesticity, and cuisine. I review recent research that overturns some long-held notions about Neandertal diet and behavior, and trace how Homo sapiens evolved, spread, and eventually outcompeted our nearest hominin relatives to become the last hominin standing. Finally, I discuss the earliest human communities during the Upper Paleolithic in Europe and western Asia.

Teaching ideas: This chapter offers a jumping-off point to learn more about foragers. My students read "Hunters in a Landscape" and "People in their Lifespace" from Binford's (1983) In Pursuit of the Past and consider this as a source of analogy for Upper Paleolithic Arctic sites in this activity. There are many ethnographies and shorter pieces on foragers that would complement this chapter and help students understand forager experiences and lifeways.

Why did some people start to farm after 10,000 years ago, and how did farming lay the foundation for different forms of social organization? This chapter reviews classic archaeological theories on the origins of agriculture and then examines them from the perspective of two regions where agriculture developed independently and then spread. First, I discuss the Near East/western Asia and the spread of farming north and west to Europe, and then I turn to Central Mexico to look at the domestication of maize and its spread north to the southeastern US. Finally, I return to research from western Asia to consider the ways in which farming reshaped human health, population, and social organization.

Teaching ideas: Students enjoy learning about the diversity of domesticates from around the world, many of which are unfamiliar to them. As a class, we try to identify samples of heirloom grains, pulses, and other crops. A trip outside the classroom to visit a farm or plant seeds in a campus garden would work well with this chapter.

I use the Near East (Jordan and Turkey) and Central Mexico as cases of initial independent domestication, and then look at how farming spread to Europe and the Southeastern US because the comparison is so interesting. An assignment that asks students to choose a different case of independent domestication (in the tropical lowlands or highlands of South America, China, Papua New Guinea, etc) and compare either to the cases in Chapter 4 or the models of agricultural origins would work well to enhance the discussion and build out a comparative framework.

We read the first part of Michael Pollan's classic The Omnivore's Dilemma in conjunction with the unit on the origins of agriculture. Pollan discusses the dominance of corn in the context of industrial agriculture, and I ask students to reflect on the ways in which contemporary industrial agriculture might be understood as the culmination of some of the trajectories that we identified at the origins of agriculture in this reflection prompt.

Large, elaborate, and fancy meals leave an imprint on the archaeological record, and seem to be an important dynamic in many societies around the world. This chapter introduces Michael Dietler and Brian Hayden's feasting typologies, and uses case studies from the Andes, the Mediterranean, the Pacific Northwest, Southeast Asia, and West Africa to illustrate and complicate feasting categories. I also spend some time considering the role of alcohol in sensory and economic aspects of ancient feasting.

Teaching ideas: I ask students to read and compare feasting case studies in this activity. You can choose feasting case studies to either illustrate typologies or show how they can oversimplify. Students practice reading primary literature, communicate creatively to different audiences, and practice inductive reasoning as they analyze cases.

Food is a powerful symbol of class and reflects (and transmits) relations of inequality and even exploitation. This chapter begins with a consideration of high class foods, haute cuisine, and luxury food across cultures. I move on to consider how archaeological investigation of food reveals relationships of inequality and oppression in the US South by opening a window on the experience of enslaved African and African American people, and in the Andes where imperial conquest reshaped daily life in conquered communities.

Teaching ideas: To think through characteristics of haute cuisine and luxury food, I assign different Michelin star restaurants to small groups, who look for evidence for different principles on the restaurant websites and menus. There are many resources on the archaeology of free and enslaved African and African American communities, and this case study can serve as a window onto questions of the representation of slavery at historic sites (students can do website research or visit local historical sites), or a way to bring in the voices of Michael Twitty or other food historians writing on African American (or Afro-Caribbean or Afro-Latin American) foodways and experiences.

From the ritual consumption of sacred foods (including human flesh) to funeral feasts, food is an essential component of many religious and social rituals. This chapter traces the archaeology of food and drink in ritual contexts and discusses how ritual contexts can redefine everyday food such as bread or corn or become contexts for the consumption of special or restricted items such as hallucinogens or human flesh.

The final chapter explores how daily meals can tell us about family, gender, and identity in the past. Ultimately, chapter 8 focuses attention on how people use food to tell themselves and others who they are. Case studies include my own work on the impact of Chimu conquest on daily life in Jequetepeque Valley communities as well as several cases that explore how gender and ethnicity shaped kitchens in colonial contexts spanning Uruk Mesopotamia to Russian and Spanish settlements in California.

Teaching ideas: this chapter is an ideal place to ask students to reflect on the role of food in their own daily domestic lives. This could be a moment to circle back to the ethnographic work discussed in Chapter 1 by asking students to collect narratives or oral histories about food in the lives of family or community members, or to create opportunities for experiential learning by asking students to cook something and reflect on the embodied experience of recreating a recipe from their childhood or from another culture.