Northeast Historical Volume 42 Foodways on the Menu: Understanding the Lives of and Communities through the Article 1 Interpretation of Meals and -Related Practices

2013 Introduction: Bringing More to the Table Karen Bescherer Metheny

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Recommended Citation Metheny, Karen Bescherer (2013) "Introduction: Bringing More to the Table," Northeast Historical Archaeology: Vol. 42 42, Article 1. https://doi.org/10.22191/neha/vol42/iss1/1 Available at: http://orb.binghamton.edu/neha/vol42/iss1/1

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Introduction: Bringing More to the Table

Karen Bescherer Metheny

Introduction and nutrition by analyzing individual components of meals, we elicit economic data from price Archaeology and the archaeological lists and discuss consumer choice based on increasingly contribute to the knowledge of the selection of meats and goods, food preparation and consumption in historic- and we analyze the visual elements of food period households and communities, offering consumption and display, from table settings insights into what was consumed and how it to tea wares, as evidence of socioeconomic was prepared. In this volume, contributors status. We are less willing or prepared to talk build upon the archaeological evidence using about the meal as a whole, the context in an anthropological framework of analysis to which food was eaten or tea and alcohol examine the context and meaning of meals imbibed, or the significance of social relations and food-related practices. Using food remains associated with those meals. We are also reluctant and material objects, oral narratives, archival to broach the sensorial and communicative and other documentary sources (recipes and aspects of food and food-related material culture. cookbooks, novels, print media), genre paintings, Because food is more than subsistence, and and other lines of evidence, the authors because foodways intersect with a host of address questions related to community and cultural and social practices, as well as gender, household structure, gender, ethnicity, age, ethnicity, and other identities, it is important economic status, and social discourse. Changes for historical archaeologists to give greater in foodways practices and material culture are consideration to the role of food and foodways discussed in the context of broader social, cultural, in daily life. A closer examination of foodways and technological change. The approaches can provide information about the spectrum of offered here suggest that archaeologists can do relationships that are defined and reinforced in more to reconstruct past foodways and to the context of food-related activities, whether interpret the social, economic, and cultural economic transactions associated with food significance of these practices. procurement; task sharing associated with Foodways are a natural subject of study in food production and preparation among archaeology. Following Jay Anderson (1971: household members; social, political, or xl), foodways may be defined as the range of cultural networks and connections that are in cultural, social, and economic practices shared by play at the dinner table; or the enactment a group in the conceptualization, production, of hierarchical relationships through the and consumption of food. Broadly speaking, symbolic or sensorial aspects of food and this includes activities from gathering or foraging, dining. A study of foodways practices also hunting, subsistence gardening and , reveals that food consumption is not only a store purchases, and barter and exchange, to socially significant behavior, but is also a food preservation and storage, to preparation, multilayered performance in which both tacit presentation, consumption, and, finally, discard. and spoken communication are enhanced by Given that archaeological deposits at historical the very qualities of the food—taste, texture, sites often contain evidence of food remains temperature—and the context in which it is served, and quantities of food-related material culture, from seating arrangements to presentation, to and given the wealth of documentary sources the material culture of dining. available, it is surprising that archaeologists The papers in this volume not only demonstrate do not do more to interpret foodways practices. the power of an expanded interpretive focus, Archaeologists excel at teasing out information but provide practical suggestions on how based on residues, butchery cut marks, seeds, archaeologists can bring more to this area of and microremains—information that tells us research from both methodological and theo- what cuts of meat or raw ingredients, even retical perspectives. One of the most exciting spices, were consumed. We discuss subsistence aspects of this volume is that the bulk of the 2 Metheny/Introduction

