Foodways Archaeology - Methods and Cases [1 ed.] 9783031410161, 9783031410178

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Chapter 1: Archaeology of Foodways
1.1 Components of Foodways Archaeology
1.2 Research Themes in Foodways Archaeology
1.3 Background to the Case Studies
1.4 Organization of the Volume
References
Chapter 2: Zooarchaeology of Foodways
2.1 Sample Recovery Best Practices
2.2 Analysis Methods
2.2.1 Primary Data Collection
2.3 Number of Identified Specimens (NISP)
2.4 Weights
2.4.1 Secondary Data Collection
2.5 Minimum Number of Individuals
2.6 Biomass
2.7 Species Diversity and Equitability
2.8 Zooarchaeology of the Earliest Introduction of Iberian Foodways to the Americas
2.9 Summary
References
Chapter 3: Paleoethnobotany of Foodways
3.1 Plant Samples Common to Archaeological Sites
3.1.1 Food Plants
3.1.2 Fuel Plants
3.1.3 Pollen and Pollen Rain
3.2 Plant Sample Recovery Best Practices
3.3 Lab Analysis Methods
3.3.1 Primary Data Collection
3.3.2 Secondary Data Measures
3.4 Taphonomy and Sample Bias
3.4.1 Differential Preservation
3.4.2 Modern and Ancient Biases
3.5 Interpreting Plants as Part of Foodways
3.6 Summary
References
Additional Resources
Chapter 4: Bioarchaeology of Foodways
4.1 Ethical and Legal Considerations in Bioarchaeology
4.2 Discovery of Human Remains
4.2.1 Best Practices in the Recovery of Human Remains
4.3 Lab Analysis Methods
4.3.1 Basic Osteological Identification
4.3.2 Basic Demographic Identification
4.4 Biomarkers of Foodways (Diet and Nutrition)
4.4.1 Paleopathology
4.4.2 Dental Wear and Tear
4.4.3 Diet Reconstruction Based on Stable Isotope Analysis
4.4.4 Growth Disruption
4.4.5 Iron Deficiency Anemia
4.5 Biomarkers of Foodways (Physical Work and Activity)
4.5.1 Osteoarthritis
4.5.2 Skeletal Morphology
4.6 Discussion
4.7 Summary
References
Additional Resources
Chapter 5: Chemical Analysis of Foodways
5.1 Organic Residue Analysis
5.2 Diet Reconstruction Based on Stable Isotope Analysis
5.2.1 Basics of Stable Isotope Analysis
5.3 Experimental Studies with Absorbed Residues
5.4 Dietary Reconstructions of the Mission Period
5.5 Summary
References
Chapter 6: Ceramic Analysis and Foodways
6.1 Why Do We Study Ceramics?
6.2 Data Collection on Archaeological Ceramics
6.2.1 Raw Material
6.2.2 Surface Treatment
6.2.3 Vessel Shapes
6.3 Ceramic Quantification
6.4 Ceramic Classification Systems
6.5 The Functional Vessel
6.5.1 Processing
6.5.2 Storage
6.5.3 Cooking
6.5.4 Uncommon Cookware
6.5.5 Serving
6.6 Summary
References
Chapter 7: Documentary Analysis of Foodways
7.1 Documents Written About the Lived Experience
7.2 Historic Documents and Foodways
7.2.1 Religious Doctrine
7.2.2 Cookbooks
7.2.3 Art/Paintings
7.3 Text Analysis Methods for the Foodways Archaeologist
7.4 Big Data, Digital Humanities, and Foodways
7.5 Summary
References
Chapter 8: Cooking Tools and Spaces
8.1 Culinary Tools and Missions
8.2 Tools for Food Processing
8.3 Cookware
8.4 Cooking Features and Spaces
8.5 Summary
References

Citation preview

SpringerBriefs in Archaeology Tanya M. Peres

Foodways Archaeology - Methods and Cases

SpringerBriefs in Archaeology

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Tanya M. Peres

Foodways Archaeology Methods and Cases

Tanya M. Peres Department of Anthropology Florida State University Tallahassee, FL, USA

ISSN 1861-6623 ISSN 2192-4910 (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Archaeology ISBN 978-3-031-41016-1 ISBN 978-3-031-41017-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41017-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Acknowledgments

I acknowledge that my institution, Florida State University, and the city where I live and conduct research, Tallahassee, is located on land that is the ancestral and traditional territory of the Apalachee Nation, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida, and the Seminole Tribe of Florida. I pay respect to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to their descendants and to all Indigenous people. The initial writing of this manuscript was supported by a grant from the Committee on Faculty Research Support through the FSU Council on Research and Creativity. The idea for the book was borne out of developing, teaching, and refining a Foodways Archaeology course for advanced undergraduate and graduate students at Florida State University. Thank you to all of the students that researched ingredients, recipes, cookware, and cooking methods, and then prepared historic recipes. My writing partner, Katie Foss, was instrumental in holding me accountable for my self-imposed deadlines, which I could not have met without the larger writing challenge group we belong to – #thanksAGT! I am thankful to the editorial staff at Springer for their understanding, flexibility, and guidance during the course of writing this book. I offer thanks and gratitude to my colleagues at Florida State University for their support and assistance. Rochelle Marrinan introduced me to zooarchaeology and Mission archaeology when I was an undergraduate (1994 Mission Patale field school) and gave me the opportunity to be her field assistant for the Mission O’Connell field school in 1997. My thinking and writing has benefited immensely from our near-daily discussions on food, birds, books, and archaeology. Malinda Thompson’s support (and coffee) provided necessary fuel for writing. I am indebted to the students in the 2018 FSU Archaeological Field School held at San Luis de Talimali and to my students that wrote theses from those materials – Alison Bruin, Caitlin Delmas, David Korkuc, Laylah Roberts, Taylor Townsend, and Cam Walker. The staff of Mission San Luis have been exceptionally accommodating, especially Jerry Lee. I am thankful to John Worth, University of West Florida, for graciously sharing translations and information from his own unpublished research files with

vi

Acknowledgments

me. The Florida Division of Historical Resources graciously provided images of culinary tools for inclusion. Finally, I thank my family for their continued support and willingness to eat the historic recipes I experiment with at home.

Contents

1

Archaeology of Foodways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Components of Foodways Archaeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Research Themes in Foodways Archaeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Background to the Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Organization of the Volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 2 5 5 7 8

2

Zooarchaeology of Foodways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Sample Recovery Best Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Analysis Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Primary Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Number of Identified Specimens (NISP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Weights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.1 Secondary Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 Minimum Number of Individuals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Biomass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7 Species Diversity and Equitability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 Zooarchaeology of the Earliest Introduction of Iberian Foodways to the Americas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.9 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11 13 15 15 16 16 17 17 17 18

Paleoethnobotany of Foodways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Plant Samples Common to Archaeological Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.1 Food Plants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.2 Fuel Plants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.3 Pollen and Pollen Rain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Plant Sample Recovery Best Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Lab Analysis Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.1 Primary Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.2 Secondary Data Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

27 29 29 29 30 31 32 32 34

3

20 21 21

vii

viii

Contents

3.4

Taphonomy and Sample Bias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.1 Differential Preservation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.2 Modern and Ancient Biases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Interpreting Plants as Part of Foodways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Additional Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35 35 37 38 39 39 43

4

Bioarchaeology of Foodways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Ethical and Legal Considerations in Bioarchaeology . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Discovery of Human Remains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.1 Best Practices in the Recovery of Human Remains . . . . . . . 4.3 Lab Analysis Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 Basic Osteological Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.2 Basic Demographic Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Biomarkers of Foodways (Diet and Nutrition) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.1 Paleopathology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.2 Dental Wear and Tear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.3 Diet Reconstruction Based on Stable Isotope Analysis . . . . 4.4.4 Growth Disruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.5 Iron Deficiency Anemia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Biomarkers of Foodways (Physical Work and Activity) . . . . . . . . . 4.5.1 Osteoarthritis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.2 Skeletal Morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Additional Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

45 45 46 46 47 48 48 49 49 49 51 51 52 52 52 53 53 54 55 57

5

Chemical Analysis of Foodways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Organic Residue Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Diet Reconstruction Based on Stable Isotope Analysis . . . . . . . . . 5.2.1 Basics of Stable Isotope Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Experimental Studies with Absorbed Residues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Dietary Reconstructions of the Mission Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

59 59 60 61 64 64 65 65

6

Ceramic Analysis and Foodways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Why Do We Study Ceramics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Data Collection on Archaeological Ceramics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.1 Raw Material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.2 Surface Treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.3 Vessel Shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Ceramic Quantification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

69 70 71 71 72 73 74

Contents

ix

6.4 6.5

Ceramic Classification Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Functional Vessel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.1 Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.2 Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.3 Cooking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.4 Uncommon Cookware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.5 Serving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

74 76 76 77 78 79 81 85 88

7

Documentary Analysis of Foodways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Documents Written About the Lived Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Historic Documents and Foodways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.1 Religious Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.2 Cookbooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.3 Art/Paintings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Text Analysis Methods for the Foodways Archaeologist . . . . . . . . 7.4 Big Data, Digital Humanities, and Foodways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

93 93 96 97 98 100 102 104 104 105

8

Cooking Tools and Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1 Culinary Tools and Missions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 Tools for Food Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3 Cookware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4 Cooking Features and Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

109 110 112 114 114 115 116

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 6.1

Fig. 6.2

Fig. 6.3

Fig. 6.4

Location of La Florida and Mission Provinces discussed in the text. (Modified from Worth, 2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

6

Carbonized maize cobs recovered from San Luis de Talimali. (Photo by author) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

36

Reconstructed majolica plato, with recovered utensils, San Luis de Talimali. Majolica wares are earthenware bodies with a tin-enamel glaze and often highly decorated with two or more colors. Image courtesy of the Florida Division of Historical Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Modern replicas of middle-style (ca. 1580–1800) olive jars on display in the fort exhibit at Mission San Luis. (Photograph by author) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Selected artifacts recovered from structures and associated trash pits excavated at San Luis de Talimali. (a) Lamar Complicated Stamped, var. Jefferson jar (Feature 174: FS#s 12,907 and 12,908); (b) Puebla Polychrome (left) and San Luis Blue on White (right) majolica (Feature 174: FS# 12,908); (c) Colonoware brimmed plate (Feature 174: FS# 12,908); (d) Mission Red Filmed bowl (Feature 174: FS# 12,908); (e) Colonoware pitchers (Feature 174: FS#s 12,907 and 12,908); (f) Colonoware cup (Feature 174: FS# 12,908); (g) Colonoware bacín form with handle (Feature 174: FS#s 12,822 and 12,908); (h) Colonoware skillet (Feature 174: FS# 12,908); (i) Colonoware candle holder fragments (Feature 177: FS# 13,089); (j) Wound glass beads (top left: Structure 1 interior: FS# 6413, bottom left: Feature 174: FS# 12,908), and decorated ceramic beads (Feature 177: FS# 13,089). (Image courtesy of the Florida Division of Historical Resources) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Refitted sherds of Colonoware, long handled skillet form, San Luis de Talimali (8LE4). (Image courtesy of the Florida Division of Historical Resources) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

73

78

80

82 xi

xii

Fig. 6.5

Fig. 6.6

Fig. 6.7

Fig. 6.8

Fig. 6.9

Fig. 6.10

List of Figures

Sample of Apalachee clay balls recovered from a burned feature, Site 8LE34, campus of Florida State University, Tallahassee. (Photo by author) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brimmed plato decorated in the San Luis Blue on White motif, San Luis de Talimali (8LE4). (Image courtesy of Florida Division of Historical Resources) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Refitted sherds of a pocilla, Puebla Polychrome decorative motif, San Luis de Talimali (8LE4). (Image courtesy of the Florida Division of Historical Resources) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mended Colonoware sherds, double handled pitcher, San Luis de Talimali (8LE4). (Image courtesy of the Florida Division of Historical Resources) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mended Mission Red Filmed ceramic sherds, cup with handles, San Luis de Talimali (8LE4). (Image courtesy of the Florida Division of Historical Resources) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mended Mission Red Filmed ceramic sherds, brimmed plato, San Luis de Talimali (8LE4). (Image courtesy of the Florida Division of Historical Resources) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

83

84

84

85

86

87

Fig. 7.1

An oil painting describing the different casts within the caste system present in New Spain. Oil on canvas, 148 cm × 104 cm (58 1/4 inches × 40 15/16 inches). (By Unknown author – Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán, Mexico, Public Domain) . .. . .. .. . .. . .. .. . .. .. . .. . .. .. . .. . .. .. . .. . .. .. . .. .. . .. . .. 103

Fig. 8.1

Scene of a 13-year-old Aztec girl taking over the grinding of corn from her mother. The corn meal will be used to make tortillas, cooked on the comal. (Codex Mendoza, Ross 1978) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Reconstructed firechamber charcoal stove in the cocina at Mission San Luis. (Photo by the author) .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . .. . . .. . . .. . 115

Fig. 8.2

List of Tables

Table 1.1

Foodways studies components, associated material culture (direct and indirect indicators), and archaeological specialty . . . . .

4

Table 5.1 Table 5.2

Primary isotopes used in ancient diet reconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Trophic level effect on nitrogen fractionation . .. . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . .. . .

61 63

Table 7.1

Food quantities stored at Fort San Mateo according to sworn testimony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

96

Table 8.1 Table 8.2

Cooking/Kitchen Supplies given to each Friar by the Spanish Government for the Journey to New Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Cooking equipment used in the seventeenth century Catholic kitchen, extracted from Altamiras’ kitchen notebook (Hayward, 2017) .. . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . .. . 111

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Chapter 1

Archaeology of Foodways

Abstract Foodways Archaeology presents an overview of methodologies to identify and study foodways in the archaeological record. The volume includes definitions, information, and examples so that students and professionals can learn and understand the basic analytical approaches, methods, and themes critical to archaeological studies of foodways. One of the main goals of this book is to show that foodways can help us better understand many aspects of a culture and can be studied even in the absence of food remains. It is important to stress that foodways are, and should be, studied by more than zooarchaeologists and paleoethnobotanists. Foodways encompass the biological and cultural need for sustenance, and thus are a research area that incorporates a multitude of artifact types, analytical specialties, and research questions. Keywords Food · Diet · Subsistence strategy · Cuisine Food is central to the human experience. Food fills biological requirements and satisfies our emotional and psychological longings. Foodways studies help us decode the narratives embedded in the material culture of these lived experiences. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the most commonly used methodologies central to the archaeology of foodways. I focus on the ways different categories of archaeological data are recovered, identified, analyzed, interpreted as separate datasets, and ultimately brought together to create a thorough and nuanced understanding of past foodways. Food can convey a range of human sentiments, both intended and unintended. Food can communicate messages of hospitality and welcome, or celebration and mourning. For example, the Zapotecs of the Oaxaca region of Mexico make a dish called mole chichilo negro. A mole (from the Nahuatl mōlli, meaning “sauce,” or chīlmōlli, “chile sauce”) can come in a variety of flavors and include many different ingredients, with chili peppers as the common denominator. This particular mole is a black sauce that is considered complex to prepare because it is composed of 30 different ingredients that require atypical preparation methods. To me, what is so special about mole chichilo negro is the occasion on which it is prepared and served. Mole chichilo negro is eaten during times of mourning, and of course Dia de © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. M. Peres, Foodways Archaeology - Methods and Cases, SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41017-8_1

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los Muertos, because of its bitter ashy taste. Pati Jinich (2017:Episode 607), resident chef at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C., cookbook author, and host of PBS’s series “Pati’s Mexican Table,” ventured to Oaxaca – Land of the Seven Moles – to learn the secrets of making mole chichilo negro. Jinich and Chef Celia Florian remove the seeds and toast the chilis, then Chef Florian burns tortillas and chili seeds on a comal (from the Aztec Nahuatl comalli) until they are nearly ash. As we watch Chef Florian masterfully move the chilis around on the comal, proclaiming that “the demons will be leaving from here,” Jinich and the camera crew start to cough and quickly vacate the kitchen. Even though I am not with them in Chef Florian’s kitchen, I can imagine the burning sensation in my eyes and throat from the chili smoke.The smell of the burning chilis is as important a part of mole chichilo negro as the ingredients, bitter taste, black color, and the mourning occasions on which it is served. The significance of the toasting and the burning is not only in the color it imparts on the finished sauce, but the bitter notes that form the base of this mole. Personal and group identity is broadcast through the types, quantities, and preparation of foods. Foodways signal social, political, and religious structures. An important part of foodways studies is gastropolitics, the creation and maintenance of social and political relationships through the making and consuming of meals (Appadurai, 1981; Peres, 2017). In this way, archaeologists can define smallscale activities, such as daily meals prepared and eaten at the household level, so that the larger ritual meals consumed at the community level can be identified (Appadurai, 1981; Crowther, 2013). Everyone acknowledges that food is essential to human life. This is evidenced by the rise in prominence of studies over the past half-century that examine food, foodways, and food and culture within and across multiple disciplines. Archaeologists have drawn on this corpus of literature to apply concepts and theories from across the humanities and social sciences to the global material foodways record of ancient and historic communities. In this volume I present a primer on archaeological foodways studies. As such, the remainder of this chapter is dedicated to familiarizing the reader with terms and definitions, research themes, and methods common to these studies that are expanded on in later chapters.

1.1

Components of Foodways Archaeology

Foodways archaeology is an emerging field that cuts across traditional sub- specialties in archaeology. There are several components to foodways that are studied using different artifact categories and analytical techniques, though in some instances multiple methods are applicable to different components. In this section I identify these components, the types of archaeological data categories that can be used to study these components, and the corresponding analytical specialty.

