Garfish – It’s NOT What’s for Dinner! (original) (raw)
Related papers
"People with Animals: Perspectives and Studies in Ethnozooarchaeology," edited by Lee Broderick, pp.103-114 , 2016
The zooarchaeological remains of garfish (Lepisosteidae) appear throughout the Southeastern United States from the Archaic through the late Prehistoric periods (ca. 8,000 BC - AD 1450) and have been predominantly interpreted as food remains or the residue of feasting events. However, ethnographic and ethnohistoric data from the region provide conflicting views on how these fish were used by Native Americans, and suggest a fresh examination of the role of gar is needed. By examining ethnohistoric accounts, modern ethnographic studies, and archaeofaunal remains we attempt to explore the full range of gar use in the ethnographic past and present, and suggest new interpretive possibilities for archaeologists faced with gar remains from prehistoric contexts.
Erasure of Indigenous Food Memories and (Re)Imaginations
On independent, temporally staggered, yet somehow parallel paths, our collective ethnographic fieldwork has taken us over the years across the tall and short grasses of the central and eastern plains through the dry dessert plateaus of the Southwest, culminating into a recent, joint venture into the lush high jungle of the Ecuadorian Amazon with a special opportunity to work with indigenous Shuar communities. As space folds and time curves, Barry and I have both worked with American Indian communities for our dissertation work in the 1990s and 2010s, respectively. Within the indigenous context, I have worked with Ojibwa, Potawatomi, Navajo, and Pueblo communities, and Barry has worked with Hopi communities for our respective dissertations. My experiences have spanned Anishinaabe harvest feasts, powwows, drum ceremonies and rituals and chronic disease prevention health programs in tribal schools and communities in the Midwest to Pueblo community gardening and school programs in the Southwest. Barry's experiences have encompassed ritual dance performances, feast celebrations, and farming among the Hopi to powwows and tribal casinos from California to Connecticut. Being the two anthropologists and faculty at St. John's University having the rare commonality of working with American Indians brought with it ongoing conversations about indigeneity, food, culture, and health. It is through these conversations over nearly three years that our growing interest in writing a piece on indigenous food cults came about. As part of this edited volume on food cults, we discuss our experiences in the field primarily focusing upon the North American Indian context. In this chapter, we argue that indigenous underlying foodways and related belief systems are actively redefined and realized by communities as products of their own organic experience of multiple waves of traumatic losses and the resulting embodiment of social devastations. While we take a critical medical anthropological perspective, our discussion in this chapter focuses on the importance of meaning-making and terminology usage by American Indian communities for their foodways, foods, and identity.
Community Identity, Culinary Traditions and Foodways in the Western Great Lakes
Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, 2019
This dissertation project examines for evidence of substantial differences in community and community identity, as expressed through culinary traditions and foodways, of Early and Middle Woodland populations in the western Great Lakes region from circa 100 BC to AD 400. The research compares culinary traditions and foodways of Early and Middle Woodland populations in southeastern Wisconsin using multiple lines of fined grained material data derived from the Finch site (47JE0902). As an open air Early to Middle Woodland (ca 100 BC to AD 400) domestic habitation, the Finch site serves as a case study for elucidating culinary traditions and foodways at the community level. Implementing a multi-faceted approach, this study integrates traditional plant macrobotanical studies, faunal analyses, ceramic morphological and use wear analyses, and absorbed chemical residue analyses to provide a comprehensive overview of the intersection between food and community in this region of North America.
Given the distance from our subjects both spatially and temporally, archaeologists often forget about the importance of taste, smell, and texture to the meal. We are better able to talk about presentation or appearance because of our familiarity with the material culture of food consumption. We may focus on nutrition or caloric intake without considering whether a food is good to eat, or write about a food or ingredient without an understanding of the physical properties of that food when prepared in a certain manner. In this paper, I explore the role of sensory experience in the interpretation of the archaeological remains of a meal, and the need to acknowledge that food is not just good to think, but it is good to eat-that is, while a food may be nutritious and it may be pleasurable, it is also meant to be edible.
Lessons from Archaeology and Anthropology for New England Cookbooks: Pies and Puddings
This study is based on the belief that recipes in New England cookbooks could be seen as a series of artifact assemblages and analyzed using the archaeological concepts of seriation, TPQ, presence/absence, horizon, and chaine opératoire. The initial focus, drawn from research by Deetz and Dethlefsen (Deetz 1968, 1977; Dethlefsen and Deetz 1966), was on seriation in the primary, identifying ingredients among puddings and pies. My goal was to see whether change through time in food preparation could be traced within a similar small area; whether it was an archetypal shift in food practice, modifications made by a few families, revolved around elite consumption patterns, or related to other social forces unrelated to market price. The data base consisted of single-authored, first edition New England cookbooks published between 1800 and 1900 by women with Anglo-American roots and added a few local books from the early 20th century. Although some went through many editions, these books were neither mass-produced not aimed at a national audience.
Eating with the dead in the nation of Georgia
This articles has two focuses, one is what eating with the dead in the nation of Georgia significates for the family members and loved ones that are still here, another focus is on the traditions and habits surrounding the meals with the beloved parted ones.