research presented involves work with existing the community and negotiated their position collections, some of which are decades old, or within that community. Here the authors draw with data recovered through cultural resource on existing social theory, the writings of W. E. projects that typically are B. Du Bois, and Chela Sandoval’s (1991) theory constrained in terms of recovery, funding, and of “differential consciousness.” As summa- time. As such, the offerings here are inspiring rized by the authors, Sandoval posits that examples of how to do more with what we humans are able “to survive and operate have. The success of these studies lies in the within oppressive environments, while at the willingness of their authors to weave together same time developing beliefs and tactics to disparate sources and to incorporate data sets resist domination and oppression”(10). with which archaeologists are already familiar Springate and Raes make a compelling (e.g., genre paintings, contemporary , argument that the foodways practices of the period cookbooks), but with an innovative and Mann household encapsulate a discourse over creative eye. Each of the nine studies in this race and power structures in 19th-century volume uses an anthropological framework Deckertown (now Sussex Borough), New of analysis to examine the context of food Jersey. Using comparative data from the sites procurement, preparation, and consumption, of other free African American households and the many relationships and discourses in the Middle Atlantic, the authors further that are embedded in such practices. The contend that food and foodways were core authors are conducting what amounts to an elements of an African American identity historical anthropology of foodways in house- during this period, simultaneously serving holds, institutions, and communities. In so the process of identity formation and cultural doing, they are pushing interpretive boundaries expression, even as foodways practices to examine food as subsistence, but also food functioned as a means of negotiation and as metaphorical nourishment and sustenance, resistance. This dualism suggests a level of and food as an expressive medium. complexity to foodways that archaeologists This volume begins with four case studies have yet to articulate fully. that build from traditional archaeological and Two case studies link the archaeological documentary sources, but use a new or altered evidence of food preparation and consumption interpretive focus to understand better the to period and regional foodways practices significance of site-specific foodways practices. using contemporary print media and visual In “The Power of Choice: Reflections of representations. In “Dining with John and Economic Ability, Status, and Ethnicity in the Catharine Butler before the Close of the Foodways of a Free African American Family Eighteenth Century,” Eva MacDonald and in Northwestern New Jersey,” Megan E. Suzanne Needs-Howarth take a creative Springate and Amy K. Raes explore the role of approach to the reconstruction of historic- food and foodways in a free African American period foodways by positing a hypothetical household in the context of social, economic, dinner hosted by the Butler family at their and racial power structures in 19th-century home in Newark, Upper Canada (now New Jersey. They argue that the day-to-day Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario). They interpret choices made by the Mann household the vast quantities of zooarchaeological data regarding food procurement and consumption and material culture remains recovered from —choices made evident in the types of faunal the Butler site within the context of the remains and methods of processing, and in Georgian meal system as reconstructed from the selection and use of tablewares and period cookbooks. Hannah Glasse’s (1774) Art serving vessels recovered from the site—reflect of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, in particular, the struggles of family members as they provides context for taxa (wild and domestic) confronted discrimination and negotiated the recovered from the site and the butchery cuts tensions associated with being free African associated with food processing, but also links Americans in a largely white community. the archaeological data to prepared or But Springate and Raes also contend that dishes from the period, methods of preparation, foodways were an important vehicle through portion size, as well as menus and order of which the Manns expressed their identity to service. The hypothetical menu includes such Northeast Historical Archaeology/Vol. 42, 2013 3