1.1

Components of Foodways Archaeology

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A food is any plant, animal, or fungus that is biologically sustaining for the organism that consumes it (in this case, humans). Of course, humans do not eat everything that is available or edible. That is where culture comes into play – our culture determines what we eat. Analysis of the archaeological food remains (plants and animals) by zooarchaeologists and paleoethnobotanists, while subject to the limitations of the archaeological record and taphonomic processes, tells us which foods were processed, cooked, consumed, and discarded. Another common word in foodways archaeology is diet. This is all of the food eaten by an individual or a group on a regular basis without differentiating between daily and special meal occasions. For example, I may follow a vegetarian diet and eat wheat pasta with butter, but no animal muscle meat. My friend may follow a gluten-free diet, and would avoid foods that contain wheat, but would eat steak or chops. In thinking about this in regard to archaeological cultures, the daily fare and special meals of indigenous farmers in sixteenth-century La Florida who lived in villages attached to Catholic missions might have included the same food components (wheat, corn, venison), but in the case of feasts they would have been prepared and consumed differently or in ritualized contexts. Subsistence strategy is the dominant mode in which a person or group acquires their food. We would not say a group has a vegetarian subsistence strategy, but they might be fisher-gatherers. Other groups might practice hunting and gathering, agriculture, or whaling. We as archaeologists determine a group’s subsistence strategy based on the food remains, harvesting and processing of these food resources, evidence for cooking technologies, and when available, the study and analysis of human skeletal remains (see Table 1.1). Cuisine is the manner in which foods and dishes are prepared, and is not a term that is frequently used in archaeological foodways studies. This is likely because the data and information needed to piece together a group’s cuisine are often missing in the archaeological record. We tend to think of cuisines as being regional and emblematic or diagnostic of specific locales. Cuisines incorporate plant and animal ingredients that reflect the local physical and cultural environment, or terroir (Benson et al., 2009; Crown, 2000; Joyce & Henderson, 2007; VanDerwarker & Wilson, 2016; Whitney et al., 2014). In this way the terroir becomes an inherent part of the flavor and psychology of the cuisine. The integration of multiple lines of direct and indirect evidence, such as food remains recovered in unequivocal association with one another, evidence of cooking methods (roasting, indirect heat baking, pot boiling), the chemical signatures of food residues absorbed into ceramics, and cooking equipment (Beehr & Ambrose, 2007; Graff & Rodriguez-Algria, 2012; Reber & Evershed, 2006), give us the most complete understanding of cuisines in the past. The last term we need to define is foodways. I save this term for last because it encompasses all of the other terms and ideas above. Foodways are the specific food items and all of the activities, rules, and meanings that surround the production, harvesting, processing, cooking, serving, consumption, and disposal of those foods. Foodways are a group’s food culture. Through the study of the material remains of food and associated technological artifacts and features, we can gain insight into how a

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Table 1.1 Foodways studies components, associated material culture (direct and indirect indicators), and archaeological specialty Foodways component Food

Diet

Direct indicators Macrobotanical remains (nuts, seeds, kernels, pits, husks, cobs, cupules, nutshell) Microbotanical remains (phytoliths, starch grains, pollen) Faunal Remains (bones, shell, antler, horn, scales, eggshell, teeth) Food remains Human skeletal remains

Subsistence Strategy

Food remains + Technological tools (i.e., fishhooks, arrow points, ceramics, knives)

Cuisine

Food remains + Technological Tools (manos & metates, mortar & pestle) Cooking features Recipes

Analytical specialty Paleoethnobotany

Indirect indicators Carbon isotopes Nitrogen isotopes Absorbed residue analysis

Analytical specialty Stable isotope analysis

Zooarchaeology

Zooarchaeology Paleoethnobotany Bioarchaeology

Lithic analysis Ceramic analysis Zooarchaeology Ethnography Ethnohistoric documents Artifact analysis Contextual analysis Ethnography Ethnohistoric documents

Isotope analysis Paleopathology Use-wear Residue analysis

Residue analysis

Microscopy Stable isotope analysis Experimental archaeology Stable isotope analysis Experimental archaeology

biological necessity reflects the community’s social, political, economic, and religious systems. The bringing together of multiple lines of foodways evidence – both direct and indirect indicators – allows us to overcome the limitations of preservation and sampling biases to come to a fuller understanding of community identity construction and maintenance. I advocate that archaeologists take a bottom-up approach to studies of community foodways. By starting with the individual household and identifying the foodways practiced within it, we can then move to the community of households and the community foodways practiced. These in turn can lead us to a better understanding of the social, political, and religious systems that are produced and reproduced by humans and their things (Hodder, 2016).

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1.2

Background to the Case Studies

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Research Themes in Foodways Archaeology

I present evidence from the Native South Spanish Colonial period in the Atlantic World – namely that in La Florida – as an example of how foodways can be studied through the lens of archaeology. The oft-forgotten quotidian foodway practices are important indicators of the social, political, and religious organizations that were undergoing change and adoption during the expansion of the Spanish Empire in the Atlantic World. This book specifically draws together studies on the foodways that resulted from the sustained contact between Indigenous peoples of the “New World” and the cross-section of Spanish society that crossed the Atlantic to build a new life and pursue wealth, status, territory, and new religious converts. I have previously identified four overarching themes in foodways studies that have been the focus of archaeological investigation in the Southeastern United States, including feasts, gender, social and political status, and food insecurity (Peres, 2017). For the present volume I limit my examples and case studies to the Spanish Colonial period in La Florida, and as such am able to expand into related but different research themes. The themes that will be explored in later chapters of this volume include: how socioeconomic status affects access to preferred foods and culinary tools (imported and locally made); the role of ethnicity in creating and maintaining foodways traditions; religious affiliation and rules for foodways; agency, adaptation, and acculturation; and the difference between quotidian and extra-special/communal eating events. For further reading and in-depth discussions of topics related to foodways archaeology and the archaeology of food, please see Metheny and Beaudry (2015), Scarry et al. (2023), and Twiss (2020), among other journals, books, and websites on the archaeology of food and foodways.

1.3

Background to the Case Studies

In this volume I bring together archaeological and archival studies of individuals, households, and communities to showcase the entangled culinary history of the Spanish Empire in the Atlantic World in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as an example for applying foodways archaeology methods and concepts. While I situate this book broadly in La Florida, I do so with a bottom-up approach by working from the household level, widening to the community level, and then sweeping out to the wider region to show the application of foodways archaeology to research themes of broad anthropological concern. In doing this, I have chosen to focus on foodways studies of La Florida under the Spanish Flag. The La Florida communities included in this book are located in the Guale, Timucua, and Apalachee provinces (Fig. 1.1). These diverse communities range in population and settlement size from individual households to villages; in geographical locations like the uplands of the Tallahassee Red Hills to the coastal marshes and sea islands of the Atlantic coast; and ethnic

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Fig. 1.1 Location of La Florida and Mission Provinces discussed in the text. (Modified from Worth, 2017)

diversity within communities including members of multiple Native American groups, freed Africans, and Spaniards. These communities include: urban sites (St. Augustine), a multi-ethnic frontier town (San Luis de Talímali), missions with associated villages (Patale, O’Connell, Fig Springs, Baptizing Spring, 8JE106, Santa Elena, Santa Catalina, Fallen Tree), and indigenous villages not associated with missions (Apalachee Hill, Velda). In some instances it is necessary to include earlier sites from the larger circum-Caribbean region for context and as comparative examples. In addition, I include foodways information gathered from Spanish ship manifests and wreck sites – which are themselves purposeful short-lived and self-contained communities.

1.4

Organization of the Volume

7

The ships that left Spain to voyage across the Atlantic to Spanish-controlled ports are an interesting study in floating self-sustaining communities. Thankfully we have documents to help us understand what the Spanish saw as necessities in maintaining the crew and passengers at sea and to help the colonists get started once they arrived in the New World. Of course, different ships sailed to the New World for different reasons – some carried men, women, and children destined to settle in established towns or to establish new settlements; soldiers sent to help defend Spanishcontrolled areas; enslaved Africans destined to a life of labor in the houses and fields of the Spaniards; religious men on a mission to convert souls and spread the gospel of the Catholic church; or sailors on a supply run to the Spanish colonies. There were some foodways that were successfully grafted onto the environments of the Americas, and others that ultimately failed.

1.4

Organization of the Volume

This volume presents an overview of methodologies to identify and study foodways in the archaeological record. The volume includes definitions, information, and examples so that students and professionals can learn and understand the basic analytical approaches, methods, and themes critical to archaeological studies of foodways. One of the main goals of this book is to show that foodways can help us better understand many aspects of a culture and can be studied from the material culture recovered from archaeological sites. It is important to stress that foodways are, and should be, studied by more than zooarchaeologists and paleoethnobotanists. Foodways encompass the biological and cultural need for sustenance, and thus are a research area that incorporates a multitude of artifact types, analytical specialties, and research questions. Chapter 2 – Zooarchaeology of Foodways, presents the more commonly used analytical methods and terminology in the study of animal remains from archaeological sites. The types of samples, and how to best recover them are discussed, followed by standard lab methods for identifications and primary data collection. Secondary data measures, such as MNI, biomass, and diversity and equitability, are described. Chapter 3 – Paleoethnobotany of Foodways, gives an overview of the different types of plant samples common to archaeological sites, preservational and taphonomic issues that affect archaeobotanical assemblages, and best practices to ensure maximum recovery of archaeobotanical samples. An overview of the accepted standard analytical methods and data categories, and the types of data and data analyses used for each. Chapter 4 – Bioarchaeology of Foodways, discusses the ways in which we can learn about an individual’s diet, nutrition, and health from markers on the skeleton. For this book, bioarchaeology only applies to human skeletal remains. The chapter presents the reader with ethical and legal considerations in the incorporation of human remains in research projects. Then, as in the previous chapters, best practices

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for field and lab data collection are presented. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are discussed. Chapter 5 – Chemical Analyses of Foodways, provides an overview of stable isotope analysis as it applies to foodways archaeology. Modern technologies allow us to identify the chemical dietary signatures in human remains (bones and teeth), and residues on ceramic pots to reconstruct human diets. Bone chemistry, paleodiet reconstruction, and visible and absorbed residues analysis are discussed. Chapter 6 – Ceramic Analysis of Foodways, discusses the analysis of ceramics, or pottery, as they are one of the most common and abundant artifact types recovered from archaeological sites. As with the previous chapters, the reader is introduced to the best practices for recovery of ceramics, their identification, and the collection of data. These data can be used to better understand past practices of food storage, processing, cooking, and serving. We can identify changes in culinary equipment that indicate the ways in which foods were prepared (multi-ingredient stews, individual dishes, baking), served, and consumed eaten (communal versus individual). Chapter 7 – Documentary Analysis of Foodways, discusses the different types of documents one might encounter or find useful in understanding past foodways. Methods used to analyze texts and how to incorporate big data and lessons from the Digital Humanities into the study of past foodways. Chapter 8 – Cooking Tools and Spaces, focuses on the material culture involved in the storage, processing, and cooking of foods. Culinary tools, cookware, storage vessels, and cooking features and spaces are described, paying close attention to those commonly used by the indigenous peoples of North America. The application of these methods and themes is highlighted with case studies woven throughout the book. The case studies were chosen to showcase the multivariate work of foodways archaeologists. While I situate this book broadly in time and space, I focus on foodways studies of the Spanish Colonial period in the Atlantic World – namely that of La Florida under the Spanish Flag. The La Florida communities included in this book are located in the Guale, Timucua, and Apalachee provinces. These diverse communities range in population and settlement size from individual households to villages; in geographical location like those in the Tallahassee Red Hills to the coastal marshes of Atlantic coast; and ethnic make up including members of multiple Native American groups, freed Africans, Spaniards. The case studies are examples of how foodways can be studied through the lens of archaeology.

References Appadurai, A. (1981). Gastro-politics in Hindu South Asia. American Ethnologist, 8, 494–511. Beehr, D. E., & Ambrose, S. H. (2007). Reconstructing Mississippian diet in the American bottom with stable isotope ratios of potsherd residues. In J. H. Barnard & W. Eerkens (Eds.), Theory and practice of archaeological residue analysis (BAR international series) (Vol. 1650, pp. 189–199). Archaeopress. Benson, L. V., Pauketat, T. R., & Cook, E. R. (2009). Cahokia’s boom and bust in the context of climate change. American Antiquity, 74, 467–483.

References

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Crown, P. L. (2000). Women’s role in changing cuisine. In P. L. Crown (Ed.), Women and men in the prehispanic southwest: Labor, power, and prestige (pp. 221–266). School of American Research Press. Crowther, G. (2013). Eating culture: An anthropological guide to food. University of Toronto Press. Graff, S., & Rodriguez-Alegria, E. (2012). The menial art of cooking: Archaeological studies of cooking and food preparation. University Press of Colorado. Hodder, I. (2016). Studies in human-thing entanglement. Electronic document. http://www.ianhodder.com/books/studies-human-thing-entanglement. Jinich, P. (2017). Episode 607: The art of mole. Pati’s Mexican Table. https://patijinich.com/video/ episode-607-the-art-of-mole/ Joyce, R. A., & Henderson, J. S. (2007). From feasting to cuisine: Implications of archaeological research in an early Honduran Village. American Anthropologist, 109, 642–653. Metheny, K. B., & Beaudry, M. C. (Eds.). (2015). Archaeology of food: An encyclopedia. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Peres, T. M. (2017). Foodways archaeology: A decade of research from the Southeastern United States. Journal of Archaeological Research, 25(4), 421–460. Reber, E. A., & Evershed, R. P. (2006). Ancient vegetarians? Absorbed pottery residue analysis of diet in the late woodland and emergent Mississippian periods of the Mississippi Valley. Southeastern Archaeology, 25, 110–120. Scarry, C. M., Hutchinson, D. L., & Arbuckle, B. J. (Eds.). (2023). Ancient foodways integrative approaches to understanding subsistence and society. University Press of Florida. Twiss, K. C. (2020). The archaeology of food: Identity, politics, and ideology in the prehistoric and historic past. Cambridge University Press. VanDerwarker, A. M., & Wilson, G. D. (2016). War, food, and structural violence in the Mississippian Central Illinois Valley. In A. M. VanDerwarker & G. D. Wilson (Eds.), The archaeology of food and warfare (pp. 75–105). Springer. Whitney, B. S., Dickau, R., Mayle, F. E., Walker, J. H., Soto, J. D., & Iriarte, J. (2014). Pre-Columbian raised field agriculture and land use in the Bolivian Amazon. The Holocene, 24, 231–241. Worth, J. (2017). Spanish Florida, 1587-1706. Electronic document. https://pages.uwf.edu/jworth/ SpanishFlorida_1587-1706.jpg. Accessed 23 Apr 2021.

Chapter 2

Zooarchaeology of Foodways

Abstract Animal remains recovered from archaeological sites have long been part of the foundation of foodways archaeology. This chapter is not meant to be a comprehensive text on zooarchaeology; rather it is a guide to some of the analytical methods and terminology that are used commonly by practitioners of zooarchaeology. While individual zooarchaeologists have their own way of analyzing and interpreting animal remains, some methods, terms, and analytical tools are considered standard. The purpose of this chapter is to give the reader an overview of basic methodological issues and applications within zooarchaeology. Keywords NISP · Biomass · Species diversity and equitability · Taphonomy · Taxonomy Zooarchaeology is the study of animal remains recovered from archaeological sites. Animal remains inform us about a variety of issues and parameters in the study of past societies, such as environment, seasonality, subsistence, hunting practices, political and social organization, settlement patterns, and resource-use. People most often think of animal remains in terms of bones. However there are a number of types of remains that can potentially be recovered from archaeological sites. In Traditional Western Classification systems, all animals are in the Kingdom Animalia. Vertebrata, a subphylum of Chordata (though see Irie et al., 2018 for an argument to recognize Vertebrata as a stand-alone phylum), are all species of animals with backbones. There are seven classes of animals within Vertebrata: Mammals (Mammalia), birds (Aves), reptiles (Reptilia), amphibians (Amphibia), bony fishes (Osteichthyes) and the subgroup of ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii), cartilaginous fishes (Chondrichthyes), and jawless fishes (Agnatha). In addition to vertebral columns, these animals may have teeth, fur, feathers, scutes, scales, claws, otoliths, antlers and horns, which, in the right environmental conditions can persist over time and are highly recoverable. Invertebrates (Invertebrata) is a commonly used term to indicate all animals lacking an internal or external skeleton made of bone. Several groups within Invertebrata are more likely to be encountered by the zooarchaeologists, and include molluscs (Mollusca, both gastropods and bivalves) and crustaceans (Crustacea). The portions of their bodies that can be recovered are © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. M. Peres, Foodways Archaeology - Methods and Cases, SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41017-8_2

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the harder exoskeletons – shells (bivalves, gastropods); shrimp mandibles (Retiz & Quitmyer, 1988), crab claws, and opercula. Taxonomy and nomenclature are a foundation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge systems. Taxonomy is the way that a group of people or culture organizes the world around them and then expresses that world in their language. Gomes (2020:30, emphasis in original) defines “folk taxonomies (or folk classifications) ...as the ways people categorize and classify organisms in the world around them based on both perceived discontinuities and practical purposes.” Zooarchaeologists are typically anthropological archaeologists with training in biology and zoology (though sometimes they are zoologists with a penchant for anthropological questions). Students taking zooarchaeology classes are taught how to identify animals using Traditional Western Classifications schemes, particularly the Linnaean system of taxonomy. This system is widely used by zooarchaeologists around the world, making it a universal language of science. Of course, as anthropologists interested in studying the human condition, we must work towards an emic understanding of animals, or an ethnotaxonomy, of the culture we are working with. This has the power to show us how animals fit into personal and communal worldviews (Peres & Altman, 2017). Knowledge of a group’s subsistence is critical to understanding the relationships between people and their environments, the technologies they create and use to exploit and modify their environments, as well as social and economic relationships amongst the people themselves. Different subsistence strategies reflect a variety of responses to human/environment interactions and human/human interactions. The animals that are represented in the archaeological record have been termed the “fossil assemblage” by Klein and Cruz-Uribe (1984:3), but those that are actually recovered during excavations are a sample of that, and are thus termed the “sample assemblage” (Klein & Cruz-Uribe, 1984:3). The larger the sample assemblage recovered, the more robust the interpretation of human activities and choices. The suite of taxa that are represented in the archaeological record can inform us about habitat exploitation, both in numerical terms (the number of habitats exploited) and in geographical terms (how far people traveled to obtain their food). This is not a straightforward issue, being closely related to the complexity of human society and also to the ecological and geological history of the area under study. It is fundamental to determine the locations and social complexity of archaeological sites, which can aid in interpreting the importance of resources to human populations. For example, sites located immediately adjacent to rivers and estuaries are better positioned for the inhabitants to exploit these resources than groups located at a distance from the same habitats. With regard to social complexity, we must take into account that not all citizens of a community procured food for themselves, but would have received foodstuffs from specialist producers, markets, exchange, trade, reciprocity, or some other avenue. Household-level analyses of faunal assemblages can highlight differences in the foods, or parts of foods, eaten due to ethnicity, status, gender, or age (Brunache, 2011; Crabtree, 1990; Franklin, 2001; Franklin & Lee, 2019; Lapham, 2016; Lyman, 1987; McKee, 1987; Peres, 2008; Peres et al., 2010; Poe, 1999, 2001; Reitz, 1986, 1987; Reitz et al., 2006; Reitz & Scarry, 1985; Schulz & Gust, 1983; Scott, 2001).

