Meat Usage and Cuisine in Eighteenth-Century English Colonial America
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W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects Summer 2018 “God Sends Meat and the Devil Sends Cooks”: Meat Usage and Cuisine in Eighteenth-Century English Colonial America Dessa Elizabeth Lightfoot College of William and Mary - Arts & Sciences, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Recommended Citation Lightfoot, Dessa Elizabeth, "“God Sends Meat and the Devil Sends Cooks”: Meat Usage and Cuisine in Eighteenth-Century English Colonial America" (2018). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1530192810. http://dx.doi.org/10.21220/s2-hg7y-pb75 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “God Sends Meat and the Devil Sends Cooks”: Meat Usage and Cuisine in Eighteenth-Century English Colonial America Dessa E. Lightfoot Williamsburg, VA, USA Bachelor of Art, Syracuse Univ., 2001 Master of Art, Univ. of New Mexico, 2004 A Dissertation Here presented to the Graduate Faculty of The College of William & Mary in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology College of William & Mary May, 2018 © Copyright by Dessa E. Lightfoot 2018 ABSTRACT American cuisines did not develop in isolation, but instead were influenced by a constant flow of information, individuals, and material culture between the colonies and the rest of the Atlantic world. These, in turn, interacted with the specific agricultural, social, and economic conditions and goals of residents in each colony. Food was a powerful symbol of identity in the English world in the eighteenth century, and printed English cookery books were widely available. What colonists ate, however, also reflected what was locally available, and resources could vary significantly between colonies. Meat usage is one aspect of cuisine that is directly observable in the archaeological record. This study employs a multidisciplinary approach to investigate the utility of printed eighteenth-century English cookery books to model and predict meat usage in the British American colonies, and to explore if or how meat usage and the larger cuisine varied from colony to colony. To do so, archaeologically-recovered faunal materials from sites in colonial Connecticut and colonial Virginia were compared against a model of meat usage constructed from a rigorous textual analysis of several popular printed cookery books and other texts available to colonists in the eighteenth century. The central aims of this research are to establish a baseline understanding of colonial American meat cuisine to allow for assessments of the ways the cuisine of the American colonists varied from their English peers, and to contextualize colonial British America cuisine in the ecological, political, and social worlds of eighteenth-century Anglo-America. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ii Dedications iii List of Figures iv-viii Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Reconceptualizing Agriculture in Eighteenth-Century England, Connecticut, and Virginia 25 Chapter 2. Cookbooks, Cooking, and Reading Culture in in Eighteenth-Century England, Connecticut, and Virginia 66 Chapter 3. Building A Model of English Cuisine 106 Chapter 4. Site Histories and the Structure of the Zooarchaeological Assemblages 157 Chapter 5. Modeling Eighteenth-Century Colonial American Livestock Use and Butchery 202 Chapter 6. Comparing the English Cookbook Model Against Observed Colonial Faunal Assemblages 241 Chapter 7. Between Page and Bone: Towards an Understanding of Eighteenth-Century Colonial Cuisine 316 Appendix I. Taxonomic Comparison By Assemblage 332 Appendix II. Distribution of Taxa By Assemblage 338 Bibliography 355 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my committee for all their excellent advise, tireless hard work, and boundless patience. Thank you to Dr. Joanne Bowen for her mentorship. She always knew what to say to keep me motivated, bolster my courage, and give me the energy to move forward. I would also like to express my gratitude to Dr. Brad Weiss for guiding me through a sometimes- labyrinthine process and giving me hope that the end was in sight. His viewpoint always challenged me to think beyond my boundaries and engage my materials more critically. Thank you to Dr. Audrey Horning, who took me on despite not knowing me, and whose attention to detail and insightful criticisms opened avenues of research I had not previously explored. