Why domesticate food animals? Some zoo-archaeological evidence from the Levant

Zoo-archaeological remains from the southern Levant indicate two shifts in the pattern of animal exploitation from Palaeolithic to Pre-Pottery Neolithic times. These shifts were especially marked towards the end of this time span. One is the increased consumption of small animals and the other shift is an increased hunting of juvenile gazelles compared to adults. Both are interpreted in terms of an increased intensity of exploitation of environmental resources due, it is suggested, to population increase, which subsequently forced people to husband animals.     

The pectoral fin spines of European catfish Siluris glanis; cultural artifacts or food remains?

The urban archaeological site of Nicopolis ad Istrum in north central Bulgaria, which has multiple periods of use and abandonment, has produced a large and varied ichthyofauna. A number of bones of the European catfish Siluris glanis have been identified and have been interpreted as both food remains and bone artifacts. It was found that a percentage bias in the distribution of S. glanis bones from the Roman period of occupation called for further analysis. The investigation attempts to identify the reason or reasons for the apparent overrepresentation of the pectoral fin spines of this species. Taphonomic factors are considered along with butchery and an actualistic study of butchery on modern S. glanis material. Studies from north Africa are used to illustrate the possible function of the spines. The conclusions drawn are that a high proportion of the pectoral fin spines were brought into the site, possibly as personal artifacts. Their use is open to debate; no clear functional use can be determined from the archaeological material, although it cannot be ruled out that they were used for medicinal purposes or as charms.     

‘Broad but not deep’: regional food hubs and rural development in the United States

Abstract

As organizations that aggregate, market, and distribute locally and regionally sourced food within wholesale, retail, and institutional markets, regional food hubs (RFHs) are increasingly promoted in the United States as rural development tools. Connections between RFHs and rural development, however, remain mostly untested and unclear. Motivated by prolonged declines in rural, agricultural communities and limited investigation to date, this paper adopts the capability approach to comprehensively test for the first time the rural development rhetoric surrounding RFHs. In-depth interviews in a rural, poor setting contribute empirical, noneconomic evidence to assess if, how, how much, and for whom RFHs advance rural opportunities and improve upon highly localized food systems. Though not to the purported degree, RFHs facilitate rural development, and do so in previously unexplored though substantial ways. Contrary to what proponents might anticipate, the study simultaneously highlights negative outcomes and areas that – albeit key to rural development narratives – remain unchanged. Grounding assumptions, highlighting alternative spaces of impact, and uncovering barriers with a novel evaluative approach, this paper draws on community voices to fill gaps between theory and reality and offer insights for those hoping to harness the transformative capacities of food.     

Famine responses in the world food crisis 1972–5 and the World Food Conference of 1974

In the early 1970s, there was scarcity in the world grain market, soaring prices and famines in several countries of Asia and Africa. The commercial grain trade was expanded at the expense of food aid. After a brief look at policies addressing the situation in terms of modernised methods of agricultural production for small producers, the article sketches how such policies also affected relief efforts, from the low availability for food aid, the provision of food that was not useful and late deliveries through efforts to tie food aid to local changes in agricultural production and settlement patterns. In part, food aid thus reinforced processes of social differentiation that had contributed to causing the famines in the first place.     

Staple or famine food?: ethnographic and archaeological approaches to nut processing in East Asian prehistory

Recent archaeobotanical studies in East Asia show that the use of wild food plants, particularly nuts, was important for not only hunter–gatherers but also early farmers. For example, recent archaeobotanical work has identified large quantities of nut remains from early Chinese rice farming sites dating 5,000–4,500 BC. In Japan, which introduced rice farming from China around 1,000–500 BC, archaeobotanical data have shown continued exploitation of nuts even after the introduction of rice farming. Therefore, the first appearance of farming does not appear to have immediately impacted the subsistence system, although it may have changed cultural perceptions of food plants, eventually rice replacing nuts as a staple food. To explain the cultural implications of this shift in emphasis, it is necessary to investigate people’s routine subsistence activities with reference to available ethnographic information on non-mechanised plant processing. The ethnographic data provide insights into ancient nut processing, including possible methods, tools, choices of working locations and labour scales. Conceptual modelling based on ethnographic observations of the range of nut-processing practices will also aid interpretations from newly developed methods, such as starch residue analyses. The resulting archaeobotanical, archaeological and ethnographic picture may help to further explore past social organisation and social perceptions of plant foods.     