2.1

Sample Recovery Best Practices

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The taxa identified in an assemblage, site location, and duration of occupation can further inform about the scheduling of seasonal resources (e.g., Russo, 1991; Hollenbach & Walker, 2010; Weinand et al., 2000). Procurement technologies such as fishing tackle, digging sticks, and storage items, may be inferred not only from the artifacts found in archaeological contexts, but also from the animal resources (represented taxa, quantity, and size) that were exploited (Kozuch, 1993; Walker, 2000; Walker et al., 2001). The presence of small animals in a zooarchaeological assemblage can inform us about the types of technologies needed to capture these animals (Carvajal-Contreras, 2010; Carvajal-Contreras et al., 2008; Cooke & Ranere, 1999; Mahar, 2019; Reitz & Wing, 2008; Voorhies, 2004; Zohar & Cooke, 1997). Ethnographic analogy, coupled with archaeological data, enables us to interpret food processing and food waste disposal behaviors (Albarella & Trentacoste, 2011; Altman et al., 2019; Jones & Quinn, 2010; Peres, 2018). Zooarchaeological remains aid in the interpretations of ancient resource choices, technological adaptations, cultural continuity, cuisine, and settlement patterns. Through the study of zooarchaeological data, specialized and utilitarian artifact assemblages, site locations and catchment areas, soils and topography, and stable isotope analysis of human skeletal remains, additional information can be obtained to strengthen or alter these interpretations. For instance, the use of stable isotope analysis of human bone collagen allows for the determination of the environmental origin of the protein resources eaten by an archaeological population. This type of analysis can also give information about continuity and variation in consumed resources through time, between populations, and within a population (Hutchinson & Norr, 2006; Larsen et al., 1992, 2001; Norr, 1990). The study of seasonal-growth increments in the teeth of prey species (especially mammals) (Hillson, 1986; Weinand, 2000), fish otoliths (Wheeler & Jones, 1989), and invertebrates (Quitmyer et al., 1997) can give us information about the season when a site was occupied, the scheduling of resource-use, and the age classes targeted.

2.1

Sample Recovery Best Practices

Faunal remains are recovered using a variety of methods, from arbitrary levels within general excavation units to samples that deliberately control for faunal materials, such as bulk, flotation, and column samples. These are especially useful sampling strategies when employed in areas of suspected faunal deposition like middens or features. During excavation, it is important that fieldworkers try not to crunch up archaeofaunal remains with shovels, trowels, or their shoes! Sample size and preservation quality ultimately influence the outcome of any zooarchaeological analysis and interpretation. Reitz and Wing (2008:157) state “all primary data are influenced by sample size... [the significance of which] is too frequently” overlooked “by generations of researchers.” They, and others, warn that small sample size not only affects the range of taxa identified, but also negatively affects any secondary data derived from the identifications (Cannon, 1999;

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Reitz & Wing, 2008). Thus, analysts should do everything they can to ensure the study of large sample sizes, and project directors need to include zooarchaeologists at the earliest stages of planning the research design. Previously excavated assemblages held in curation facilities may be less than ideal in size, but can still be of value, especially if the site no longer exists and the collection is all that remains. As researchers, we need to approach these samples with appropriate research questions, data collection methods, and an understanding of the biases affecting the samples, all of which affect the interpretations based on these samples. Across the board, smaller screen sizes (mesh openings) are better. Several studies (Gordon, 1993; Shaffer, 1992; Shaffer & Sanchez, 1994; Wing and Quitmyer 1985) have shown that soils screened with larger mesh sizes (1/2-in. or 1/4-in.) are biased towards large animals (i.e., mammals), and give a skewed picture of the relative abundance and importance of one class of animals compared to another. Of course, the objectives of the overall project, budget, timeframe, and post-excavation curation resources must be considered when deciding upon a sampling strategy. In the past, and even in the present, we often deal with research plans that are focused on the recovery of artifacts important to the cultural and temporal association of a site. The standard recovery method at most archaeological sites involves dry-screening excavated soils through 1/4 inch (6.35 mm) hardware mesh. This is especially true when samples are recovered during the excavation of test units using arbitrary levels. This strategy has proven sufficient for the recovery of pottery and lithics, the artifact classes that form the basis of site chronologies. This recovery strategy is used in most places where archaeologists trained in the United States have extended their research efforts. Newsom and Wing (2004:42) note that archaeologists working in the West Indies have shifted their research objectives from cultural chronology to environmental manipulation by humans, which has led to a corresponding change in sampling and recovery strategies, particularly a shift towards the use of smaller mesh sizes. To recover foodways data from features and middens, archaeologists should follow a recovery plan that ensures adequate samples. Such a recovery strategy might include any, or a combination, of the following: – Excavation of half of a feature that is dry-screened through 1/4 in. mesh – Excavation of half of a feature that is dry-screened through 1/8 in. mesh – Water-screening of half or all of the feature through 1/8 in. (3 mm) or 1/16 in (1.5 mm) mesh – Excavation of the entire feature and artifacts recovered using a flotation strategy – Bulk sampling or column sampling, especially within middens – Resulting samples screened through nested geological sieves Any of these methods can yield adequate sample sizes for the study of foodways and subsistence economies, but it is important that the method (or combination of methods) chosen is done so explicitly under the guidance of a trained subsistence specialist, and is carried out systematically. Standardizing the use of smaller mesh sizes for the collection of foodways related data enables disparate datasets to be integrated quantitatively and qualitatively (VanDerwarker & Peres, 2010).

2.2

Analysis Methods

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Analysis Methods

There are two main categories of zooarchaeological data that can be derived from faunal remains: Primary Data and Secondary Data. These are discussed here and how they apply in foodways contexts.

2.2.1

Primary Data Collection

The goal of taxonomic identification is to assign faunal remains to taxonomic categories. We strive to identify specimens to Genus and species. However, this is not always possible or desirable. In these instances, the most specific taxonomic classification possible should be assigned. The identification of animal remains will only be as good as the skill-level of the analyst and the completeness of the modern comparative osteological collections available to them. Analysts need to secure access to comparative collections and/or collect (and macerate when necessary) modern specimens before they begin their analyses. In some cases, the identification of a specimen cannot be completely secured, but the specimen compares with or is close to a particular species. In such cases, the specimen assignment is qualified with “cf.” (from the Latin confere) before the taxonomic identification (Reitz & Wing, 2008:36). In addition, it is not always possible to assign a specimen to a species, even if it is assigned to a genus. Thus, in these cases, “sp.” is used for species, and “spp.” is used if there is more than one species possible (Reitz & Wing, 2008:36). Standard and current taxonomic nomenclature should be used. Online biodiversity and bioinformatics databases of use to zooarchaeologists include: FishBase (http:// www.fishbase.org/home.htm), Darwin Core (https://dwc.tdwg.org/), VertNet (http://vertnet.org/index.html), FishNet 2 (http://www.fishnet2.net/aboutFishNet. html), HerpNet (http://www.herpnet.net/uncategorized/www-herpnet-net-homepage/), iDigBio (https://www.idigbio.org/), OpenContext (https://opencontext.org/), the Digital Archaeological Record (https://www.tdar.org/), Global Biodiversity Information Facility (https://www.gbif.org/), and Biodiversity Information Standards (https://www.tdwg.org/). Faunal elements are identified and recorded using standard element vocabulary. The following additional information about each element is necessary to allow for robust data analysis and interpretations: side (i.e., left, right); position (especially for vertebrae, teeth, turtle plastron elements); portion (medial, lateral, proximal, distal, etc.); and completeness. Bone surface modifications are an important part of primary data collection. Any and all evidence of use-wear, thermal alteration (stages of burning), modifications such as cut marks (butchering, sawing, hacking), spiral fractures (marrow extraction), crushing (bone fat production), and other types of coking-related wear (pot boiling, roasting, etc.) recorded during the primary data collection phase of analysis. Morphometric data can be recorded during primary data

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collection or as part of a more focused effort (Cossette & Herbin, 2003; Lyman & Van Pool, 2009; Retiz & Ruff, 1994; Reitz et al., 2010, 2016; Reitz & Wing, 2008; Zierden & Reitz, 2009). Measuring relative abundance is one of the zooarchaeologist’s principal objectives in the collection and quantification of faunal remains. Data should be quantified using tools that will yield the most information from the assemblage. Both primary data (counts and weights) and secondary data (biomass, MNI estimates, and species diversity and equitability) can be used to measure relative abundance in a zooarchaeological sample.

2.3

Number of Identified Specimens (NISP)

Quantifying zooarchaeological remains has been, and remains, the keystone upon which all other quantifications and statistical analyses of assemblages are based. Taxonomic identifications and specimen counts are the two basic pieces of data that all zooarchaeological analyses should include. The Number of Identified Specimens (NISP), also referred to as count, is the basic quantification unit in zooarchaeological analyses. Each individual bone, tooth, shell, antler, horn, or scale (including complete, partial, and fragment) is counted as a single unit regardless of the level of taxonomic identification. Klein and Cruz-Uribe (1984:25) point out two benefits of using NISP: (1) it is calculated during identification, thus it is a basic unit of data and does not need to be further manipulated to have meaning; and (2) “NISP values are additive,” meaning the NISP for a given taxa within a given provenience can be readily updated with subsequent excavations or analyses by adding the original number with the new number.

2.4

Weights

The recording of the weight (in grams or kilograms) of bone, teeth, antler, otoliths, and shell from archaeological sites is a common practice. This data class is important for several reasons: (1) like NISP, as a basic unit of data it does not need further manipulation to have meaning; (2) it can be used to measure the relative importance of a taxon within an assemblage; and (3) it is the basis for some secondary data measures, such as biomass. There are problems with using sample weights to make substantial interpretations. One of these is the issue of taxa representation and size. Larger animals weigh more than smaller ones; thus if weight is used as a relative measure of abundance, the interpretations will always be biased towards large mammals. In addition, this unit of data does not compensate for the effects of weathering or thermal alteration on specimen weight. Just as counts should not be the “sole index of species abundance,” neither should weights.

2.6

Biomass

2.4.1

17

Secondary Data Collection

Secondary Data are derived measures based on the collected Primary Data. There are a number of secondary measures that are popular in zooarchaeology, and I expand on the most commonly used ones here, including MNI, Biomass, and Species Diversity and Equitability. See Gifford-Gonzalez (2018); Lyman (2008); Reitz and Wing (2008) for detailed information on other secondary measures.

2.5

Minimum Number of Individuals

The Minimum Number of Individuals (MNI) is used to estimate the minimum number of whole animals that could account for the number of faunal remains recovered from a given site, context, and/or provenience. MNI estimates have been derived in a variety of ways, but the standard accepted procedure is as follows: the most abundant diagnostic element of each taxon was counted as the MNI (Grayson, 1984; Reitz & Wing, 2008). If this element was a paired element (left and right), the higher count of the two was used. For gastropods (or univalves), complete individuals are counted as single individuals. Size differences should be taken into account when appropriate. MNI should be determined based on unique and meaningful contexts (i.e., feature, structure, burial, etc.), rather than by provenience (i.e., MNI from a test unit). For summary discussions or to offer general characterizations of a site, MNI may be estimated for the site as a whole.

2.6

Biomass

One area of research in zooarchaeology is the study of the dietary contributions of animals identified in a given faunal assemblage. A number of methods for estimating dietary contributions have been developed, assessed, and modified over the years (Peres, 2008; Reitz & Wing, 2008). However, the one method that provides information on the quantity of biomass from the materials recovered (sample biomass) is used here. This method is preferred, as it is not based on assumptions of what parts of an animal were considered edible or inedible in the past; rather it is based on a biological relationship that holds true for all organisms over time (Reitz & Wing, 2008:239). Thus, all invertebrate and vertebrate specimens identified in an assemblage can be included in dietary contribution estimates. Sample biomass refers to the estimated total weight represented by the archaeological specimen (Reitz & Wing, 2008). Sample biomass estimates are calculated using specimen weights and the regression formula described below. The biomass of an animal is calculated using correlation data between skeletal weight and total body weight (Casteel, 1974; Reitz, 1987; Reitz & Wing, 2008). These data are collected

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from modern animals for application to biomass estimates. For most faunal assemblages, biomass can be estimated using specimen weight in the following allometric formula (Reitz & Wing, 2008:236): Y = aXb or log 10 Y = log 10 a þ b ðlog 10 XÞ Where: Y = the estimated sample biomass (kg) contributed by the archaeological specimen (s) for a taxon X = specimen weight of the archaeological specimens for a taxon a = the Y-intercept of the linear regression line b = slope of the regression line To calculate biomass, several values that are class or species dependent are needed. General biomass estimates can be calculated using values from Reitz and Wing (2008:68) and Wing (2001). General class and/or family values should be used in cases where values for specific taxa are not available.

2.7

Species Diversity and Equitability

Ecologists in the second half of the twentieth century have spent much time attempting to explain the multiplicity of Earth’s species by comparing the species diversity of different habitats (Colinvaux, 1986:650). Colinvaux (1986:650–652) has outlined a number of difficulties or complications in determining species diversity. Ecologists needed objective measures to compare the diversity of different habitats, but these measures proved difficult to devise, as it is difficult to know which group of species to measure in a sample (e.g., piscivores, pelecypods). This difficulty is compounded in archaeological samples by the fact that by their very nature, they are not complete representatives of past environments. Another complication with species diversity research is that population sizes vary by location. To overcome the problem of variability, ecologists calculate species diversity and equitability (also referred to as richness and evenness). Species richness is the actual number of species present in a sample or community. The equitability is the differing relative abundance of each species. A more detailed definition is “the relative evenness of the numerical importance of a species in a sample” (Colinvaux, 1986:650). A third difficulty is that no single index has been found that measures both richness and equitability, and that can be applied universally. There are numerous

2.7

Species Diversity and Equitability

19

ways to measure taxonomic evenness. The reader is directed to in-depth discussions of these measures by Faith and Andrew (2017), Grayson (1984), Smith and Wilson (1996), and Tuomisto (2012). There are several indices that have been used and can be applied to different studies (Colinvaux, 1986:651). According to Cole (1994:89), the best diversity indices are ones that express heterogeneity by combining both species richness and equitability. A frequently used index of diversity by zooarchaeologists is the Shannon-Weaver function (sometimes referred to as the Shannon-Weiner function): H0 = ΣðpiÞ ðLog10 piÞ where: H′ = information content of the sample (this is typically MNI) pi = the relative abundance of the ith taxon within the sample Log pi = the logarithm of pi. This can be to the base 2, e, or 10. s = the number of taxonomic categories By using the Shannon-Weaver function, assemblages with an even distribution of abundance between taxa have a higher diversity than samples with the same number of taxa, but with disproportionately high abundance of a few taxa. Samples that have a high number of taxonomic categories and a similar degree of equitability have greater diversity values (Reitz & Wing, 2008:111–113). Sample size can be a factor in the diversity of an assemblage. We often assume that assemblages with greater quantities of specimens will have more taxa than assemblages with fewer specimens (Baxter, 2001; Kintigh, 1989; Reitz, 1987; Rhode, 1988). The DIVERS statistical program allows us to overcome the potential influence of sample size on interpretations of diversity (Kintigh, 1984, 1989, 1991). The DIVERS program compares the diversities of different assemblages to themselves, based on the expectations for diversity, given the sample sizes. The assemblages then are compared not to each other but, rather, to the expected diversity for a sample of a given size (Kintigh, 1984). This allows zooarchaeologists to bypass the issue of sample-size differences completely. The actual values are then plotted against sample size with a 90% confidence interval that is based on the expected values (Peres, 2008; VanDerwarker & Peres, 2010). The center line of the plot indicates the expected richness or evenness, while the lines above and below the center indicate the 90% confidence interval for the expected values. Values that plot above the confidence interval are more diverse than expected, while values that plot below the confidence interval are less diverse than expected (Peres, 2008). Faith and Andrew (2017) tested the efficacy of four evenness indices with zooarchaeological assemblages. The indices they tested are Shannon evenness index, Simpson index, Simpson evenness index, and Smith and Wilson evenness index. Each index was evaluated with regard to varied richness, sample size, and taxonomic abundance. They found that richness, not sample size, was a bigger contributor to evenness values. In their analysis, the Simpson index performed the

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best on most assemblages (Faith & Andrew, 2017). They note that as a measure “...it is highly sensitive to the abundance of the dominant species” and insensitive to rare taxa, meaning evenness values are less influenced by rare taxa occurring in low-abundance (Faith & Andrew, 2017:3). Zooarchaeologists have their choice of indices to use when determining the relative abundance and evenness (and/or dominance) of taxa in zooarchaeological assemblages.The zooarchaeologist will need to determine which index is the best fit for the assemblage and the research questions being asked.

2.8

Zooarchaeology of the Earliest Introduction of Iberian Foodways to the Americas

The establishment of Spanish towns, outposts and monasteries in New Spain, lands already inhabited by indigenous groups, began in the early sixteenth century. Puerto Real, in Haiti, and the Convento de San Francisco were established in 1503 and 1502, respectively. Puerto Real persisted until it was destroyed in 1579. Nueva Cadiz, on Cubagua, was a pearl oyster fishing town from 1500 to 1545 (Reitz, 1992). St. Augustine, along the Atlantic Coast of Florida, was established in 1565, and became the capital of Spain’s colony, La Florida. The excavations at these four sites reveal a cross-section of social class and the new economic system imported into New Spain. The faunal remains recovered from these sites show that the better the colony could adapt to the local environments of the Americas, the better their chances of survival and success. In Puerto Real, the three main areas of excavation yielded archaeological findings of the upper middle class and the lower middle/commercial class. From all excavations, domestic mammals dominated the faunal assemblage (43% MNI, 93% of the biomass) (Reitz, 1992). The domestic mammal category was mainly large healthy cattle, originally imported from Spain. Other animals were incorporated into the diet, like pond turtles (approx. 32% of the MNI and 4% of the biomass) which may be related to the Catholic tradition of not eating meat on Fridays and other important dates according to liturgical doctrine. The social status of the individuals associated with the monastic site of the Convento de San Francisco in Santo Domingo allowed them to take care of sheep – which dominated the faunal assemblage (Reitz, 1992). This is noteworthy because caprines, and sheep specifically, are difficult to raise in less than perfect conditions, requiring extra care. Nueva Cadiz, was ultimately not successful, and in fact only existed for 45 years. The people at this town subsisted heavily on marine animals and, due to environmental limitations, were required to import just about everything else (Reitz, 1992). The inability of the townspeople to adapt to the local environments and become selfsustaining eventually doomed their community to failure.

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In the capital of La Florida (St. Augustine) faunal material recovered from features associated with domestic residences show a number of ways in which the townspeople were faced with food insecurity (Reitz, 1992). The Spaniards imported cattle and tried to raise them locally, but the local palmetto scrub and marsh environments surrounding St. Augustine were not good for raising Old World mammals. The cows that did survive were smaller than their Old World counterparts. The faunal assemblages suggest that while St. Augustinians may have preferred to eat cows and other domesticates from their homeland, but in actuality they relied heavily on turtles, fish, and wild mammals – a diet more similar to the local Indigenous peoples than to the Iberian diet they left behind. Overall, this study shows that the environment played a significant role in the success or failure of imported domesticated animals to the Americas. While the cognitive part of Iberian foodways was easily imported to the Spanish colonies, the physical foodstuffs were more difficult to establish and maintain. Spanish recipes could be made in these outposts even if some of the ingredients had to be substituted with locally available items.

2.9

Summary

Interpretations of zooarchaeological assemblages demand a consideration of a number of criteria. Analysts must be aware of factors, such as sample bias caused by taphonomic conditions and recovery techniques. Of critical importance to any analysis of faunal remains is a concentrated effort to completely recover materials, to take detailed notes on their context(s), and to understand the nature of their associations. This information assists the zooarchaeologist in interpreting the remains in relation to human subsistence strategies (including diet, requisite technology, procurement, processing, and modification) and achieving an understanding of the past environment. Zooarchaeologists need to be included in the planning stages of all archaeological projects, including academic, research, and salvage. It is important for the zooarchaeologist to know the research objectives, the sampling and recovery methods used, the skill level of the field and laboratory crew, and the cultural contexts of the remains. These data are necessary so that we can determine the possible sources of bias, and structure our analysis and interpretations accordingly.

