After the harvest: investigating the role of food processing in past human societies,

Abstract

Plant processing provides an essential framework for archaeobotanical interpretation since practices of processing lie between the ancient acquisition of plants and the preserved remains of archaeology. Crop-processing stages have received much attention as they contribute towards the interpretation of plants recovered from archaeological sites, linking them to routine human activities that generated these plant remains. Yet, there are many other important aspects of the human past that can be explored through food processing studies that are much less often investigated, e.g. how culinary practices may have influenced resource selection, plant domestication and human diet, health, evolution and cultural identity. Therefore, this special issue of AAS on “Food Processing Studies in Archaeobotany and Ethnobotany” brings together recent pioneering methodological and interpretive archaeobotanical approaches to the study of ancient food processing. This new research, which involves archaeobotany, ethnoarchaeology, ethnobotany and experimental methods, encompasses investigations into dietary choice, cultural traditions and cultural change as well as studies of the functional properties (i.e. performance characteristics) of edible plants, and the visibility as well as dietary benefits and consequences of different food processing methods.