dishes as venison haunch, legs of beef, fish, disjunctions between the archaeological data pigeon, and game birds. The reconstructed (compiled from several middens linked to dinner allows consideration of the individual student consumption) and the documentary components (e.g., faunal remains, ceramic vessels, record (provisioning lists, account books, college stemware) as related parts of a meal—a dining regulations) as evidence of an alternate economy experience involving hosts and guests, a menu, within Harvard’s institutional structure. The standards of service and dining etiquette, as presence or absence of tea wares, wine bottles, well as a variety of dishes prepared, served, and tobacco-pipe fragments, interpreted as displayed, and eaten in such a way as to enact evidence of a negotiated, “improvisational” and reinforce the middle-class status and consumerism, reveal the intersection of food social standing of the Butler family. and power—subversion and resistance (illicit In “Historic Philadelphia Foodways: A behaviors), but also negotiated behavior in Consideration of Catfish Cookery,” Teagan response to control and surveillance. Schweitzer focuses on the cultural significance Several articles highlight the importance of catfish remains recovered from excavations of interpreting site-specific evidence in the at seven Philadelphia sites dating from 1750 to context of the broader social, cultural, political, 1850. The assemblages, some of which were and technological trends of the period. In “Op excavated several decades ago, come from city Ed: The Influence of New Technologies, Foods, taverns and from domestic sites spanning a and Print Media on Local Material Culture range of socioeconomic classes. To understand Remains in Nineteenth-Century America,” the culinary significance of the catfish remains, Marie-Lorraine Pipes and Meta Janowitz Schweitzer contextualizes the archaeological consider the information revolution of the 19th data using contemporary print sources— century and explore the impact of print newspapers, political discussions, tourist and visual media upon consumer behavior in reviews, advertisements, fishing guides, 19th-century households. In their survey of fishing and agricultural bulletins issued by these sources, particularly advertisements, the commonwealth—along with engravings, cookbooks, and genre paintings, Pipes and photographs, and other graphic sources. In Janowitz evaluate factors, such as the availability, so doing, Schweitzer has reconstructed the frequency, and range of distribution, the of a long-lost regional specialty, “catfish longevity of media sources, the targets of and waffles,” as well as aspects of the culinary, specific forms of media, and the types of social, and political landscape of Philadelphia information each form attempted to convey. during this period. Such sources are traditionally used by archae- In “Consumerism and Control: Archaeological ologists to discuss availability and price, but Perspectives on the Harvard College Buttery,” Pipes and Janowitz argue that they are also Christina J. Hodge looks at the role of food relevant for understanding the processes provisioning and consumption in social, through which new foods and food technologies economic, and political discourse at colonial were introduced and accepted into households, Harvard through the lens of the “buttery,” a as well as the spread of the social and cultural commissary established by the college to values that were embedded within those foods allow students to supplement mandatory and goods. The latter, whether expressions of institutional meals known as commons. ideas of morality, themes of modernization, Rather than looking at exchanges through notions of hygiene, or nostalgia for past practice the buttery as examples of supply and and, thus, perceived values, reveal not only demand, however, Hodge argues that the broader cultural, demographic, and social transactions through this market reflect trends, but such ideas can be connected to the the tensions between institutional regulation life cycles of families and to specific practices and oversight, and acts of resistance and of households and communities. negotiation by students. Following the work of In “Decline in the Use and Production of Appadurai, Bourdieu, Certeau, Foucault, and Red-Earthenware Cooking Vessels in the others who have articulated theories concerning Northeast, 1780–1880,” Meta Janowitz examines the intersection of institutional or societal structure trends in redware production in the context and individual experience, Hodge interprets the of larger socioeconomic, technological, and 4 Metheny/Introduction

cultural changes. Janowitz scrutinizes several to technological changes, as well as to social, explanations for the decline in the quantities of religious, and cultural beliefs of the period, redware vessels that has been observed at 19th- including ideas about health, wellbeing, century archaeological sites in the Northeast, morality, and cultural identity that were in and weighs such factors as availability, cost, play in New England at this time. Equally need, and function. She concludes that the important, she documents a lag time between downward trend in redware production and the market availability of ingredients and use was very much a factor of technological their appearance in contemporary regional change, specifically the transition from hearth cookbooks, a caution to archaeologists who cooking to stove technology, and argues further rely primarily on cookbooks, food , or that this technological shift likely had greater secondary sources to interpret period foodways. impact on redware usage than more commonly This exercise further highlights the problems accepted explanations, such as a fear of lead- archaeologists and food historians create when glaze poisoning or the relative cost of redware availability is conflated with presence or use, and to stoneware. Janowitz then steps back to emphasizes the importance of contextualizing examine the significance of these broader foodways practices using as many lines of trends on household behavior and argues evidence as are available. that archaeologists need to understand and In “Modeling Communities Through Food: incorporate such contextualized knowledge Connecting the Daily Meal to the Construction into our interpretations of households and of Place and Identity,” Karen Metheny applies communities. food mapping and other visualization techniques The last group of papers offers innovative used by anthropologists, ethnographers, cultural methodological approaches to the study of geographers, and other social theorists to chart the spatial relationships associated with food- historical foodways. In “Applying Concepts related tasks and food sharing in the late 19th- from Historical Archaeology to New to mid-20th-century coal-mining community England’s Nineteenth-Century Cookbooks,” of Helvetia, Pennsylvania. Though archaeologists Anne Yentsch offers a richly detailed analysis have given considerable attention to feasting of print sources that has direct applicability to and formal dining, Metheny contends that it is the remains found at archaeological sites, as important to analyze and interpret the daily whether the seeds of fruit, condiment jars, or meal as it is to study feasting, and that the the remnants of iron cookstoves and cooking most ordinary meal—whether a snack, the vessels. This study begins with a repurposing miner’s meal, or the family dinner—is integral of the technique of seriation for the study to the creation of identity and place, and the of 19th-century New England cookbooks. larger process of community formation. Yentsch’s approach allows her to delineate Metheny uses oral histories, archaeological trends in the use of specific ingredients, data, and archival sources to delineate and including fruits, such as pineapple and then graph the linkages or connections among banana, and coffee, spices, and foodstuffs that people, food events, and the spaces associated were often classified as “exotic” or “cultural with daily food tasks (procurement and prepa- other” in 19th-century New England house- ration) and food consumption. The maps holds (e.g., fig and pomegranate); transitions reveal a multiplicity of networks, boundaries, and in cooking methods such as boiling or baking relationships that varied based on ethnicity, puddings; the preparation of composite dishes gender, age, sex, and other factors. These (e.g., prepared dishes that require different, connections were created and maintained sequential methods of heating or cooking to in the context of the daily meal, suggesting complete them); and shifts in ideas about what that daily food sharing has implications for was appropriate to eat (sweet or savory) understanding the processes through which and when (menu/order of service), as well as ethnic, gendered, and other identities are created, what was good (culturally appropriate) to eat. maintained, and reinforced; the importance of By examining contemporary documents, kin networks and alliances to individual and including shipping notices, advertisements, family wellbeing and community stability; the and prescriptive literature of the period, Yentsch manifestations of social, economic, and gendered is able to link these trends to availability and status and hierarchy within households and Northeast Historical Archaeology/Vol. 42, 2013 5