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Baxter, M. J. (2001). Methodological issues in the study of assemblage diversity. American Antiquity, 6(4), 715–725. Brunache, P. (2011). Enslaved women, foodways, and identity formation: The archaeology of habitation La Mahaudière, Guadeloupe, circa late-18th century to mid-19th century. PhD Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin. Cannon, M. D. (1999). A mathematical model of the effects of screen size on zooarchaeological relative abundance measures. Journal of Archaeological Science, 26, 205–214. Carvajal-Contreras, D. R. (2010). Fishing, curing and smoking fish at Cueva de los Vampiros: A contextual and archaeofaunal evaluation of a purported Pre-Columbian fishing camp near Parita Bay (Panama, Central Pacific). PhD Dissertation, Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary. Carvajal-Contreras, D. R., Cooke, R., & Jiménez, M. (2008). Taphonomy at two contiguous coastal rockshelters in Panama: Preliminary observations focusing on fishing and curing fish. Quaternary International, 180, 90–106. Casteel, R. W. (1974). A method for estimation of live weight of fish from the size of skeletal remains. American Antiquity, 39, 94–97. Cole, G. A. (1994). Textbook of limnology (4th ed.). Waveland Press/Prospect Heights. Colinvaux, P. (1986). Ecology. Wiley. Cooke, R. G., & Ranere, A. J. (1999). Precolumbian fishing on the Pacific Coast of Panama. In M. Blake (Ed.), Pacific Latin America in Prehistory (pp. 103–121). Washington State University Press. Cossette, E., & Horard-Herbin, M. P. (2003). A contribution to the morphometrical study of cattle in colonial North America. Journal of Archeological Science, 30, 263–274. Crabtree, P. (1990). Zooarchaeology and complex societies: Some uses of faunal analysis for the study of trade, social status, and ethnicity. In M. B. Schiffer (Ed.), Archaeological method and theory (Vol. 2, pp. 155–205). University of Arizona Press. Faith, J. T., & Andrew, D. (2017). The measurement of taxonomic evenness in zooarchaeology. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 10, 1419–1428. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520017-0467-8 Franklin, M. (2001). The archaeological dimensions of soul food: Interpreting race, culture, and Afro-Virginian identity. In C. E. Orser Jr. (Ed.), Race and the Archaeology of Identity (pp. 88–107). University of Utah Press. Franklin, M., & Lee, N. K. (2019). Revitalizing tradition and instigating change: Foodways at the ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead, c. 1871–1905. Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage, 8(3), 203–225. https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2019.1726613 Gifford-Gonzalez, D. (2018). An introduction to zooarchaeology. Springer. Gomes, N. (2020). Reclaiming native Hawaiian knowledge represented in bird taxonomies. Ethnobiology Letters 11(2):30-43. https://doi.org/10.14237/ebl.11.2.2020.1682 Gordon, E. A. (1993). Screen size and differential faunal recovery: A Hawaiian example. Journal of Field Archaeology, 20(4), 453–460. Grayson, D. K. (1984). Quantitative zooarchaeology. Academic Press. Hillson, S. (1986). Teeth (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. Hollenbach, K. D., & Walker, R. B. (2010). Documenting subsistence change during the pleistocene/holocene transition: Investigations of paleoethnobotanical and zooarchaeological data from dust cave Alabama. In A. M. VanDerwarker & T. M. Peres (Eds.), Integrating zooarchaeology and paleoethnobotany: A consideration of issues, methods, and cases (pp. 227–244). Springer. Hutchinson, D., & Norr, L. (2006). Nutrition and health on the eve of European contact in late prehistoric central Gulf Coast Florida. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 129, 375–386. Irie, N., Satoh, N., & Kuratani, S. (2018). The phylum vertebrata: A case for zoological recognition. Zoological Letters, 4(32). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40851-018-0114-y

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Jones, S., & Quinn, R. (2010). Waitui Kei Vanua: Interpreting sea- and land-based foodways in Fiji. In A. M. VanDerwarker & T. M. Peres (Eds.), Integrating zooarchaeology and paleoethnobotany: A consideration of issues, methods, and cases (pp. 135–172). Springer. Kintigh, K. W. (1984). Measuring archaeological diversity by comparison with simulated assemblages. American Antiquity, 49(1), 44–54. Kintigh, K. W. (1989). Sample size, significance, and measures of diversity. In R. D. Leonard & G. T. Jones (Eds.), Quantifying diversity in archaeology (pp. 25–36). Cambridge University Press. Kintigh, K. W. (1991). Tools for quantitative archaeology. Self published. Klein, R. G., & Cruz-Uribe, K. (1984). The analysis of animal bones from archaeological sites. University of Chicago Press. Kozuch, L. (1993). Sharks and shark products in South Florida. Monograph 2, Institute for Archaeology and Palaeoenvironmental Studies. Lapham, H. A. (2016). Fauna, subsistence, and survival at Fort San Juan. In R. A. Beck, C. B. Rodning, & D. G. Moore (Eds.), Fort San Juan and the limits of empire: Colonialism and household practice at the berry site (pp. 271–300). University Press of Florida. Larsen, C. S., Schoeninger, M. J., Vm, N. J., Merwe, D., Moore, K. M., & Lee-Thorp, J. A. (1992). Carbon and nitrogen stable isotopic signatures of human dietary change in the Georgia bight. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 89, 197–214. Larsen, C. S., Griffin, M. C., Hutchinson, D. L., Noble, V. E., Norr, L., Pastor, R. F., Ruff, C. B., Russell, K. F., Schoeninger, M. J., Schultz, M., Simpson, S. W., & Teaford, M. F. (2001). Frontiers of contact: Bioarchaeology of Spanish Florida. Journal of World Prehistory, 15(1), 69–123. Lyman, R. L. (1987). On zooarchaeological measures of socioeconomic position and cost-efficient meat purchases. Historical Archaeology, 21, 58–66. Lyman, R. L. (2008). Quantitative paleozoology. Cambridge University Press. Lyman, R. L., & Van Pool, T. L. (2009). Metric data in archaeology: A study of intra-analyst and inter-analyst variation. American Antiquity, 74(3), 485–504. Mahar, G. (2019). The practice of fishing: investigating the social and technological implications of mass-capture fishing along the North Florida Gulf Coast. PhD Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville. McKee, L. (1987). Delineating ethnicity from the garbage of early virginians: Faunal remains from the Kingsmill plantation slave quarter. American Archaeology, 6(1), 31–39. Newsom, L. A., & Wing, E. S. (2004). On land and sea: Native American uses of biological resources in the West Indies. University Press of Alabama. Norr, L. (1990). Nutritional consequences of prehistoric subsistence strategies in lower Central America. PhD Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign. Peres, T. M. (2008). Foodways, economic status, and the antebellum upland south cultural tradition in Central Kentucky. Historical Archaeology, 42(4), 88–104. Peres, T. M. (2018). Zooarchaeological approaches to the identification of bone fat production in the archaeological record. Ethnobiology Letters, 9(2), 107–109. Peres, T. M., & Altman, H. M. (2017). The magic of improbable appendages: Deer antler objects in the archaeological record of the American South. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 20, 888–895. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.10.028 Peres, T. M., VanDerwarker, A. M., & Pool, C. A. (2010). The farmed and the hunted: Integrating floral and faunal data from Tres Zapotes, Veracruz. In A. M. VanDerwarker & T. M. Peres (Eds.), Integrating zooarchaeology and paleoethnobotany: A consideration of issues, methods, and cases (pp. 281–308). Springer. Poe, T. N. (1999). The origins of soul food in black urban identity: Chicago, 1915–1947. American Studies International, 37(1), 4–34. Poe, T. N. (2001). The labour and leisure of food production as a mode of ethnic identity building among Italians in Chicago, 1890–1940. Rethinking History, 5(1), 131–148.

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Quitmyer, I. R., Jones, D. S., & Arnold, W. S. (1997). The sclerochronology of hard clams, Mercenaria spp., from the South-Eastern U.S.A.: A method of elucidating the zooarchaeological records of seasonal resource procurement and seasonality in prehistoric shell Middens. Journal of Archaeological Science, 24(9), 825–840. Reitz, E. J. (1986). Urban/rural contrasts in vertebrate fauna from the Southern Atlantic Coastal Plain. Historical Archaeology, 20, 4–58. Reitz, E. J. (1987). Vertebrate fauna and socioeconomic status. In S. M. Spencer-Wood (Ed.), Consumer choice in historical archaeology (pp. 101–119). Springer. Reitz, E. J. (1992). The Spanish colonial experience and domestic animals. Historical Archaeology, 26, 84–91. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03374163 Reitz, E. J., & Quitmyer, I. (1988). Faunal remains from two coastal Georgia swift creek sites. Southeastern Archaeology, 7(2), 95–108. Reitz, E. J., & Ruff, B. L. (1994). Morphometric data for cattle from North America and the Caribbean prior to the 1850s. Journal of Archaeological Science, 21(5), 699–713. Reitz, E. J., & Scarry, C. M. (1985). Reconstructing historic subsistence with an example from sixteenth century Spanish Florida (Special publications series, No. 3). The Society for Historical Archaeology. Reitz, E. J., & Wing, E. S. (2008). Zooarchaeology (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. Reitz, E. J., Ruff, B. L., & Zierden, M. A. (2006). Pigs in Charleston, South Carolina: using specimen counts to consider status. Historical Archaeology, 40(4), 104–124. Reitz, E. J., Pavao-Zuckerman, B., Weinand, D. C., Duncan, G. A., & Thomas, D. H. (2010). Mission and Pueblo Santa Catalina de Guale, St. Catherines Island, Georgia: A comparative zooarchaeological analysis. In Anthropological papers of the American Museum of natural history (Vol. 91). Scientific Publications of the American Museum of Natural History. Reitz, E. J., Camilla, S., McGrath, K., & Alexander, M. (2016). A sixteenth-century Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) from Puerto Real, Hispaniola. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 10, 640–646. Rhode, D. (1988). Measurement of archaeological diversity and the sample-size effect. American Antiquity, 53(4), 708–716. Russo, M. (1991). A method for the measurement of season and duration of Oyster collection: Two case studies from the prehistoric South-East U.S. Coast. Journal of Archaeological Science, 18(2), 205–221. Schulz, P. D., & Gust, S. M. (1983). Faunal remains and social status in 19th century Sacramento. Historical Archaeology, 17(1), 44–53. Scott, E. M. (2001). Food and social relations at Nina plantation. American Anthropologist, 103(3), 671–691. Shaffer, B. S. (1992). Quarter-inch screening: Understanding biases in recovery of vertebrate faunal remains. American Antiquity, 57(1), 129–136. Shaffer, B. S., & Sanchez, J. L. (1994). Comparison of 1/8″ and 1/4″ mesh recovery of controlled samples of small-to-medium-sized mammals. American Antiquity, 59(3), 525–530. Smth, B., & Wilson, J. B. (1996). A consumer’s guide to evenness indices. Oikos, 76, 70–82. Tuomisto, H. (2012). An updated consumer’s guide to evenness and related indices. Oikos, 121, 1203–1218. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0706.2011.19897.x VanDerwarker, A. M., & Peres, T. M. (Eds.). (2010). Integrating zooarchaeology and paleoethnobotany: A consideration of issues, methods, and cases. Springer Press. Voorhies, B. (2004). Coastal collectors in the Holocene: The Chantuto people of Southwest Mexico. University Press of Florida. Walker, K. J. (2000). The material culture of Precolumbian fishing: Artifacts and fish remains from Coastal Southwest Florida. Southeastern Archaeology, 19(1), 24–45. Walker, R. B., Detwiler, K. R., Meeks, S. C., & Driskell, B. N. (2001). Berries, bones and blades: Reconstructing late Paleoindian subsistence economies at Dust Cave, Alabama. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, 6(2), 169–197.

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Chapter 3

Paleoethnobotany of Foodways

Abstract Paleoethnobotany is the study of the types of plants and the ways in which people interacted with them in the past. In this chapter, I offer information on the different types of plant samples common to archaeological sites, preservational and taphonomic issues that affect archaeobotanical assemblages; best practices to ensure maximum recovery of archaeobotanical samples; an overview of the accepted standard analytical methods and data categories; and the types of data and data analyses used for each. Paleoethnobotanical case studies that date to the Spanish Colonial period of North America are used throughout the chapter to highlight examples of the topic under discussion. Keywords Maize · Paleoethnobotany methods · Indigenous diet · Spanish diet · Subsistence strategy For millennia, Indigenous groups across the Eastern Woodlands of North America, such as the Apalachee, Creek, Cherokee, Guale, Mocama, Timucua, and many others, raised their families and fed their communities by hunting, trapping, and fishing for locally available animals and growing crops in large communal plots of land and smaller house gardens. The most productive agricultural fields were located in the flood-prone and nutrient-rich river deltas and floodplains of the American South (Waselkov, 1997). The mainstays of the farming regime were maize (Zea mays), beans (Phaseolus sp.), and squash (Cucurbitaceae), similar to other regions of the Americas in the northern hemisphere. In the post-European Contact world, many of these same subsistence strategies were in place with the addition of crops and animals imported from various parts of the Spanish Empire. The changes to Indigenous foodways varied regionally and temporally. The archaeobotanical remains from sites in La Florida, specifically those located in Apalachee, Guale, and Timucua provinces, are important for understanding changes in traditional subsistence strategies through time and the exchange of staple foods between Indigenous groups and the Spanish (Ruhl, 1993). Not surprisingly, there were changes to both the traditional Indigenous diets and strategies as well as those of the colonizers.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. M. Peres, Foodways Archaeology - Methods and Cases, SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41017-8_3

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Spanish cuisine and religious practices were dependent on certain foods – namely olive oil, wine, wheat, vinegar, chickpeas, fish, and beef. The basic ingredients for these are Old World staples and have specific environmental needs, often needs that could not be met in the coastal plain environs of the American South. This forced the Spanish to adopt some native staples, such as corn, beans, and squash, into their diet. This was not out of a desire to try new foods, but imperative to their survival. This resulted in an increase in the production of these crops and the establishment of cattle ranching in the areas they colonized. The most important crop plant was maize, and formed the basis for much of the economy of the seventeenth century communities of La Florida (Peres, 2022; Worth, 1998). Other staples, such as olive oil, wine, vinegar, and wheat were shipped in from Spain and other areas folded into the Spanish Empire, though not with the frequency the colonists desired or demanded. As seen in areas outside of La Florida, by the eighteenth century the Creeks, Cherokees, and other Indigenous groups left their traditional ancestral lands in river floodplains and bottomlands to live in the uplands. This was in response to the demand for an increase in suitable fields for cattle grazing that resulted in the dispersal of village communities and communal gardens. Instead, people settled farmsteads with members of their immediate nuclear family, maintaining house gardens and engaging in trade with French and other European settlers (Waselkov, 1997). The relatively larger Creek and Cherokee communities maintained their traditional lands and practices longer than other groups. However, these communities were stretched thin and eventually collapsed under the many pressures brought on them by Europeans, a phenomenon known as the “Mississippian Shatter Zone” (Etheridge, 2009:2). Likewise, the Apalachees held fast to their traditional foodways until the early eighteenth century, when the approaching British and their allies forced the remaining Apalachee and Spaniards to flee the missions. Prior to 1704, Apalachees and other Indigenous groups in La Florida increased the production of maize, beans, and squash to feed their families and the colonizers (Peres, 2022; Worth, 1998). They adopted into their cuisine chili peppers and chayote squash, both New World crops brought to North America (and other parts of the Spanish Empire) by the Spanish from Mesoamerica (Ruhl, 1993). This overview of change and consistency in plant foodways in La Florida is enabled because of meticulous research conducted by paleoethnobotanists. In the first section of this chapter I provide information about the different types of plant samples common to archaeological sites; the preservational and taphonomic issues that affect archaeobotanical assemblages; the best practices to ensure maximum recovery of archaeobotanical samples; and the accepted standard analytical methods and data categories. The second section discusses common interpretative themes and the types of data and data analyses used for each. Interwoven through the entire chapter are relevant case studies that give primacy to the paleoethnobotanical data to answer questions about Indigenous and European foodways in Spanish Colonial La Florida.

3.1

Plant Samples Common to Archaeological Sites

3.1

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Plant Samples Common to Archaeological Sites

Paleoethnobotanists study the intersection of people, culture, and plants, especially those plants that were used as food items in the past. Generally, the study of plant food remains in the archaeological record is divided into two areas: macrobotanical (nuts, nutshells, rinds, seeds, kernels, cobs, charcoal, fibers, roots, and tubers) and microbotanical remains (starch grains, pollen, phytoliths). There are other, indirect, ways to identify the presence of plant foods – through food residues on pottery, lithic and shell tools, physical impressions and iconographic and artistic depictions. We must understand the depositional context and site formational processes of actual and potential recovered plant remains to better interpret their presence, cultural uses, and meanings. Macrobotanical remains can be recovered from archaeological sites under the right preservational conditions. In open air sites, archaeologists recover macrobotanical remains that have been burned or carbonized. Typically, uncarbonized remains from these types of sites are of modern origins. Exceptions can occur in contexts that are waterlogged or dry. Submerged sites or dry sites (such as caves and rockshelters) often produce relatively large volumes of uncarbonized plant remains of archaeological value (see chapters in Doran, 2002; Carmody et al., 2018; Gremillion, 1996).

3.1.1

Food Plants

Macrobotanical remains interpreted as food plants may be recovered if they were incidentally lost, or accidentally or purposely burned. Oftentimes, the non-edible parts of edible plants are what is left. This means we most often study the parts of plants that were not consumed – like burned maize cobs instead of kernels. Evidence of past dietary plants can be found in the form of phytoliths -- microscopic silica bodies that form within individual plant cells (Sutton et al., 2010:78, Figure 3.2). Phytoliths may be recovered from a variety of contexts including tool surfaces, interior of ceramic vessels, associated with or in feature soils, in dental calculus, and paleofeces. All of these contexts can inform about the plant foods consumed.

3.1.2

Fuel Plants

While plants that were used for fuel, typically wood from trees, will not be discussed in great detail in this book on foodways, they are worth a mention as fuelwood collection was not an isolated activity, but one performed during or around other daily activities. Burned wood fragments are most commonly recovered from

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archaeological contexts and can tell archaeologists about the types of trees that grew in the site’s vicinity or ones that were preferred for fuelwood (Kabukcu, 2018; Graham, 2020). Graham (2020) argues that burned wood can tell us about daily practices beyond collecting sticks and limbs for fuel, such as tending fields, gathering wild resources, and forest management. Not all fuel materials were wood; nutshells, the inedible parts of crops such as maize cobs, and animal dung, are all suitable fuel sources (Ruhl, 2017; Smith et al., 2019). Graham (2020) studied the use of fuelwood at sites spanning the earliest contact period through the Middle Colonial period in the North Carolina Piedmont. While these communities were not part of Spanish Florida, they were contemporaneous to the missions and affected by colonization. Graham found a decrease in the use of hickory wood over time at all sites and a corresponding increase in tree species diversity through time. The increased diversity was in part due to the collection of tree species that readily grow in old fields (successional species). The collection of less-preferred woods may be a consequence of slave-raiding in the area and women and children seeking safety by staying close to their villages as they sought out fuelwood (Graham, 2020:177).

