What Shall We Eat Tonight?: Categorisation, restriction and the archaeology of food

"What to eat?" Behind this our daily question, there work various tangled factors. Let alone environmental availability and physical edibility of plants or animals, cultural categorisation and social restriction, which is unique to each social group, play a big role on our recognition of "What should be food" and among them, "What is most important food".

To study this complex background of the choice of "food" in archaeology beyond classic associations of it to such as environmental or population pressure, bio-archaeology, which enables to directly trace animal and plant remnants on their relationship to a human culture in which they were utilised, is indispensable. In other words, this is one of spheres which bio-archaeology, on the contrary to its stereotype image of "Nothing to do with the theoretical discussion", takes a vital part for discussion on the society and culture on its value-making process.

For the aim of this session, we are discussing practically how we can develop this aspect of archaeological study on plant and faunal analyses, based on world-wide research examples shown in the papers- Japan, India, Central Europe, Egypt and Peru.

Contact- and the Day After: Introduction of rice and its impact to Japanese prehistoric social transformation

In the human history, introduction of a new food plant has played a significant role through a contacting process among alien communities. Introduced plants were sometimes rejected, other times accepted in various levels, and the how a community reacts to an exotic food plant is not a simple economic matter, but a result of their culturally unique valuing of the plant, and reflects the ethnic identity, the power relationship in the exchange, and so on.

The introduction of rice agriculture into Japan from the Continental Asia around 300 BC, which lead very a drastic structural change of the society after existence of 10,000-year long stable fishing-hunting-gathering life style, is a good example of how introduction of an exotic plant produced an impact on the existing social system. To explain why they accepted rice and the associated agricultural life style, socially attached meanings to the crop created on the political relationship between Japan and the Continent have to be archaeobotanically scrutinised. In this paper I will discuss this problem including consideration of the previous Japanese archaeologists' characteristic way to approach the topic, who themselves are much influenced by the modern concept of "Rice as the Japanese Symbol of the Culture", and how new archaeobotanical methods can open another view to the study.

Cultural Constraints and Compatibilities in Crop Adoptions: Examples from Indian archaeobotany

Although it is possible to delimit environmental constraints on the distribution of crops, these often fail to explain chronological and spatial patterns of their cultivation in prehistory. In South Asia number of disparities are notable, such as the lack of African millets within the Harappan sphere when they were readily being adopted on its periphery and the delay in the acceptance of rice in peninsular India. This paper will explore some of the potential cultural and social factors affecting the adoptions of these crops, in particular with regards to how already existing agricultural practices reproduced structures into which new crops did not necessarily fit. The adoption of a new crop requires more than just environmental suitability and implies adjustments to cultural values or practices. The dissolution of the Harappan archaeological culture as well as the central Indian chalcolithic Malwa culture might both be seen as changes in social organisation due in part to restructuring cultivation and animal husbandry practices.

Animal Bone Assemblages and Social Sphere: Example of the Central European Neolithic

Animal bones recovered from archaeological sites of Central European Neolithic are commonly used to reconstruct aspects of prehistoric economy and diet. Vast majority of Central European archaeozoological studies identify and quantify these faunal remains in order to give some idea of the relative proportion of animals consumed. Thus, these faunal analyses are characterised by economic bias. This bias has to be overcome by focusing on the social side of animal-human interaction. The most effective approach comprises explicit use of actualistic studies on the recognition of formation processes of a given animal bone assemblage. The objective of the next step of the analysis, taking into account the results of the previous one, is to consider social and ritual practices and their impact on interpretation of characteristics of faunal assemblages as; species composition, sex and age profiles, body part representation, etc. This perspective forces us to look differently at various processes occurred in prehistory. Some examples from Central European Neolithic are provided to illustrate the general concept.

Spreading the faith? Causewayed enclosures, pits and the spread of crops across Neolithic Southern Britain

Plant remains from prehistoric sites in Britain have traditionally been interpreted as representing the debris of subsistence related activities. The study of plant remains from a series of Neolithic contexts at Windmill Hill in Wiltshire has attempted to interpret the charred plant remains in relation to other artefact types, artefact associations and social context in which use may have occurred rather than relying on universal assumptions about plant use and significance. Although a fragile and almost invisible archaeological resource, the charred plant remains from these contexts can be traced to deliberate acts of plant use. The causewayed enclosure and pits may be the archaeological traces of meeting places where disparate social groups met and engaged in social and economic exchanges. In such contexts plant use may have occurred for a variety of reasons beyond subsistence. The functions and reasons for plant use within the social arena of the enclosure will be discussed as will be the significance of these acts of consumption and the possible pivotal role of such sites in the exchange and spread of crops plants across Southern Britain.

Between Fasting and Feasting: The historical and archaeobotanical evidences for Monastic Diet (Egypt)

Fasting was an important element of early Christian behaviour. Accounts of fasting pepper the literary texts on the saintly lives from Late Antique Egypt. Within these sources, debates over the appropriate amount of fasting or restriction of certain foods from the diet abound. There also is no doubt that these religious texts were intended to establish saintly figures as behavioural role models and that, at times, they tend toward exaggeration. Even so, can we risk ignoring these histories of monastic behaviour simply because certain texts clearly do not reflect real life but are intended to illustrate a complex, sometimes conflicting, set of ideals?

In spite of a wealth of sources describing acts of fasting, the reality must be that food was consumed at regular intervals. So, what was the monastic diet? To date, discussion of monastic dietary practice has been largely a historical debate. Although we do not discount this approach and will use it ourselves, this paper departs from this academic tradition by incorporating new archaeobotanical evidence from the recent excavations of the 5th - 7th century AD monastery at Kom el - Nana, Middle Egypt into the study of monastic diet. It is our belief that use of this new archaeobotanical data will provide a second and independent source of evidence on monastic diet which can be used to re-examine our current understanding of monastic diet in Late Antique Egypt.

Why Women Planted Plants (Peru)

I focus on the social side of plant mothering and cultivation. Early activities with plants began because of individual plant's special meanings. Gatherers and hunters associated or identified certain plants with themselves and their family, due to the activities the plants participated in, the place where this occurred, or the people they represented. Women brought plants into their family to be cared for, like their children. These early plants were used, transported, and traded because of these associations with kin; the plants representing a person, place, or lineage. The spread of this activity accompanied changes in human relationships, such as the development of group or lineage identity. If the earliest plants to be nurtured are not exotic, morphologically altered, or densely deposited, archaeologists cannot recognise agriculture in the archaeological record. Early propagated plants tend not to be carbohydrate, staple crops, but rather medicinal, industrial, spicy, hallucinatory, or merely exotic. Places like the desertic Peruvian coast, where virtually all cultivated plants are foreign, make such a subtle artifactual event more visible to archaeologists. There we see spicy and industrial plants being nurtured for a long time, before steady and staple-product farming begins. I propose that this process was instigated by women.