The Wages of Collaboration: the German food crisis 1939–1945 and the supplies from Denmark

The problem of limited food supplies left its mark on Germany and the Nazi regime during World War II. The Germans faced diminishing food rations and to a great extent had to rely on supplies from occupied Europe. To a small state like Denmark, with its precarious geo-political position, this turned out to be crucial. Thanks to its advanced agricultural production and fisheries and a generous German price policy, Germany was able to extract a maximum of food from Denmark without damaging the structure of Danish agricultural production. Deliveries culminated in 1943–1945, as Denmark supplied German big cities with 14% of their consumption of meat and pork and more than 20% of the Wehrmacht’s consumption, while Danish butter constituted nearly 9% of consumption in big cities and as much as one third of the Wehrmacht’s consumption during the same period. On this account, Denmark obtained a certain political freedom of action. In internal reports, German authorities in Copenhagen and in the Foreign Ministry repeatedly pointed to the fact that any attempt at changing the occupation regime in Denmark would rid Denmark of its democratically based government and jeopardize the abundant food supplies to Germany. The article argues that Danish food supplies to Germany provided the main reason why democratic Denmark was allowed to maintain its political system despite the German occupation.     

The rôle of transport in firms' spatial organization: evidence from the Spanish food processing industry

This paper explores the role of transport in the spatial organization of food processing firms in Spain. A framework is developed through the analysis of the various mechanisms by which transport affects firms, and the identification of key elements and recent trends in spatial firm organization. Empirical evidence from interviews suggests that with modern logistic strategies transport is becoming more important. In a time‐based competitive environment, transport plays an important role in efforts to reduce delivery times, and increase reliability and flexibility in deliveries, as well as customer responsiveness. Not only does transport influence firms' location decisions, but also by adjusting to transport improvements firms are found to reconfigure their spatial organization.     

‘Gender hates men’: untangling gender and development discourses in food security fieldwork in urban Malawi

This article examines the social construction and contestation of gender and gender roles in the city of Blantyre in Malawi. In fieldwork on gendered household roles related to food security, interviews with men and women revealed a distinct set of connotations with the word gender, which reflected Malawians’ historical and contemporary engagement with concepts of development, modernity, and human rights. We denote the Malawian concept of gender as gender in order to distinguish the word participants used in interviews from the more widely accepted conventional definition. We then use this distinction to highlight the ways in which ideas of gender equality have been introduced and received in the Malawian context. The urban setting of the research is key to drawing out the association of gender with Westernization, bringing into focus the power dynamics inherent in the project of translating global discourses of gender rights and gender equality into meaningful social change in developing countries. Gender in Malawi denotes a top-down (and outside-in) process of framing Malawi’s goals for gender equality. This creates political constraints both in the form of resistance to gender, because it resonates with a long history of social change imposed by outside forces, and in the form of superficial adherence to gender to appear more urban and modern, especially to a Western researcher. Local understandings of gender as gender undermine efforts to promote gender equality as a means to address Malawi’s intense urban poverty and household food insecurity.     

‘Touche pas à mon pain au chocolat!’ The theme of food in current French political discourses

Current French political discourses contain numerous references to food. The phenomenon began in the late 1990s with the issue of food safety and references to ‘la malbouffe’, as the population became increasingly anxious about the consequences of globalisation. In the 2010s the phenomenon gained momentum, particularly during the 2012 presidential elections as the debate focused on French identity and the place of Islam in France. Today, both the far right and the mainstream right include the issue of food in their discourses. Careful analysis suggests that the Identitaires, an electorally weak but ideologically influential political movement, were ahead of the tide before being followed by the Front National, which focused on the issue of halal meat, and finally other key figures from the former Union pour un Mouvement Populaire. This study highlights how the parties on the right appropriated the theme of food at different times and underscores similarities with regards to their frequent recourse to discursive strategies based on a dichotomy between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The topic of food therefore represents a new strand in the right’s and far right’s traditional discourses on immigration and identity and can be viewed as a new rhetorical tool to mark otherness.     

Ground cereal food preparations from Greece: the prehistory and modern survival of traditional Mediterranean ‘fast foods’