3.1.3

Pollen and Pollen Rain

Pollen analysis, palynology, is a speciality within paleoethnobotany that can help us understand past environments and the subsistence and technological roles of plants in the past. Pollen grains are produced by seed-bearing plants and are microscopic. They can be transported over short and long distances by rain, water, wind, and animals. The outer layer of a pollen grain is called the exine and is extremely resilient to decay. These exines are morphologically distinct at the genus and species level. Pollen grains may be recovered, after a time and labor-intensive extraction process, from sediments such as peats or ponds. These types of samples are used for understanding the presence/absence and relative abundances of specific plants over time, which is one part in reconstructing past environments. Pollen rain is the pollen from plants growing in the vicinity of an archaeological site. The pollen becomes airborne and “rains” down on exposed surfaces, ultimately becoming incorporated into the pollen history at that location (Sutton et al., 2010). While these samples contain key information about the environmental setting of the site, they may give us little to no information on the plants people were eating. When looking for evidence of foodways, the working edges or surfaces of tools, especially grinding stones, are sampled for pollen grains. Pollen may also be recovered from gut contents of inhumations or paleofeces (Berg, 2002). Sediment samples recovered from the sacral areas often yield abdominal tract contents (Berg, 2002). To date, no pollen analyses have been performed on Mission period sites in La Florida.

3.2

3.2

Plant Sample Recovery Best Practices

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Plant Sample Recovery Best Practices

There are a number of ways to sample for botanical remains, but none should be considered a one size fits all circumstances or research questions. The rule of thumb in paleoethnobotany is the more contexts that are sampled the better the dataset and resulting interpretations – regardless of the research questions (Diehl, 2017). Some things to consider during the research design stage of a project are: the ultimate goal of the project; number of samples that can be identified and reported on (including data entry, analysis, and data curation) given the time and funding available; number of, if any, samples be curated for future analysis; priority of contexts to be sampled; the best way to gain data useful for comparative analyses beyond the present research questions (VanDerwarker et al., 2016). Paleoethnobotanists need lots of samples that are large (average of 10–30 L pre-processed), and that are taken from a variety of cultural contexts (e.g., midden, hearth, trash pit, burial, structure floor/walls, etc.) and general level grab samples. Several published volumes are fundamental texts for students of paleoethnobotany and are considered the guides for standard procedures for collection, analysis, and reporting of archaeobotanical data (Hastorf & Popper, 1988; Pearsall, 2000; Piperno, 2006; Torrence & Barton, 2006). There are three main types of samples, briefly defined here (Lennstrom & Hastorf, 1995; Pearsall, 2000). The first are composite samples that are collected from across the surface of an excavation unit. These are typically collected from each level (arbitrary or cultural) during the process of unit excavation. The second type of sample is the point sample. These are samples taken from each feature and are recovered in a standardized volume of soil (i.e., 10 milliliters from each part of the grid within the boundaries of the feature). Column samples are the third sample type and can be taken from any context (i.e., feature, excavation unit). They are excavated in levels (like a mini excavation unit), and are useful for studying change in plant use through time. The fourth sample type is taken from off-site as a control sample. These are useful in understanding the extent that seed and/or pollen rain plays in the plant profile of the site. Sample processing can use water or non-water methods. The most well known water-assisted method is flotation, and there are several to choose from (Chapman & Watson, 1993; Pearsall, 2000; VanDerwarker et al., 2016): Flote-tech (mechanized), Shell Mound Archaeological Project (SMAP) tank (non-mechanized), and bucket (manual). The linked YouTube videos give the reader a visual on how these methods look in action. Pearsall (2000) describes each method in detail. The reader is advised to avail themselves of the pros and cons of each processing method to choose the most appropriate one for their circumstances (VanDerwarker et al., 2016). Pollen samples are typically collected from core samples taken from wet sites such as lake or pond beds. Pollen can also be recovered from dry sites, bricks, vessels, burials, or coprolites (Gorham & Bryant, 2001; Wright, 2010). Phytoliths are recovered in similar ways as pollen – often through core samples, but also from artifact surfaces and submerged sites (Gorham & Bryant, 2001; Wright, 2010).

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Starch grains are often recovered from areas or artifacts that were used for processing plant remains. They may be recovered from core samples in the same ways as other microbtoanical remains. More often they are found on teeth, in gut contents, coprolites, or on the working edges of tools. The methods to extract the starch grains from dental calculus, artifacts, soils, and coprolites are highly specialized (Pearsall, 2000; Piperno, 2006). The best course of action is to collaborate with a paleoethnobotanist during the research design phase of the project. They can best inform you of how to effectively sample for the research questions being addressed.

3.3

Lab Analysis Methods

The effective and unequivocal analysis of plant remains requires the proper training, equipment, reference materials, and comparative collections. Training includes basic and advanced knowledge of plant taxonomy, systems, morphology, and ecology. Equipment must include a low power (10–40x) stereo microscope for macrobotany and a polarizing microscope with high magnification (400–1000x) and digital imaging capabilities for microbotany (VanDerwarker et al., 2016). Other standard lab equipment includes a Riffle-Splitter for sub-sampling, small non-plastic trays (plastic accumulates static), small hand tools (clean paint brushes, entomology forceps, spatulas, probes), small rigid capsules or vials (such as mini-centrifuge tubes), and acid-free paper tags. Reference materials include print and digital manuals and plant guides. Macrobotanical comparative collections should include a mix of seeds, leaves, stems, roots, and tubers from plants that are native to the region (see VanDerwarker et al., 2016 for resources) in their unadulterated and carbonized states (Pearsall, 2000). The creation of microbotanical collections (starch and/or phytolith) involves more than merely collecting the plant materials (see Field, 2006; Pearsall, 2000; Serpa, 2008 for detailed methods). Identification methods are detailed in Adams (2004), Fritz (2007), Hastorf and Popper (1988), Minnis (1987), Pearsall (2000), Piperno (2006), and Torrence and Barton (2006).

3.3.1

Primary Data Collection

The end goal of paleoethnobotany is to establish which kinds of plants were used in the past (for food, fuel, medicine, technology), and their relative importance within those categories. As in other types of archaeological analyses (especially zooarchaeology), once sampling and subsampling procedures have been worked out and executed, the analyst starts by sorting or scanning samples. Specimens that are identifiable or potentially identifiable are picked out. Primary data collection categories, which include both qualitative and quantitative data, form the baseline data that are used for secondary data measures and quantitative analyses.

3.3

Lab Analysis Methods

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Taxonomic Identification The analyst compares the archaeological specimens with a modern reference collection. Analysts strive to identify a plant to its lowest possible designation (i.e., Genus species subspecies). However, at this time, many taxonomic classifications are made based on morphology. With the introduction of DNA analysis of modern and ancient plants, classification schemes are changing. Lee Newsom (personal communication, 2017) emphasizes it is best to leave identifications at the family or genus levels until the genetics have been worked out. Taxonomic identifications give us presence/absence data and partial information about plant use at a given site. For example, highly fragmented charred plant remains recovered from a large pit feature at the O’Connell Mission site east of Tallahassee, Florida, shows that both wild plants and cultigens were relied upon (Cooper & Roberts, 1998; Marrinan et al., 2000: Table 1). Wild plant foods include acorn (Quercus sp.), grape(Vitus sp.), hickory nut (Carya sp.), amaranth (Amaranthus sp.), palmetto (Serenoa repens), passion fruit (Passiflora sp.), honey locust (Gleditsia sp.), and red bud (Cercis sp.), and persimmon (Diospyrus virginiana). Cultigens include beans (cf. Phaseolus sp.), 10-rowed maize (Zea mays), and a possible cucurbit (Marrinan et al., 2000:240). Also identified were plants known to be used medicinally. Quantitative Data Once specimen identifications are secure to their lowest taxonomic category, the analyst collects quantitative data including count, weight, and some metrics. Given that different parts of plants are used, the paleoethnobotanist will count the parts separately. For example, when maize is identified, it is not uncommon to record the count of kernels,cupules, and cobs separately. In Ruhl’s (1993) analysis of the presence, spread, and importance of wheat and oranges in late sixteenth and seventeenth Spanish Florida, she provides wheat grain count data from nine sites established by the Spanish in Guale, Timucua, and Apalachee provinces. The assemblages range from 1 wheat grain present (Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine, Timucua Province) to more than 60,000 analyzed to date from the mission site on St. Catherines Island in Georgia, Guale Province (Ruhl, 1993:Table 1). The Fountain of Youth site was established by Pedro Menendez de Aviles in 1565 at the village of Seloy, where the Tolomato and Matanzas rivers meet and outlet to the Atlantic Ocean. Seloy was the principal Timucuan village in the area, headed by a chief of the same name. The wheat grain recovered there was from a well deposit. Conversely, the copious amounts recovered from St. Catherines were in the church, likely in an area used for storage of the necessary liturgical supplies. As the plant remains themselves have undergone extensive taphonomic transformations (see Wright, 2010), count and weight data are not always meaningful on their own. To overcome taphonomic biases the counts and weights are manipulated to create more standardized samples for interpretation (Wright, 2010). These are described in the next section. Morphometric data are important for determining varieties of some plants. For instance, in the case of maize, there are a series of standard measurements taken on whole kernels to aid in determining the cultivar of maize present. Kernel length, width, and thickness are recorded, as are several qualitative data points (Scarry, 1992). Scarry (1992:138) notes that while there is only a single species of maize, there are a number of

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cultivars that exhibit different morphological attributes and require different growing conditions. According to ethnohistoric documents, Indigenous groups in the Southeastern US farmed multiple maize cultivars at different times of the year for a variety of purposes (Adair, 1966; Swanton, 1946). This would have led to locally cultivated and hybridized maize cultivars, with varieties increasing after the introduction of new cultivars by the Spanish (Scarry, 1992). These precontact and early colonial period cultivars were ancestral to the modern Southern Dent and Corn Belt Dent cultivars and became the foundation of industrial agricultural production (Scarry, 1992). In Scarry’s comparison of maize kernel morphometrics from San Luis (8LE4), Aspalaga/Pine Tuft (8JE1), and Ayubale/Scott Miller (8JE2), she found more than one maize cultivar. The identified cultivars include Eastern Eight Row (San Luis), a Southern Dent variety called Hickory King (San Luis, Aspalaga, Ayubale), and likely one that was a non-local or hybrid cultivar (San Luis) (Scarry, 1986, 1992).

3.3.2

Secondary Data Measures

There are numerous issues with trying to compare the raw (unstandardized) counts and/or weights of different types of plants and plant remains (Hastorf & Popper, 1988; Scarry, 1986). Once the primary data (identifications, parts, counts, weights, etc.) are collected they are then used for estimating a variety of secondary data measures including ubitquity, ratios, and statistical significance of sample compositions. Paleoethnobotanists use a variety of data primary data manipulations to standardize archaeobotanical assemblages and overcome taphonomic issues (Wright, 2010). The most common are presence/absence and ubiquity indices, ratios, and diversity. Presence/Absence and Ubiquity Measures Fragmentation of archaeobotanical remains can be problematic for quantification, no matter if it occurs during deposition and burial, recovery during excavation or post-excavation handling. One way to overcome the issue of fragmentation is to look at the ubiquity of different types of plants or plant parts, though it is not without issues including differential depositions, differential preservation, sample size, and sample context (Popper, 1988; VanDerwarker, 2010). Ubiquity is simply the presence of plant remains in each unique provenience or the frequency of occurrence of plant taxa in the samples under study (Popper, 1988; VanDerwarker, 2010). If maize is present in 100% of the samples from a site, then maize would have 100% ubiquity, and it is considered common across the site. Ratios Both the count and weight data recorded for plant remains must be standardized for meaningful interpretations. Some analysts measure the count or weight of charred material relative to sediment volume (density); count of a particular plant relative to the total plant weight (percentage), or the amount (count, weight, volume) of nutshell relative to wood, or the amount of seeds relative to wood (comparisons) (Wright, 2010).

3.4

Taphonomy and Sample Bias

35

For instance, one might calculate the seed to nutshell ratio of a pit feature, or the kernel to cupule ratio of different proveniences (e.g., individual structures across a site, residential areas vs. elite areas) to determine how corn was being processed. In the latter example, the kernel to cupule ratio can indicate where maize kernels were being removed from the cobs for storage or further processing. Diversity I discussed the use diversity and equitability estimations for faunal samples in Chap. 2. These measures are useful for plant assemblages as well. One can compare diversity of plant assemblages over time to determine how different plant species varied in importance (VanDerwarker, 2010). The richness of a plant assemblage is the number of taxa in that assemblage. The greater the number of taxa, the richer the assemblage (Reitz & Wing, 2008; VanDerwarker, 2010). The equitability of the sample is the distribution of the taxa in the assemblage. An even distribution of taxa occurs when each taxon is represented by the same number of specimens across the assemblage. If one taxon dominates the assemblage in terms of numbers of specimens, then the assemblage is considered to be uneven.

3.4

Taphonomy and Sample Bias

Paleoethnobotanists know that archaeobotanical samples are biased. In working with any given sample, we must determine the extent of the biases and what the contributing factors were. Some things are beyond the control of the paleoethnobotanist such as differential preservation and deposition and previous excavator bias (for legacy collections). We can (or should) have control over other factors, such as excavation and recovery strategies during the research design, post-excavation processing and analysis.

3.4.1

Differential Preservation

Plant remains become part of the archaeological record in a number of ways, each of which offers unique opportunities and challenges for sample recovery, identification, and analysis. I include here the most common preservational states for plant remains: carbonized, waterlogged, mineralized, and desiccated. Carbonization Plants become carbonized through burning, whether it is intentional (e.g., corn cobs in a smudge pit) or accidental (e.g., chickpeas spilled into the cooking fire). Burning is the most likely way for plants to enter the archaeological record. And while the edible portions of plants are often burned under accidental circumstances, the increased use of a plant overall increases its chances of being burned, and thus preserved for future archaeologists to excavate and analyze. Two common examples are the use of nuts and corn for food. The edible portion of the nut is the meat located inside the hard outer shell. This nut meat is consumed and

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Fig. 3.1 Carbonized maize cobs recovered from San Luis de Talimali. (Photo by author)

digested, leaving little evidence of its use. However, the shell is a macrobotanical and is often recovered as a carbonized or charred component of the archaeological matrix or feature fill. Nutshells can be used as fuel post-consumption or discarded in fires by burning. In this way, the non-edible portion of the nut is preserved. The edible portion of corn is the kernel. However, we often recover carbonized cobs and cupules (the cup that holds the kernel in the cob) in greater quantities than kernels. The kernel is processed, eaten, and then digested, leaving fewer chances to recover then archaeologically. The cobs, however, are useful as fuel and for smudging (burning of plant materials that smoke or smolder) (Fig. 3.1). Smudge pit features identified in the Southeastern US are typically round, of a similar size (ca. 20 cm × 30–50 cm deep) with straight walls and a flat bottom. These pits are filled with carbonized plant remains – mostly maize cobs and cob fragments but also bark or pine cones (Scarry, 1992). Smudge pits are thought to have functioned to smoke hides (Binford, 1967), the interior of ceramic vessels (Munson, 1969), or as insect control (Scarry, 1992). At San Luis de Talimali, 25 cob-filled pit features were excavated from the floor of the council house (Scarry, 1992). The pits were placed to be under the seating areas in the council house, and thus are interpreted as being used for insect (mosquitoes especially) control. The recovered cobs were byproducts of food processing (i.e., the kernels were removed prior to their use in smudging). More direct food remains were recovered from the Spanish convento. These were entirely New World plants consisting of carbonized maize kernels, beans, squash seed fragments, a sunflower seed, and small quantities of

3.4

Taphonomy and Sample Bias

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hickory, acorn, grape, plum, and cherry (Scarry, 1992, 1993). In 2018 fragmentary remains of carbonized Eastern Eight Row maize cobs were recovered from an area outside of, but adjacent to, a domestic structure in the Spanish Village area (Peres, 2021; Townsend, 2018). Waterlogged Plant remains that are buried or deposited in permanently submerged or waterlogged environments, which are typically devoid of oxygen, are often well preserved. Such environments might be along the edges of rivers or lakes, in swamps, at the bottom of rivers, lakes, and oceans, in the bottom of wells, or even the bottom of deep storage pits. Macro and micro-botanical remains can both be preserved in waterlogged environments and include structural timbers, watercraft (ships, canoes, rafts), trackways, seeds, nuts, matting, woven cloth, nutshells, leaves, and twigs (Dixon, 2004; Doran, 2002; Scarry & Reitz, 1990). Waterlogged plant remains were recovered from seven different barrel walls in St. Augustine, all dating to the sixteenth century (Scarry, 1985). In this case, when the wells were replaced they were rapidly backfilled with trash, in effect making them a rapid or single deposition closed context (Scarry, 1985). The wells produced plant evidence that Spanish colonists in sixteenth century St. Augustine subsisted on a variety of indigenous cultigens, exotic New World cultigens (particular species of squash, lima bean, and chili pepper), and Old World cultigens (pea, fig, peach, and watermelon). Of the latter category, only peach and watermelon were successfully grown in the region (Scarry, 1985). Mineralization Mineralization is the end result of calcium phosphate replacement of plant remains. This type of preservational condition can occur in privies or outhouses and some types of middens (Carruthers & Smith, 2020). This is not a common preservation activity in the Southeastern United States. Desiccation In arid environments such as caves and rockshelters, plant remains become desiccated, or dried out (van der Veen, 2007). This is due to a lack of water in the air, ultimately inhibiting decomposition. In the Southeastern US desiccated plant remains are most often recovered in caves and rockshelters in the upland areas of Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia (e.g., Fritz, 1986, 1997; Gremillion, 1997).

3.4.2

Modern and Ancient Biases

The research design, excavation, and recovery strategies used in a given project directly influence the recovery of plant remains. The types of actions (excavator, analytical, socio-cultural, past choices) that bias archaeobotanical assemblages are the same as for archaeofaunal assemblages (see Chap. 2, this volume). Ruhl (1993) notes that the majority of wheat grains in Spanish Florida are recovered from storage areas in church complexes not in domestic settings. Having this information while creating the research design for field recovery or plants, or for sampling of already procured flotation samples, is critical.