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to Dr. Ross Harper for his generosity with his time, his data, and his astute comments. His thoughtful comments and great depth of knowledge kept me grounded and focused on the task at hand. I would additionally like to express my most profound appreciation for Stephan Atkins for all his assistance, guidance, and friendship. Without Steve and his amazing memory and his deep kindness, none of this would have been possible. I would like to thank Susan Trevarthen Andrews for generously sharing her data with me. I would like to thank Eleanor Breen for giving me access to a wide range of resources and for being always available to answer questions. Special thanks to all the interpreters in the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Foodways Department for helping me experiment and for giving me the chance to get some hands-on experience with butchery. Thank you to all the volunteers in the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Environmental Laboratory for keeping me sane and providing me with a kind community of amazing friends. I would like to thank the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, PAST, Inc, and the Mount Vernon Ladies Association for generously allowing me to study their collections. I’d also like to thank the College of William & Mary Department of Anthropology for providing me with laboratory space, support, and amazing educational and teaching opportunities. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their endless encouragement and support through this long long process. Especially thank you for all the Barnes and Noble gift cards, rent money, dentist appointments, conference clothes, airplane tickets home, holiday visits, and, most especially, all your love. Thanks to my loyal friends for celebrating landmarks large and small with me, for giving me encouragement when I was lacking motivation, listening to me ramble about animal bones when I needed to work through a problem, and giving me support when I was frustrated. Thank you most especially to Carol Gillam Glanville, who kept me sane and always made sure I was always fashionably attired. Last but not least, thank you to my cat, Piglet Lightfoot, who has been my faithful companion and loyal sidekick through thick and thin. ii “He says the best way out is always through--- And I agree to that, or in so far As that I can see no way out but through…” -A Servant to Servants, Robert Frost 1915 “If every pork chop were perfect we wouldn’t have hot dogs” -Mr. Universe, 2014 This Ph.D. is dedicated to all my very kind, very patient, and very supportive friends, family, collegues, and advisors. Thank you for your generosity of time, resources, and energy. It was never unnoticed or unappreciated. iii LIST OF FIGURES Chapter 3 1. Fig. 3-1: Bill of Fare, January in Smith 1732 122 2. Fi3-2: Number of Recipes by Receipt Book 132 3. Fig. 3-3: Distribution of Main Ingredient by Cookbook 135 4. Fig.3-4: Diversity and Evenness by Cookbook 136 5. Fig.3-5: Number of Ingredients by Cookbook 138 6. Fig.3-6: Number of Species by Category 139 7. Fig.3-7: Number of Livestock Recipes by Cookbook 141 8. Fig.3-8: Distribution of Livestock Recipes by Taxon and Age Chart and Graph 142 9. Fig.3-9: Distribution of Cooking Techniques by Cook Book 144 10. Fig.3-10: Total Number of Cooking Methods by Cook Book 146 11. Fig.3-11: Number of Cooking Methods by Percent of Total Recipes 147 12. Fig.3-12: Historic Locations of Meat Cuts by Taxon 150 Chapter 4 13. Fig. 4-1: Site Summaries 179 14. Fig.4-2: Distribution of Identified to Indeterminate Specimen 180 15. Fig.4-3: Number of Taxa by Category 182 16. Fig.4-4: Shannon-Weaver Diversity Index Chart and Graph 184 17. Fig. 4-5: Shannon-Weaver Evenness Chart and Graph 188 18. Fig.4-6: Simpson’s Index of Diversity -1-D Chart and Graph 189 19. Fig. 4-7: Distribution of Wild vs. Domestic Taxa 190 iv 20. Fig.4-8: Distribution of Assemblages by Biomass 191 21. Fig. 4-9: Mean Bone Weight and Number of Taxa by Assemblage 194 22. Fig. 4-10: Mean Bone Weight by Animal Size Category 195 23. Fig. 4-11: Fragmentation Index by Assemblage 197 24. Fig. 4-12: Livestock Fragmentation Index 197 Chapter 5 25. Fig.5-1: Distribution of Livestock by Minimum Number of Individuals 208 26. Fig.5-2: Livestock Distribution by Percent Biomass Chart and Graph 210 27. Fig.5-3: Cattle Short Element Distribution and Expected vs. Observed Ratios 215 28. Fig.5-4: Calf Short Element Distribution and Expected vs. Observed Ratios 217 29. Fig.5-5: Pig Short Element Distribution and Expected vs. Observed Ratios 219 30. Fig.5-6: Sheep/Goat Short Element Distribution and Expected vs. Observes Ratios 220 31. Fig.5-7: Location of Slaughter by Assemblage 221 32. Fig.5-8: Percent of Butchered Livestock Specimens by Assemblage 224 33. Fig.5-9: Cattle Compiled Observed Butchery 225 34. Fig.5-10: Calf Compiled Observed Butchery 228 35. Fig.5-11: Pig Compiled Observed Butchery 230 36.