Archaeobotanical remains of ground cereals from prehistoric northern Greece are discussed in this paper within the context of ethnographic and textual evidence for similar food preparations encountered in countries of the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The archaeobotanical remains consist of ground einkorn and barley grain, stored in this form, from the sites of Mesimeriani Toumba and Archondiko respectively, located in the region of central Macedonia, northern Greece. The results of published pilot studies involving macroscopic, experimental, and scanning electron microscopic examination of these archaeological finds seem to suggest that these products correspond to preprocessed cereals, stored in this form. It is also likely that some at least of these finds were produced from boiled and subsequently ground cereal grains. This practice identified in the prehistoric material is similar to various forms of processing cereals still widely encountered in rural areas of modern Greece and other circum-Mediterranean countries. These products are known in Greece under the names of pligouri (bulgur) and trachanas. Through a combined examination of archaeobotanical, ethnographic, and textual evidence it is argued that the idea of pre-processing cereals for piecemeal consumption throughout the year is of considerable antiquity in this part of the world. Drawing information from food science research on similar, modern traditional preparations of the same geographical region, the paper highlights the advantages of pre-processing cereals for later consumption, which offers insights into likely prehistoric subsistence practices. Parboiling cereal grains or mixing grains with milk products in the summer would have made excellent use of seasonally available ingredients by converting them into nutritious and storable foodstuffs, which could then be consumed as part of daily meals with very little additional cooking effort and fuel. This ease of conversion into a filling meal may justify us considering them as ‘traditional fast foods’.     

The local traveler: farming,food, and place in state and provincial tourism guides, 1993–2008

Over the past fifteen years, Americans and Canadians have become increasingly interested in and conscious of the sources of their food. Local food movements such as farmers’ markets and community supported agriculture have expanded dramatically in popularity. This study focuses on a heretofore unexamined aspect of this phenomenon, the widespread rise in use of local food and agriculture in tourism marketing. Nearly absent in 1993 promotions, “eating locally” is now a cornerstone of tourism advertising by states and provinces. This study examines the ways that local food is employed in tourism booklets, and by extension, the desires of the travelers to whom such booklets are targeted.     

Women’s sense of farming: ecofeminism in sustainable farming and local food in Vermont,U.S.A

Abstract

Women’s Sense of Farming is a qualitative study of women farming as part of the local food movement in Vermont, U.S.A. The study puts the lives of women farmers in conversation with ecofeminist theory in order to examine how women farmers simultaneously enact critiques of culture, while also mimicking dominant narratives. The study subjects’ narratives of their lives show how they navigate the reason/nature dualism (as articulated by philosopher Val Plumwood). The result of the study is a set of values and experiences that show the successes and challenges of local food farmers working toward social, environmental, and economic sustainability.     

It’s never too late to join the revolution! – Enabling new modes of production in the contemporary Danish food system

ABSTRACT

The Danish food system has undergone a transition in the past 10–20 years, in which new quality conventions have evolved. Examples include increasing organic production and consumption, and increasing interest in local food, experience, community, taste and gastronomy. This article explores what influences if and how these new food trends are expressed in the food system. We conduct a comparative case study involving three product categories: craft beer, specialty flour and organic broilers. Craft beer and specialty flour have undergone a revolution, in which new flavours, products, practices and social relations are generated; by contrast, organic broilers have remained a relatively stable product category. The case studies demonstrate that the revolution is not just taking place in one domain, but it implies a multidimensional reconfiguration of the food system where an emphasis on multiple quality aspects and diversification of the product category is important. However, food trends are not the invention of the individual producer, but serve as common conventions that products can be related to, although their interpretation is not pre-given. In addition, a transition presupposes a shared vision and a coordination of activities among the actors in the food system or the mobilization of new actors who share this vision.     

Wood exploitation and food supply at the border of the Roman Empire: the case of the vicus of Thamusida – Sidi Ali ben Ahmed (Morocco)

This paper presents the results of inter-disciplinary work drawing on archaeobotanical and archaeometric studies to trace the agroforestry landscape and the supply economy at the vicus of Thamusida in north-west Morocco at the border of the Roman Empire. The available data indicate the self-sufficiency of the settlement in both forestry and agricultural products throughout the period investigated from the end of the 1st century BC to the beginning of the 4th century AD. Charcoal data testify to the presence of a Quercus suber forest in the close surroundings of the site and its exploitation for a variety of forestry products such as timber, fuelwood, cork, and probably also leaves and acorns to feed livestock. The overwhelming presence of Q. suber in the archaeological layer investigated clearly indicates that this forest was under human influence prior to Roman occupation and was already partially degraded. Charred seed and fruit remains suggest that the diet of both troops and civilians was mainly based on locally grown products and that all the inhabitants of the site had access to good cereals such as barley, naked wheats and pulses with large seeds such as horse bean and pea; quality fruits, such as olive and grape, were also produced locally for fresh consumption. Organic residue analyses of the contents of ceramic vessels and plastered vats allowed archaeobotanical data to be complemented, thereby shedding light on some of the imports at Thamusida. Despite the remote location of this settlement, imported goods such as oil and wine were transported here in amphorae from different parts of the Empire.