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3.5

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Paleoethnobotany of Foodways

Interpreting Plants as Part of Foodways

Plant remains are most often used to reconstruct the growing, harvesting, and cooking of foods important to past people and communities. Growing and Harvesting In preagricultural societies, seeking out and gathering ample plant foods occupied a large portion of the food quest. In food-producing societies, increased amounts of time and effort were spent on preparing, planting, and tending fields. Harvesting the crops and then preparing them for storage and consumption were important seasonal tasks. A species list of archaeological plant remains can provide information on seasonality and ubiquity (presence/absence of plant taxa). A number of paleoethnobotanical studies have successfully argued for specific types of agricultural methods, such as swidden (Borejsza et al., 2011), gardens (Sasso, 2003), intensification (VanDerwarker, 2009), and multiple crop production strategies (Scarry, 1992, 1993; Scarry & Scarry, 2005). Plant Processing Experimental studies of plant processing, including cooking, are key to our broader understanding of plant preservation, survivorship, and transformation in the archaeological record (Wright, 2003, 2005). Much of the archaeobotanical record is made up of the by-products of food processing. For instance, the shells from walnuts are more likely to be thrown into a fire or swept into a trash pit versus the edible nut meat portion, which may undergo further processing such as fat or oil extraction (Larson, 1980; Swanton, 1946). As Scarry (1992:152) notes, maize produced for shipping to St. Augustine from Apalachee Province was likely “processed in bulk for shipping. Given the costs of transport it is probable that grain was stripped from the ears prior to export. This would have produced an abundant supply of cobs for fuel.” Acorns from oak trees (Quercus sp.) were especially important Indigenous groups of northern La Florida and were processed into a meal or flour. Contemporaneous documents written by the Spanish detail the processes for transforming the acorns from bitter nuts to edible loaves, or, depending on the species, into oil (Hann, 1988). In the processes described, the shells were removed before the nutmeat was processed. In this sequence, the nut shells will have the highest probability of being recovered archaeologically, while the nutmeat, even if transformed into oil or bread, will have the lowest probability of being recovered. Microbotanical analysis of phytoliths or starch grain residues on the working edges of tools leads to a broader understanding of ancient worklife (Barton, 2007; Raviele, 2011). Typically,phytoliths and starch grains are resistant to decay even in suboptimal preservational conditions. The use of starch grain analysis to determine the plants processed with ground stone tools is not common in research studies of the Southeastern United States. However, research in the Caribbean and other parts of the Americas shows that it is a productive avenue of analytical inquiry (Ciofalo et al., 2019; Babot et al., 2014). In terms of the artifacts associated with food processing, few have been recovered archaeologically. Mano and metate fragments were recovered from St. Augustine,

References

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likely for maize grinding (Reitz & Scarry, 1985). Given that maize processing was time and labor intensive, a log mill was built in St. Augustine by the late sixteenth century to grind maize (Arnade, 1959). The greatest quantity of stone grinding tools recovered to date are from San Luis. A total of 23 fragments of basalt grinding tools (manos) and one metate fragment have been identified from across San Luis (Lee, 2021). All of the identified grinding tool fragments are non-local basalt, though it is likely that wooden manos and metates were also used though these are less likely to preserve. Cooking The evidence for cooking of food remains can be studied spatially, contextually, and through material remains. Cooking areas, or kitchens, may have been permanent areas within or exterior to houses, or erected as temporary work areas (Klarich, 2010). In Spanish Florida, little physical evidence remains for the cooking of processed plant foods. Based on ethnohistoric documents and historic cookbooks, we can extrapolate that cooking vessels were the main way in which plant foods were cooked. This typically would have been in the form of soups and stews. Griddles were used in many areas of the Americas to cook tortillas or corn cakes, though none have been found archaeologically from Spanish Florida. At San Luis, colonoware skillets, with straight handles, were recovered from Structure 1 and three trash pits in the Spanish Village (Lee, 2021: Figure 6.3H), and may have served this purpose.

3.6

Summary

Diet, subsistence strategy, and cuisine are the sum total of the plant and animal resources used and consumed in the past for nutritional purposes. As Reitz and Scarry (1985:86) note, “the goal of any subsistence system is to provide a balanced diet that meets the population’s energy needs.” We know this basic biological need is wrapped up in cultural ideals, desires, rules, and expectations. By understanding how the basic food needs were met using plants, we can start to put together more complex analyses and models of social and cultural practices related to foodways.

References Adair, J. (1966). Adair’s history of the American Indians. Argonaut Press. Adams, K. R. (2004). Archaeobotanical analysis: Principles and methods [HTML Title]. Available: http://www.crowcanyon.org/plantmethods. Date of use: 28 May 2019. Arnade, C. W. (1959). Florida on trial: 1593-1602. University of Miami Hispanic American Studies 16, Coral Gables. Babot, P., Lund, J., & Olmos, V. (2014). Taphonomy in the kitchen: Culinary practices and processing residues of native tuberous plants of the South-Central Andes. Intersecciones en Antropología Especial, 1, 35–54.

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Barton, H. (2007). Starch residues on museum artifacts: Implications for determining tool use. Journal of Archaeological Science, 34(10), 1752–1762. Berg, G. E. (2002). Last meals: Recovering abdominal contents from skeletonized remains. Journal of Archaeological Science, 29, 1349–1365. Binford, L. R. (1967). Smudge pits and hide smoking: The use of analogy in archaeological reasoning. American Antiquity, 32(1), 1–12. Borejsza, A., Frederick, C., & Lesure, R. (2011). Swidden agriculture in the Tierra Fría? Evidence from sedimentary records in Tlaxcala. Ancient Mesoamerica, 22, 91–106. https://doi.org/10. 1017/S0956536111000071 Carmody, S. B., Hollenbach, K. D., & Weitzel, E. M. (2018). Prehistoric foodways from the dust cave site. In T. M. Peres & A. Deter-Wolf (Eds.), Baking, bourbon, and black drink: foodways archaeology in the American Southeast (pp. 102–118). University of Alabama Press. Carruthers, W. J., & D. N. Smith (2020). Mineralised plant and invertebrate remains: A guide to the identification of calcium phosphate replaced remains. Historic England. Liverpool University Press. https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/mineralised-plant-and-inverte brate-remains/mineralised-plant-and-invertebrate-remains-pdf/ Chapman, J., & Watson, P. J. (1993). The Archaic period and the flotation revolution. In C. M. Scarry (Ed.), Foraging and farming in the eastern woodlands (pp. 27–38). University Press of Florida. Ciofalo, A. J., Sinelli, P. T., & Hofmann, C. L. (2019). Late precolonial culinary practices: Starch analysis on griddles from the Northern Caribbean. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 26(3), 1632–1664. Cooper, T., & Roberts, B. (1998). Analysis of botanical remains from feature 84 of the O’Connell Mission Site (8LE157). Ms on file, Department of Anthropology, Florida State University, Tallahassee. Diehl, M. W. (2017). Paleoethnobotanical sampling adequacy and ubiquity: An example from the American Southwest. Advances in Archaeological Practice, 5(2), 196–205. https://doi.org/10. 1017/aap.2017.5 Dixon, N. (2004). The crannogs of Scotland: An underwater archaeology. Tempus. Doran, G. H. (Ed.). (2002). Windover: multidisciplinary investigations of an early Archaic Florida cemetery. University Press of Florida. Etheridge, R. (2009). Introduction: Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone. In R. Etheridge & S. M. Shuck-Hall (Eds.), Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone: The colonial Indian slave trade and regional instability in the American South (pp. 1–62). University of Nebraska Press. Field, J. (2006). Reference collections. In R. Torrence & H. Barton (Eds.), Ancient starch research (pp. 95–114). Left Coast Press. Fritz, G. J. (1986). Desiccated botanical remains from three Bluffshelter sites in the pine mountain project area, Crawford County, Arkansas. In G. Sabo III (Ed.), Contributions to Ozark prehistory (Arkansas archeological survey research series No. 27) (pp. 86–97). Fritz, G. J. (1997). A three thousand year old cache of crop seeds from Marble Bluff, Arkansas. In K. J. Gremillion (Ed.), People, plants, and landscapes: Case studies in paleoethnobotany (pp. 42–62). University of Alabama Press. Fritz, G. J. (2007). Pigweeds for the ancestors: Cultural identities and archaeobotanical identification methods. In K. Twiss (Ed.), The archaeology of food and identity (Occasional paper, No. 34) (pp. 288–307). Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University. Gorham, D., & Bryant, V. M. (2001). The role of pollen and phytoliths in underwater archaeology. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, 30(2), 299–305. Graham, A. F. (2020). Fuelwood collection as daily practice: A wood charcoal study tor the colonial period North Carolina Piedmont. Southeastern Archaeology, 39(3), 166–182. https://doi.org/10. 1080/0734578X.2020.1781457 Gremillion, K. J. (1996). Early agricultural diet in Eastern North America: Evidence from two Kentucky Rockshelters. American Antiquity, 61, 520–536.

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Gremillion, K. J. (1997). New perspectives on the paleoethnobotany of the Newt Kash Shelter. In K. R. K. J. Gremillion (Ed.), People, plants, and landscapes: Studies in paleoethnobotany (pp. 23–41). University of Alabama Press. Hann, J. H. (1988). Apalachee: The land between the rivers. University Press of Florida. Hastorf, C. A., & Popper, V. S. (Eds.). (1988). Current paleoethnobotany: Analytical methods and cultural interpretations of archaeological plant remains. University of Chicago Press. Kabukcu, C. (2018). Wood charcoal analysis in archaeology. In E. Pişkin, A. Marciniak, & M. Bartkowiak (Eds.), Environmental archaeology, interdisciplinary contributions to archaeology (pp. 133–154). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75082-8_7 Klarich, E. A. (Ed.). (2010). Inside ancient kitchens: New directions in the study of daily meals and feasts. University Press of Colorado. Larson, L. H., Jr. (1980). Aboriginal subsistence technology and the southeastern coastal plain during the late prehistoric period. University Presses of Florida. Lee, J. (2021). Imported ceramics and colonowares as a reflection of Hispanic lifestyle at mission San Luis de Talimali. In T. M. Peres & R. A. Marrinan (Eds.), Unearthing the missions of Spanish Florida. University of Florida Press. Lennstrom, H. A., & Hastorf, C. A. (1995). Interpretation in its context: Sampling analysis in paleoethnobotany. American Antiquity, 60, 701–721. Marrinan, R. A., Halpern, J. A., Heide, G. M., & Blackmore, C. (2000). Recent investigations at the O’Connell Mission Site (8LE157), Leon County, Florida. The Florida Anthropologist, 53(2–3), 224–249. Minnis, P. E. (1987). Identification of wood from archaeological sites in the American Southwest, I: Keys for gymnosperms. Journal of Archaeological Science, 14, 121–131. Munson, P. J. (1969). Comments on Binford’s “smudge pits and hide smoking: The use of analogy in archaeological reasoning”. American Antiquity, 34(1), 83–85. Pearsall, D. M. (2000). Paleoethnobotany: A handbook of procedures (2nd ed.). Academic Press. Peres, T. M. (2021). Feeding families and friars in Apalachee Province during the mission period. In T. M. Peres & R. A. Marrinan (Eds.), Unearthing the Missions of Spanish Florida. University Press of Florida. Peres, T. M. (2022). Subsistence and food production economies in seventeenth-century Spanish Florida. International Journal of Historical Archaeology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-02200667-2 Piperno, D. R. (2006). Phytoliths: A comprehensive guide for archaeologists and paleoecologists. AltaMira Press. Popper, V. S. (1988). Selecting quantitative measurements in paleoethnobotany. In C. A. Hastorf & V. S. Popper (Eds.), Current paleoethnobotany: Analytical methods and cultural interpretations of archaeological plant remains (pp. 53–71). University of Chicago Press. Raviele, M. E. (2011). Experimental assessment of maize phytolith and starch taphonomy in carbonized cooking residues. Journal of Archaeological Science, 38, 2708–2713. Reitz, E. J., & Scarry, C. M. (1985). Reconstructing historic subsistence with an example from sixteenth-century Spanish Florida (Special publication series) (Vol. 3). Society for Historical Archaeology/Braun-Brumfield. Reitz, E. J., & Wing, E. S. (2008). Zooarchaeology (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. Ruhl, D. (1993). Old customs and traditions in new terrain: Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century archaeobotanical data from La Florida. In C. M. Scarry (Ed.), Foraging and farming in the eastern woodlands (pp. 255–284). University Press of Florida. Ruhl, D. (2017). Archaeobotany at the Lake Monroe Outlet Midden (8VO53). Electronic document, https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/envarch/research/florida/lake-monroe/plant-remains/. Accessed 9 Aug 2020. Sasso, R. F. (2003). Vestiges of ancient cultivation: the antiquity of garden beds and corn hills in Wisconsin. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, 28(2), 195–231. Scarry, C. M. (1985). The use of plant foods in sixteenth century St. Augustine. The Florida Anthropologist, 38(1–2), 70–80.

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Scarry, C. M. (1986). Change in plant procurement and production during the emergence of the Moundville Chiefdom. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan. Scarry, C. M. (1992). Appendix 6: Plant remains from the San Luis Council House and Convento. In Archaeology at San Luis: The Apalachee Council House, by Gary Shapiro and Bonnie McEwan. Florida Archaeology No. 6, Part 1 (pp. 135–173). Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research. Scarry, C. M. (1993). Plant production and procurement in Apalachee Province. In B. G. McEwan (Ed.), The Spanish missions of La Florida (pp. 357–375). University Press of Florida. Scarry, C. M., & Reitz, E. J. (1990). Herbs, fish, scum, and vermin: Subsistence strategies in sixteenth century Spanish Florida. In D. H. Thomas (Ed.), Columbian consequences. Volume II: Archaeological and historical perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands East (pp. 343–354). Smithsonian Press. Scarry, C. M., & Scarry, J. F. (2005). Native American ‘garden agriculture’ in Southeastern North America. World Archaeology, 37(2), 259–274. Serpa, K. (2008). Cultigens of the American Northeast: A phytolith study. In J. P. Hart (Ed.), Current Northeast Paleoethnobotany II, Bulletin Series No. 512 (pp. 101–110). New York State Museum. Smith, A., Proctor, L., Hart, T. C., & Stein, G. J. (2019). The burning issue of dung in archaeobotanical samples: A case-study integrating macro-botanical remains, dung spherulites, and phytoliths to assess sample origin and fuel use at tell Zeidan, Syria. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 28, 229–246. Sutton, M. Q., Sobolik, K. D., & Gardner, J. K. (2010). Paleonutrition. University of Arizona Press. Swanton, J. R. (1946). The Indians of the Southeastern United States (Bureau of American ethnology bulleting 37). Government Printing Office. Torrence, R., & Barton, H. (Eds.). (2006). Ancient starch research. Left Coast Press. Townsend, T. (2018). An analysis of maize remains from unit 258N 472E at San Luis de Talimali (8Le4). Honors in the major thesis, Department of Anthropology, Florida State University, Tallahassee. van der Veen, M. (2007). Formation processes of desiccated and carbonized plant remains – The identification of routine practice. Journal of Archaeological Science, 34(6), 968–990. VanDerwarker, A. (2009). Farming and catastrophe at La Joya: A consideration of agricultural intensification and risk in the formative Sierra de los Tuxtlas. Arqueología Iberoamericana, 1, 17–40. VanDerwarker, A. (2010). Simple measures for integrating plant and animal remains. In A. VanDerwarker & T. Peres (Eds.), Integrating zooarchaeology and paleoethnobotany: A consideration of issues, methods, and cases (pp. 65–74). Springer. VanDerwarker, A. M., Bardolph, D. N., Hoppa, K. M., Thakar, H. B., Martin, L. S., Jaqua, A. L., Biwer, M. E., & Gill, K. M. (2016). New world paleoethnobotany in the new millennium (2000– 2013). Journal of Archaeological Research. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-015-9089-9 Waselkov, G. (1997). Changing strategies of Indian field locations in the early historic southeast. In K. J. Gremillion (Ed.), People, plants, and landscapes: studies in paleoethnobotany (pp. 179–194). University of Alabama Press. Worth, J. E. (1998). Missions of the camino real: Timucua and the Colonial system of Spanish Florida. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, Seattle. Wright, P. (2003). Preservation or destruction of plant remains by carbonization? Journal of Archaeological Science, 30, 577–583. Wright, P. (2005). Flotation samples and some paleoethnobotanical implications. Journal of Archaeological Science, 32, 19–26. Wright, P. (2010). Methodological issues in paleoethnobotany: A consideration of issues, methods, and cases. In A. M. VanDerwarker & T. M. Peres (Eds.), Integrating zooarchaeology and paleoethnobotany: A consideration of issues, methods, and cases (pp. 37–64). Springer.

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Additional Resources http://paleobot.org/ a collaborative, open-access web resource for scientists and scholars engaged in paleobotanical research and to improve accessibility to data and comparative collections.

Chapter 4

Bioarchaeology of Foodways

Abstract Foodways data can be gained from the visual and chemical analysis of human skeletal remains. An individual’s diet and nutrition consumed throughout their life is embedded in their bones and teeth. Poor nutrition during childhood or over a lifetime leaves behind markers, called pathologies, on bones and teeth. The chemical components of what a person ate during their lifetime is incorporated into the chemical makeup of their skeleton. Bioarchaeology allows us to study human remains to better understand the lived experience of past peoples. Keywords Bioarchaeology · Demography · Diet · Paleopathology · Dietary reconstruction · Stable isotopes Bioarchaeology, as the term is used in the American tradition of contemporary bioarchaeology, is the study of human remains to better understand the environmental, social, and cultural parameters of past cultures (Buikstra, 1977; Killgrove, 2013). American bioarchaeology has a different history and disciplinary context than as practiced in other parts of the world (Killgrove, 2013). This chapter deals specifically with issues, methods, and cases from the United States.

4.1

Ethical and Legal Considerations in Bioarchaeology

Bioarchaeology was not a recognized subdiscipline in archaeology until the 1970s, yet the use of human skeletal remains in anthropological research in the US dates back to 1903, when Aleš Hrdlička was the first “Assistant Curator in Charge” of the physical anthropology division at the US National Museum (now the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (Schultz, 1944). Many of these studies were a product of the prevailing cultural views of the time. It was not until 1990 that the US federal government passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). NAGPRA requires federal agencies, federal institutions, and those organizations that receive federal funds, such as universities, museums, state agencies, and local governments, to repatriate human remains and other cultural © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. M. Peres, Foodways Archaeology - Methods and Cases, SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41017-8_4

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items to the appropriate federally recognized tribes through a process of inventory, report, and consultation (NPS, 2022). NAGPRA applies specifically to the repatriation of human remains, associated funerary objects, unassociated funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. In its current form NAGPRA does not specifically address the analysis or use of existing and/or previously collected data and publications, but emerging ethical considerations in the archaeological community are questioning these practices. As the SAA Statement Concerning the Treatment of Human Remains states, “Archaeologists should approach work with human remains from a perspective of ethical stewardship, responsibility, and equity, rather than entitlement, ownership, or exclusivity” (SAA, 2021). Modern bioarchaeologists, while acknowledging the issues of the past, are actively working to dismantle the racist structures that linger (Buikstra et al., 2022). As the archaeological community continues to consult and collaborate with Indigenous groups, standards of practice are sure to change.