communities; and the exercise of economic and accomplish more with the data that are extracted political power. during recovery, but that we frame appropriate Finally, in “Feasting on Broken Glass: research questions before work begins. Making a Meal of Seeds, Bones, and Sherds,” Similarly, these articles demonstrate the value of Mary C. Beaudry proposes a study of the work with existing collections, even archaeological material and sensorial practices of dining data that are decades old. The offerings in this using multiple lines of evidence to reconstruct volume suggest the potential of a food-centered and interpret not just the nutritional content of approach, from the reconstruction of foodways the meal, but the dining experience as a whole. practices to an understanding of the complexity Beaudry reexamines the archaeological and significance of meals in all forms. evidence from two specific occupations dating Together they suggest that archaeologists can to the late 18th- and early 19th centuries at the and should bring more to the table. Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm in Newbury, Massachusetts, so as to bring into focus the References evidence for feasting and dining, and to explore the significance of such practices. Anderson, Jay Allen Through discussions of certain types of material 1971 “A Solid Sufficiency”: An Ethnography of culture (e.g., stemware or flatware) and specific Yeoman Foodways in Stuart England. Ph.D. prepared dishes (e.g., pigeon pie, a spit- dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. roasted haunch of beef, a roast suckling pig), University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, MI. Beaudry reminds archaeologists that meals are much more than their constituent elements. Glasse, Mrs. [Hannah] Rather, dining and, in particular, feasting embody 1774 The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. elements of sociality, discourse, entertainment, New Edition, Printed for W. Strahan, J. and and sensorial enjoyment. By gathering and F. Rivington, J. Hinton [etc.], London, UK. integrating all data sets related to dining (botanical and faunal remains, material culture Sandoval, Chela assemblages, historical documents, architectural 1991 U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and spatial information) into “assemblages and Method of Oppositional of practice,” she argues that archaeologists Consciousness in the Postmodern World. will be better able to interpret the sociality, Genders 10: 1–24. the sensoriality, and the meaning of the dining experience. Author Information The articles in this volume demonstrate that much can be gained by changing the Karen Metheny is a visiting researcher in the questions we ask, by asking more of the data, and Department of Archaeology, Boston University. by integrating the multiple lines of evidence She is coeditor with Mary Beaudry of that are available to us to contextualize period Archaeology of Food: An Encyclopedia (2014) and is foodways. Archaeologists may usefully draw currently working on a multidisciplinary study from a range of scholarly works by social of the cultural significance of maize in colonial scientists, as well as from the emergent field of New England. She was formerly a lecturer for food studies. There is a vast literature available the MLA Program in Gastronomy, Metropolitan to us that offers many useful theoretical and College, Boston University, where she taught methodological approaches to the study of courses in the anthropology and archaeology of food and foodways; as this volume shows, food, food history, and food culture of New familiarity with this body of scholarly work England, and method and theory in food studies. allows us to examine or reexamine our data with a new eye for both the content and context of Karen Bescherer Metheny the meal. The methods and approaches presented Department of Archaeology here also have very practical considerations. As Boston University Pipes and Janowitz note, funding and time 675 Commonwealth Avenue constraints in public archaeology and mitigation Boston, MA 02215 projects make it imperative that we not only [email protected]