4.2

Discovery of Human Remains

In the United States, human remains are often unexpected discoveries during construction and land development, though in some places, fieldwork is conducted specifically to excavate in cemetery areas to answer questions of local, regional, and global anthropological importance. Regardless of how remains are discovered, they should never be removed or excavated without a well justified and appropriate strategy. First and foremost, this means following all applicable local, state, national, and international laws, regulations, and procedures and consulting with all stakeholders, including descendant communities (Márquez-Grant & Fibiger, 2011; SAA, 2021; Seidemann, 2004). If after these considerations, it is determined that human skeletal remains are to be excavated, the research and removal design should consider where the remains are, or may be, located (a concentrated area or more broadly across the site), the condition of the remains, the surrounding matrix composition, the resources (labor, funding, time, equipment, space) needed to carefully and expertly remove, fully inventory, analyze, and curate the remains. The remainder of this chapter will give an overview of standard protocols and methods used to recover human remains and the types of data that are recorded from the remains. These data are then used to illuminate the lived experiences of these individuals. I incorporate information learned from published bioarchaeological studies in reference to Indigenous foodways in La Florida.

4.2.1

Best Practices in the Recovery of Human Remains

Field osteologists and bioarchaeologists closely follow standardized best practices for field recovery which can apply to most situations (Buikstra & Ubelaker, 1994; White, 1991). The first principle is to do no further harm or damage to the remains

4.3

Lab Analysis Methods

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during or after excavation. As White (1991:267) states, “...there is only one chance to extract the remains completely and correctly. Actions taken during recovery have consequences that long outlive any investigator, rendering the osteologist’s responsibility a weighty one.” Following this line of thinking, thorough written and photographic documentation should be a top priority before the recovery process starts and throughout the duration of the project. This includes establishing a site grid or tying the excavation into the existing grid, piece plotting when possible, recording GPS coordinates of each burial, and using a scale and directional arrow in all photographs and drawings. When necessary, the use of preservatives to stabilize fragile skeletal remains may be used (Beaubien, 2019). Excavators must collect all visible bone and teeth from burial areas. It is common to collect soil samples from areas where small and fragmentary bones are present. All soils from the abdominal area should be recovered for evidence of dietary remains. When articulated burials are excavated, the excavator exposes the human remains completely, one element at a time, using appropriate tools such as wooden implements, bamboo skewers, and brushes (clean paint brushes used exclusively for excavation). Metal tools like dental picks, trowels, and spoons, should not be used to uncover, excavate, or remove human skeletal remains as they can scratch and damage the bone. Individual burials in which the bones are in their natural anatomical positions is called a primary interment. Individuals in primary interments are often classified as being flexed (fetal position, with arms and elbows brought to the chest, lying on one side) or extended (lying flat with arms and legs extended or arms folded across chest). Flexed burials can be qualified as semi-flexed or tightly flexed. Individuals buried in the extended position may be supine (lying on their back) or prone (lying face down). Less often are individuals buried in a standing or sitting position. Secondary interments are those in which the bones of the individual are not in natural anatomical position. Rather the individual is partially or fully disarticulated, the bones gathered together, and then buried. These are often called bundle burials. A multiple interment is a burial in which more than one individual is present. These can be primary or secondary burials. Cremation is when a body is intentionally burned. Burning changes the appearance and size of the skeletal remains and takes a trained osteologist to identify cremated remains as human or non-human. While new methods are being developed, cremated remains are less forthcoming with foodways data than other burial treatments.

4.3

Lab Analysis Methods

Once human remains have been safely transported to a secure lab facility, the bioarchaeologist will conduct further analyses. This typically starts with possibly washing the remains, if needed and appropriate, and cataloging of all remains once they are dry. After the remains have been cataloged, the bioarchaeologist will perform a skeletal inventory and collect primary and secondary data. There are human skeletal remains in curation facilities that may be available for analysis of

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foodways-related data. However, the extent, if any, to which human remains may be studied will be determined by consulting and collaborating with all affected stakeholders, including descendant communities (Buikstra et al., 2022). Bioarchaeological studies must follow all applicable laws and regulations specific to their location, as well as institutional policies for allowing research access to the collections. We can also make use of existing datasets to extract foodways data, again following ethical and legal protocols. The methods described in this chapter assume the researcher has all necessary permissions to record and include human skeletal data in their analyses.

4.3.1

Basic Osteological Identification

Bioarchaeologists, like other archaeological specialists, collect standard primary data as the first step in their analysis (Bass, 1987; White, 1991). These baseline data are important for reconstructing and interpreting the individual’s and group’s past lifeways, including foodways, and thus must be collected methodologically and rigorously. While a number of helpful resources are available, there is no substitute for an experienced bioarchaeologist with training in skeletal biology of complete and fragmentary remains. It is unethical for un-trained or poorly trained technicians to perform primary data collection without direct supervision of a bioarchaeologist. No matter if the skeletal remains are complete, partial, or fragmentary, bioarchaeologists trained in skeletal biology and osteology, identify individual elements (i.e., femur, rib, molar), the portions of those elements present (i.e., distal, medial), and the anatomical side of the body the element is from (if paired, left or right). During this phase of analysis, the bioarchaeologist will also record various metrics, age, and sex markers. White (1991: 290–294) includes a detailed overview of the tools needed to record osteometrics. There are standard measurements and indices that osteologists use (Bass, 1987; White, 1991) so that datasets are standardized and comparable.

4.3.2

Basic Demographic Identification

Specific markers are used to determine the age at death (typically expressed as a range) and sex of an individual. Estimating the age of the person at death involves visual observations of the skeletal markers (including teeth) that are then compared to observations of the same markers made on modern skeletons of known age. During an individual’s lifetime, changes in the skeleton occur on a predictable schedule, especially in terms of juvenile growth. These markers include epiphyseal growth and fusion, tooth growth, eruption, and loss. White (1991:308–320) details different markers for aging skeletal elements.

4.4

Biomarkers of Foodways (Diet and Nutrition)

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Determination of sex of a skeletal specimen is based on the principle of sexual dimorphism. While skeletal differences between human males and females are not as pronounced as in other mammal species, they do exist and can be used successfully. Generally, female skeletal elements are smaller in size and more gracile while males are larger and more robust (White, 1991:320–322). Typically sex estimates are applied to adult skeletons and not subadults since they are not fully grown. As with aging, there are limitations to sex-identification of skeletons, and these assignments should be made by trained and experienced bioarchaeologists. Once basic identifications are complete, the analyst moves on to calculating secondary data. The minimum number of individuals is derived after the assessment of every bone and fragment in the assemblage. White (1991:278) defines MNI as “the minimum number of individuals necessary to account for all the elements in the assemblage.” To calculate the MNI of the assemblage, the analyst separates the bones by element and side (i.e., all right femurs together). Within element-side groups, the analyst will try to make joins between fragments taking into account age and any other morphological differences. These are then “matched” to femurs in the left side group. Then the number of individual elements are counted for that group taking into account size and age (i.e., 6 right femurs). The goal of calculating MNI is to determine the number of individual persons within the assemblage, and thus the size of the burial population.

4.4 4.4.1

Biomarkers of Foodways (Diet and Nutrition) Paleopathology

Paleopathology is the study of ancient patterns of disease and disorders as recorded in skeletal systems. Some diseases are more readily identified on bones than others. The diseases that can be most readily identified include syphilis (both venereal and non-venereal), tuberculosis, leprosy, rickets, osteoporosis, arthritis, and some cancers. Those related to nutrition and occupational use-wear are of interest in foodways studies. Health issues related to dietary deficiencies can present themselves in the skeleton (bone deformation, the formation of new bone, and/or bone resorption) and should be recorded by the analyst during the initial data collection.

4.4.2

Dental Wear and Tear

Mastication, or reducing to a pulp by crushing and kneading, i.e., chewing, is one of the most important functions of the human mandible and teeth. The act of chewing for food or for using the teeth as tools, leaves wear patterns and/or damage on teeth that can inform us about lifeways. The macro- and microscopic wear on teeth are invaluable data points for the types of activities people used their teeth for on a daily

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basis. Macroscopic wear is visually recorded and there are several different systems in place that one can use (see Rose & Ungar, 1998 for a review). A comparative study of macroscopic wear patterns by Smith (1984) showed that foragers tended to have teeth that were worn flat versus farmers who showed fewer incidences of severe tooth wear but did have cupped wear on the occlusal (chewing) surfaces of their molars (back teeth) (Larsen, 2002). The study of tooth wear microscopically, using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), looks at the presence and frequency of scratches and pits and relates them to the properties of the food items eaten and/or the procedures of processing those foods. For instance, humans who eat foods with a high silica content (such as unrefined grains or root vegetables), or who eat foods processed with stone manos and metates or mortar and pestles, such as maize, have higher rates of microwear features than people who eat soft or non-abrasive foods (Teaford, 1991; Teaford & Lytle, 1996; Larsen, 2002). Dental microwear can be used to understand change in food consumption during periods of weaning (Scott & Halcrow, 2017). Open-source software is available to classify and quantity microwear marks and analyze trends in the data (Strani et al., 2018). Organ et al. (2005) conducted a microwear study of maxillary molars from San Luis de Talimali, an Apalachee-Spanish Mission town and the western capital of Spanish Florida. They found that the frequency of pitting on the molars was greater than at contemporaneous sites, suggesting that the diets between the Indigenous residents of San Luis and other mission sites were different. Based on other lines of data, it is likely that the Apalachees at San Luis ate more meat than their counterparts at other mission sites (Organ et al., 2005). Caries (cavities) form when simple carbohydrates remain on an individual’s teeth. Bacteria then feed on these carbohydrate residues and produce an acid that dissolves tooth enamel. As Larsen and colleagues (1996:182) note, “dental caries is an age-progressive process...skeletal populations with relatively greater numbers of older individuals should contain more carious teeth.” Modern oral hygiene provides a way to reduce and limit the amount of food residues on your teeth, which can help in reducing the number of caries you have in your lifetime. Following the recommended brushing and flossing routine after eating significantly reduces the residues left behind by modern western dietary staples such as bread, candy, and other soft sticky foods. As a rule of thumb, the dentition of carnivores exhibits few to no caries. Many foods, especially plant foods, can be indicated, but the plants that were domesticated and became the economic basis for civilizations across the globe, like maize, wheat, and potatoes, are the most problematic. Bioarchaeologists can often identify agriculturalists and farmers by the prevalence of caries. It has long been established that the adoption and consumption of maize in the Americas resulted in an increase in the prevalence of dental caries (Larsen, 1987; Milner, 1984). Clark Spencer Larsen and colleagues (Larsen et al., 1996) worked with a sizeable dental assemblage (11,574 teeth from 895 individuals) from Guale Spanish Missions along the Georgia Coast (Georgia Bight) to determine rates of caries and their relationship to dietary and larger socioeconomic and political changes over time (1000 BC–AD 1702). This time span covers the precontact preagricultural, precontact agricultural, early contact, and late contact periods. They found that there was an increase in the frequency of individuals

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Biomarkers of Foodways (Diet and Nutrition)

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and teeth with caries from the precontact preagricultural period (primarily hunting and gathering) to the precontact agricultural (farming) period due to the adoption of, and increased reliance on, maize as a dietary staple during this time. There is a dramatic increase in the frequency of caries in the late contact period, though it is not explained by the higher rate of older individuals in the later periods. In the sample overall, males have fewer carious lesions on their teeth than do females (Larsen et al., 1996:184). This latter finding is attributed to the ethnohistorically-documented sexual division of labor and to possibly more frequent eating of caries-induced foods by females (Larsen et al., 1996:198). This study of dental caries from coastal sites along the Georgia Bight allows us to look at biological indicators of changing foodways, induced in the latter part of the temporal sequence by socioeconomic pressures brought on by the missionization of Indigenous groups.

4.4.3

Diet Reconstruction Based on Stable Isotope Analysis

Understanding the specifics of diet is important because the diet of an individual or a group is determined by environmental and social constraints and there are differences at the regional, intergroup, and intragroup levels. Bone chemistry in dietary reconstruction is good for understanding the average diet over the last 10–20 years of an individual’s lifetime. Since isotope values are analyzed at the individual level, we can compare diets within groups and between groups based on sex, age, inferred socioeconomic status (elite vs. commoner), and temporal and spatial variation. Isotope values should not be used to reconstruct diet alone - it is imperative that they are used in conjunction with zooarchaeological and paleoethnobotanical data from the same site. The underlying principles and specific methods of data collection and analysis are discussed in Chap. 5. Bioarchaeologists working with individuals from Guale Mission sites (Georgia Coast) analyzed the stable isotope ratios of stable carbon and nitrogen in bone collagen (Larsen et al., 1996; Schoeninger et al. 1990). They found that during the mission period there was a decrease in the consumption of marine-originating foods and an increase in maize consumption. These data correlate with the increase in dental caries in the mission period sites as discussed above (Larsen et al., 1996).

4.4.4

Growth Disruption

Human skeletal systems are in a growth state from infancy to approximately 18–21 years of age. The rate of growth is not constant and is affected (both positively and negatively) by both diet and disease. Of interest to bioarchaeologists are instances of growth disruptions. Growth disruptions are indicated by the presence of hypoplasias - horizontal lines on tooth enamel that are the result of the disruption

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of enamel-producing cells during the time teeth are developing (age 0–10 years) (Larsen, 1990: Fig. 12.4). The most common disruptors are illness/disease and dietary stress (i.e., starvation). The Mission period Indigenous residents of the Georgia sites had higher rates of hypoplasias than did their precontact predecessors (Hutchinson & Larsen, 1988, 1990; Simpson et al., 1990). At one site, the hypoplasias were wider in the Mission period residents than in the precontact period individuals, meaning that the stress(es) during the Mission period were greater or lasted longer (Larsen, 1990). While the hypoplasias can be attributed to a mix of factors, poor diet is an important one.

4.4.5

Iron Deficiency Anemia

Hypoferremia, iron deficiency anemia, results from blood loss, poor diet and nutrition, and/or an individual’s inability to absorb iron. Skeletal markers of iron deficiency anemia include a condition known as cribra orbitalia (spongy-looking bone lesions in the eye orbits) and porotic hyperostosis (spongy-looking lesions on the cranial vault) (Larsen, 1990: Fig. 12.6). The prevalence of cribra orbitalia and porotic hyperostosis during the precontact period along the Georgia coast is low (less than 8% of the population) (Larsen, 1990). However, during the Mission period, 27% of the overall population were affected, with 73% of the juveniles exhibiting the lesions (Larsen, 1990). Larsen explains this drastic increase as a result in the increasing reliance on maize as the dietary staple and the decreased consumption of marine foods. The co-consumption of marine foods and maize allows for the absorption of iron from both food sources, so a decrease in fish consumption would result in a decrease in the absorption of iron (Larsen, 1990).

4.5

Biomarkers of Foodways (Physical Work and Activity)

The cumulative effects of lifelong physical activities leave indicators on an individual’s skeleton. Bioarchaeologists study these indicators to understand the types and degree of physical work an individual participated in over the course of their life. The two specific indicators for this type of analysis are osteoarthritis and skeletal morphology.

4.5.1

Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis is a degenerative joint disease in which the articular joints in the skeleton degenerate. Basically, the cartilage in a joint breaks down, causing stiffness, swelling, pain, and loss of motion/flexibility. In extreme cases of cartilage

4.6

Discussion

53

disintegration, there can be loss of bone. The causes of osteoarthritis include injury, repetitive stress, or overuse of a joint. Typically this disease is seen in people over 50 years of age, and females are more likely to suffer from it than males. Typically osteoarthritis affects the hands, hips, knees, and spine, though any joint can be affected. Studies of the occurrence of osteoarthritis in Georgia Coast sites indicate that in precontact times, more males than females (11.8–1.4%) suffered from this disease of the thoracic vertebrae. Temporally, there was a marked increase from the precontact to Mission periods, regardless of sex. However, more males (65.4%) than females (57.5%) suffered from the condition, as evidenced by the thoracic vertebrae, though Larsen and colleagues note that “...all articular joints show comparable increases’‘ (Larsen, 1990:344; Larsen et al., 1996). This is evidence that the type of work and the workload changed from the precontact to Mission period, becoming more physically demanding. The data also suggest that males and females did similar physical work in the Mission period than in the earlier precontact period (Larsen, 1990).

4.5.2

Skeletal Morphology

Skeletal bone is affected by an individual’s physical activity or inactivity. Increased physical activity leads to bones that are more robust, thicker, and stronger. Marked decrease or lack of physical activity leads to bone loss. It may be difficult to differentiate the effects of workload on skeletal morphology from the effects of aging (i.e., osteoarthritis). Morphological changes to the skeleton are used to infer specific occupational activities and mobility. Larsen and colleagues recorded morphological changes in the femur and humerus and interpreted them as indicators of increased mechanical demand (work load) during the Mission period (Larsen et al., 1996; Ruff & Larsen, 1990). Using the morphology of the mid-shaft region of the femur, it appears that the Indigenous population overall became less mobile (Ruff, 1987), while some of the males became more mobile during the same period. The former reflects the increased sedentism of the Mission communities, while the latter may reflect consequences of the repartimiento – or forced labor of males on Spanish work projects far from home (Hann, 1988).

4.6

Discussion

The San Luis mission community is an unique documented instance of Indigenous elites, warriors, and civilians, negotiating sustained contact with their Spanish counterparts. Genetic research shows that the indigenous populations living in mission communities post-1650 were biologically homogenous, though probably maintained some interethnic cultural distinctions (Stojanowski, 2005). This is in

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contrast to the early Mission period when the genetic distance between Apalachee Province and Guale and Timucua provinces was distinctive (the latter two show less differences between them) (Stojanowski, 2005). Historical documents indicate that the Apalachee purposefully maintained a distinct identity through genetic and cultural isolation until the late mission period. Ethnic identity is central to foodways – expressed in specific foods, cooking styles, cooking and serving wares, and in the physical acts of cooking, serving, and consuming. The consequences of sustained Spanish and Indigenous interactions and Spanish social and economic policies led to massive population declines, with the male segment of the population especially hard-hit. The Spanish repartimiento was a labor tax that required single men to labor in service to the Crown for at least 1 week and more often 2 weeks or more (Bushnell, 1994:122). In reality it meant they had to spend significant amounts of time away from their families and communities, leaving their work to be completed by their kin. To avoid these obligations, some of the men would disappear completely to areas not under Spanish control. The consequences of the repartimineto, disease, and fugitivism left a void in communities as the number of potential male partners diminished. The Spanish buttressed the dwindling population by consolidating smaller or outlying communities and relocating them to strategic mission sites. By 1675 up to 10% of the indigenous population of Apalachee Province was non-Apalachee (Hann, 1988). Stojanowski (2005:426) describes these communities as polyethnic in which members spoke different languages, may have included members from groups that were enemies prior to missionization, and likely were majority Christian. The newly consolidated communities of “Spanish-Catholic-Mission-Indians’‘ enabled disparate ethnic groups to rally around this newly formed identity, devising a new social peer group that superseded former social barriers to intergroup mating (Stojanowski, 2005:427, 2013). At San Luis and St. Augustine, it is likely that Spanish men married, cohabitated, or consorted with Apalachee women, possibly along class lines (i.e., elite colonists married elite indigenous women to form strategic alliances; nonelite colonial men married nonelite indigenous women) (Voss, 2008). Whether sexual relations took place by consent or coercion is not clear; however, the genetic data show that these populations became biologically homogenous and produced “new generations of Catholics born in polyethnic settings in an unprecedented social period” (Stojanowski, 2005:426).

4.7

Summary

Bioarchaeology is the study of the human biological component of the archaeological record to better understand past human lifeways and lifestyles and is especially useful in understanding past foodways. Bioarchaeologists identify and analyze human skeletal remains to gain as much information as possible about individuals and burial populations. Through the use of visual and chemical analyses we can determine what an individual or population ate; if they were undernourished,

References

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suffered from diseases, or encountered stressful periods during adolescent growth; and the average life expectancy for a community. Bioarchaeological studies of burial populations in La Florida are limited but informative about the indigenous experience during the period of colonization. The best data are from the Guale mission sites on the Georgia coast. Bioarchaeologists collected multiple data points from burial populations dating from the precontact fishing-hunting-gathering, precontact maize farmers, and late contact/mission periods. They recorded an increase in occurrences of caries, anemia, and skeletal morphological traits of mechanical demand through time. These data show that the Guale shifted away from eating seafood and increased their consumption of maize. This has significant implications for the ways in which foods were processed, stored, and cooked and would have required shifts in Guale foodways.

References Bass, W. M. (1987) Human osteology: A laboratory and field manual. Special Publication No. 2 of the Missouri Archaeological Society. Beaubien, H. F. (2019). Field conservation of skeletal remains: Stabilization treatment techniques and implications for future analysis. Advances in Archaeological Practice, 7(1), 23–29. https:// doi.org/10.1017/aap.2018.36 Buikstra, J. E. (1977). Biocultural dimensions of Archeological study: A regional perspective. In R. L. Blakely (Ed.), Biocultural Adaptation in Prehistoric America (Proceedings of the southern anthropological society 11) (pp. 67–84). University of Georgia Press. Buikstra, J. E., & Ubelaker, D. H. (1994). Standards for data collection from human skeletal remains. Arkansas Archaeological Survey. Buikstra, J. E., DeWitte, S. N., Agarwal, S. C., Baker, B. J., Bartelink, E. J., Berger, E., Blevins, K. E., Bolhofner, K., Boutin, A. T., Brickley, M. B., Buzon, M. R., de la Cova, C., Goldstein, L., Gowland, R., Grauer, A. L., Gregoricka, L. A., Halcrow, S. E., Hall, S. A., Hillson, S., Kakaliouras, A. M., Klaus, H. D., Knudson, K. J., Knüsel, C. J., Larsen, C. S., Martin, D. L., Milner, G. R., Novak, M., Nystrom, K. C., Pacheco-Forés, S. I., Prowse, T. L., Schug, G. R., Roberts, C. A., Rothwell, J. E., Santos, A. L., Stojanowski, C., Stone, A. C., Stull, K. E., Temple, D. H., Torres, C. M., Marla Toyne, J., Tung, T. A., Ullinger, J., Wiltschke-Schrotta, K., & Zakrzewski, S. R. (2022). Twenty-first century bioarchaeology: Taking stock and moving forward. American Journal of Biological Anthropology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.24494 Bushnell, A. T. (1994). Situado and sabana Spain’s support system for the presidio and mission provinces of Florida. American Museum of Natural History. Distributed by the University of Georgia Press. Hann, J. H. (1988). Apalachee: The land between the rivers. University Presses of Florida. Hutchinson, D. L., & Larsen, C. S. (1988). Determination of stress episode duration from linear enamel hypoplasias: A case study from St. Catherines Island, Georgia. Human Biology, 60(1), 93–110. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41463980 Hutchinson, D. L., & Larsen, C. S. (1990). Stress and lifeway change on the Georgia Coast: The evidence from enamel hypoplasia. In C. S. Larsen (Ed.), The archaeology of mission Santa Catalina de Guale: Biocultural interpretations of a population in transition (pp. 50–65). Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History. Killgrove, K. (2013). Bioarchaeology. Oxford bibliographies. Electronic document. https://doi.org/ 10.1093/OBO/9780199766567-0121. Accessed 14 July 2022.

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Larsen, C. S. (1987). Bioarchaeological interpretations of subsistence economy and behavior from human skeletal remains. In M. B. Schiffer (Ed.), Advances in archaeological method and theory (Vol. 10, pp. 339–445). Larsen, C. S. (ed) (1990). The archaeology of Mission Santa Catalina de Guale: 2. Biocultural interpretations of a population in transition. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, no. 68. Larsen, C. S. (2002). Bioarchaeology: The lives and lifestyles of past people. Journal of Archaeological Research, 10(2), 119–166. Larsen, C. S., Ruff, C. B., & Griffin, M. C. (1996). Implications of changing biomechanical and nutritional environments for activity and lifeway in the eastern Spanish borderlands. In B. J. Baker & L. L. Kealhofer (Eds.), Disease and demographic collapse in the Spanish borderlands (pp. 95–125). University Press of Florida. Márquez-Grant, N., & Fibiger, L. (Eds.). (2011). The Routledge handbook of archaeological human remains and legislation: An international guide to laws and practice in the excavation and treatment of archaeological human remains. Routledge. Milner, G. R. (1984). Dental caries in the permanent dentition of a Mississippian period population from the American Midwest. Collegium Anthropologicum, 8, 77–79. NPS. (2022). Compliance. Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. National Park Service, US Department of the Interior. https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nagpra/compliance.htm Organ, J. M., Teaford, M. F., & Larsen, C. S. (2005). Dietary inferences from dental occlusal microwear at mission San Luis de Apalachee. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 128, 801–811. Rose, J. C., & Ungar, P. S. (1998). Gross dental Wear and dental microwear in historical perspective. In K. W. Alt, F. W. Rosing, & M. Teschler-Nicola (Eds.), Dental anthropology (pp. 349–386). Springer. Ruff, C. B. (1987). Sexual dimorphism in human lower limb bone structure: Relationship to subsistence strategy and sexual division of labor. Journal of Human Evolution, 16, 391–416. Ruff, C. B., & Larsen, C. S. (1990). Postcranial biomechanical adaptations to subsistence strategy changes on the Georgia coast. In The Archaeology of Mission Santa Catalina de Guale: 2. Biocultural Interpretations of a Population in Transition (Vol. 68, pp. 94–120). American Museum of Natural History. SAA. (2021). The society for American archaeology statement concerning the treatment of human remains. Society for American Archaeology. https://www.saa.org/quick-nav/saa-media-room/ saa-news/2021/04/30/the-saa-adopts-new-statement-concerning-the-treatment-of-humanremains Schoeninger, M. J., van der Merwe, N. J., Moore, K., Lee-Thorp, J., & Larsen, C. S. (1990). Decrease in diet quality between the prehistoric and contact periods. In C. S. Larsen (Ed.), The archaeology of Mission Santa Catalina de Guale: 2. Biocultural interpretations of a population in transition (pp. 78–93). Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, no. 68. Schultz, A. H. (1944). Biographical Memoir of Aleš Hrdlička, 1869-1943. National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs, XXXIII. http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographicalmemoirs/memoir-pdfs/hrdlika-ales.pdf Scott, R. M., & Halcrow, S. E. (2017). Investigating weaning using dental microwear analysis: A review. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 11, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep. 2016.11.026 Seidemann, R. M. (2004). Bones of contention: A comparative examination of law governing human remains from archaeological contexts in formerly colonial countries. Louisiana Law Review, 64(3), 545–588. https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=604 5&context=lalrev Simpson, S. W., Hutchinson, D. L., & Larsen, C. L. (1990). Coping with stress: Tooth size, dental defects, and age-at-death. In C. S. Larsen (Ed.), The archaeology of Mission Santa Catalina de Guale: 2. Biocultural interpretations of a population in transition (pp. 66–77). Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, no. 68.

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Smith, B. H. (1984). Patterns of molar wear in hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 63, 39–56. Stojanowski, C. M. (2005). The bioarchaeology of identity in Spanish colonial Florida: Social and evolutionary transformation before, during, and after demographic collapse. American Anthropologist, 107(3), 417–431. Stojanowski, C. M. (2013). Mission cemeteries, mission peoples: Historical and evolutionary dimensions of intracemetery bioarchaeology in Spanish Florida. University Press of Florida. Strani, F., Profico, A., Manzi, G., Pushkina, D., Raia, P., Sardella, R., & DeMiguel, D. (2018). MicroWeaR: A new R package for dental microwear analysis. Ecology and Evolution, 8(14), 7022–7030. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4222 Teaford, M. F. (1991). Dental microwear: What can it tell us about diet and dental function? In M. A. Kelley & C. S. Larsen (Eds.), Advances in dental anthropology (pp. 342–356). WileyLiss. Teaford, M. F., & Lytle, J. D. (1996). Diet-induced changes in rates if human tooth microwear: A case study involving stone-ground maize. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 100, 143–147. Voss, B. (2008). Gender, race, and labor in the archaeology of the Spanish colonial Americas. Current Anthropology, 49(5), 861–893. White, T. D. (1991). Human osteology. Academic.

Additional Resources American Association of Physical Anthropologists. – https://physanth.org/ ARCH 365 Podcast, Episode 153 “Bioarchaeology”. – https://www.archaeologypodcastnetwork. com/arch365/153?rq=bioarchaeology Archaeological Ethics Database: Burials and Human Remains. – https://archaeologicalethics.org/ keyword/burials-and-human-remains/ Dr. Killgrove’s “A Brief History of Bioarchaeology – Part I: America”. – http://www. poweredbyosteons.org/2012/01/brief-history-of-bioarchaeological.html Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. – https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nagpra/ index.htm Paleopathology Association. – https://paleopathology-association.wildapricot.org/

Chapter 5

Chemical Analysis of Foodways

Abstract Chemical analysis is a tool used by archaeologists to reconstruct individual dietary profiles. We can identify the chemical dietary signatures in skeletal remains or from residues found on, or absorbed into, ceramic pots to reconstruct human diets. This chapter provides an overview of stable isotope analysis as it applies to foodways archaeology. Bone chemistry, paleodiet reconstruction, and visible and absorbed residues analysis are discussed. Examples from Spanish La Florida and other areas are given to illustrate the types of data that are possible with this form of analysis. Keywords Archaeometry · Stable isotopes · Residue analysis · Lipids · Dietary reconstruction · Guale Province In this chapter different methods for dietary reconstruction are discussed including destructive and non-destructive organic residue analysis and stable isotope analysis. I separate dietary reconstruction based on stable isotopes from the bioarchaeology chapter and include it here because it is a different set of methods and techniques and need not involve human skeletal remains. One does not need to be a bioarchaeologist to conduct stable isotope analysis and interpret the data. In fact many archaeologists send their samples to specialized labs for stable isotope analysis. These labs may be private or housed in universities. I worked as a graduate research assistant in the Bone Chemistry Lab at the University of Florida from 1998 through 2001. During this time I learned best practices for choosing, handling, and processing samples; lab and equipment maintenance; how to package and load samples into the mass spectrometer (housed in the Department of Geological Sciences); and how to analyze, interpret, and ultimately understand the results of such analyses in a foodways context.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. M. Peres, Foodways Archaeology - Methods and Cases, SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41017-8_5

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5.1

5

Chemical Analysis of Foodways

Organic Residue Analysis

Ceramic vessels were, and are, used for cooking all manner of individual foodstuffs and more complex recipes. As kitchen workhorses, they can provide general and sometimes detailed information about their use-life through the analysis of absorbed residues and visible residues. In pots that do not have an interior coating, or glaze, the clay matrix acts like a sponge, readily absorbing traces of the foods and meals cooked within. The absorbed residues in the vessel walls may be a palimpsest of all the foods ever cooked in the pot, a portion of the foods ever cooked in the pot, or the last cooking event before the vessel was discarded (Miller et al., 2020; Reber, 2022; Reber & Hart, 2008). The residues that are absorbed into the vessel walls are largely made up of lipids (fatty acids) because they do not wash away with water (hydrophobic) but do dissolve in cooking liquids (hydrophilic) (Reber & Hart, 2008). Visible residues are typically crusty blackened or carbonized dregs on the interior of the vessel’s surface (Roffet-Salque et al., 2017). They may be a buildup from multiple cooking events or the result of one burned meal (Reber & Hart, 2008). Absorbed residues can also be used to determine different types of cooking methods associated with specific vessel shapes or foodstuffs (Roffet-Salque et al., 2017). Analysis of the absorbed and visible residues involves multiple steps and specialized training and facilities. The analysis of absorbed residues requires that the potsherd under study be destroyed to extract the chemical compounds (Reber, 2022; Reber & Hart, 2008). For visible residues, the crust is removed from the pot (RoffetSalque et al., 2017: Fig. 1). The lipids are chemically extracted with a solvent. The extracted compounds are then analyzed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/S). The results are a mass spectrum for each compound in the residue. These results are then analyzed through various means as to their origin (Reber & Hart, 2008). In a study on potsherds from archaeological sites in New York state dating from the Woodland through late prehistoric periods, Reber and Hart (2008) found the vessels were used to process both meats and plants. The frequent presence (12/20) of tree resin in the samples is interpreted as a waterproof sealant used on ceramics (Reber & Hart, 2008: 133). The study also indicated that some vessels were used for high heat processing, such as frying, roasting, toasting, or used to carry fire. Coupled with phytolith analysis (see Chap. 3, this volume), the residue analysis suggests some of the pots may have been used to process maize (Reber & Hart, 2008:137).

5.2

Diet Reconstruction Based on Stable Isotope Analysis

Stable isotope analysis is an exciting avenue for understanding what foods people ate or beverages they drank in the past, in the absence of physical food remains. Understanding the specifics of diet is important because an individual’s and a group’s diet is informed by environmental and social constraints and there are

5.2

Diet Reconstruction Based on Stable Isotope Analysis

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differences at the regional, intergroup, and intragroup levels. Bone chemistry in dietary reconstruction is good for understanding the average diet over the last 10–20 years of an individual’s lifetime. Since isotope values are analyzed at the individual level, we can compare diets within groups and between groups based on individual’s sex, age, socioeconomic status, and temporally, among other classifications (Fernandes & Jaouen, 2017). More recently, the use of compound specific amino acid stable isotope analysis has shown to be useful to determine between marine and terrestrial sources of proteins (Webb et al., 2018). Isotope values should not be used to reconstruct diet alone – it is imperative that they be used in conjunction with zooarchaeological and paleoethnobotanical data from the same site.

5.2.1

Basics of Stable Isotope Analysis

To understand how we can reconstruct individual and group diets based on stable isotope values, we need to understand the basics of this type of analysis. The primary focus is on the quantity of carbon and nitrogen present in bone collagen, bone apatite, and tooth enamel for diet reconstructions. Isotopes are atoms of a given element with different numbers of neutrons (Table 5.1). There are two types of isotopes – stable and radioactive. Dietary reconstructions are focused on the former because they do not break down over time. Fractionation is the process by which an organism selectively takes up one isotope over another. This can occur through (1) kinetic (slower/faster uptake), (2) diffusion, (3) thermal dynamics (change of states). Isotope values are noted in the delta value (δ), which is the isotopic composition compared to a standard. This is given in parts per mil (‰). The standard for 13C analysis is marine sediment known as Pee Dee Belemnite (PDB). Marine sediments are rich in δ13C and most archaeological samples have less 13C than PDB, thus the δ13C is expressed as a negative value. The standard used in 15 N analysis is Air. Most archaeological samples have more 15 N than air, thus δ15N values are expressed as positive values. Carbon isotopes provide the relative abundance of certain foods in the diet. It all starts with plants – the foundation of most/many/all diets. There are three ways, or photosynthetic pathways, in which plants consume carbon dioxide (CO2), and incorporate Carbon 13 and Carbon 14 into their cells. These are Calvin cycle (C3 Table 5.1 Primary isotopes used in ancient diet reconstruction Isotope 12C 13C 14C 14N 15N

Number of protons (P) + number of neutrons (N) 6P+6N 6P+7N 6P+8N 7P+7N 7P+8N

State (stable or radioactive) Stable Stable Radioactive Stable Stable

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pathway), Hatch and Slack (C4 pathway), and Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM pathway). The first is the Calvin cycle or C3 pathway. C3 plants, such as those that are native to more temperate regions, are selective in their use of carbon isotopes, and discriminate more against 13C and 14C. This means they take up less 13C and 14C than do other types of plants. C3 plants include the majority of leafy plants, wheat, grapes, apples, and carrots, among others. During the Calvin Cycle there are two stages in which plants fraction carbon isotopes. The first is during CO2 uptake, when plants preferentially take in 12C and reject 13C. The second is the preference for 12C in dissolved CO2 in conversion to phosphoglyceric acid. Thus, C3 plants can have a wide range of isotopic values of δ13C, ranging from -40‰ to -22‰, with a mean of approximately -26‰, all due to the preferential intake of 12C. The C4 photosynthetic pathway, also called Hatch and Slack, includes subtropical and tropical grasses like maize, sorghum, sugarcane, millet, yucca, and prickly pear. C4 plants discriminate less against 13C than do C3 plants because they use a different set of chemical reactions, thus their δ13C values have more 13C (they are less negative). This means they take up more 13C and 14C than do their C3 counterparts. The range of δ13C values for C4 plants is -19‰ to -6‰. The third photosynthetic pathway is Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM), which involves aspects of the C3 and C4 pathways. The extent to which of these two it more closely follows is light and moisture dependent, though they tend to have a more C4-like signal. CAM plants include desert succulents, cacti, pineapple, maguey, bromeliads, and prickly pear (Opuntia sp.). The CAM photosynthetic pathway can occur in either the day or night. In areas where the days are hot, short and/or dry, the plants fix CO2 much like C4 plants. In places where the days are cool, long, and/or wet, the plants will fix CO2 similar to C3 plants. These plants can also alternate between the two, giving them intermediate values. CAM δ13C values can vary as much as 17‰ in a single species. One thing to keep in mind is the canopy effect on C3 plants in forest environments. In these environments, the tree canopy closes off the rest of the forest from the atmosphere. As leaves fall to the floor, they decompose, releasing more 12C than 13C into the local atmosphere. This results in a build-up of 12C under the canopy. Plants living under the canopy have different atmospheric reservoirs than the canopy itself, which results in this understory plants having higher δ13C values, in the range of -36‰ to -40‰ (mean of -26‰) compared to normal C3 plants. The ratio of heavy to light carbon isotopes continues up through the food chain. The animals eating these plants will also have a high (or enriched) δ13C value. Plants - - > herbivores - - > carnivores & omnivores When interpreting 15N ratios, we must take into account the trophic level effect (Table 5.2). With each step up in the trophic level the amount of 15N increases – it becomes concentrated. Both marine and terrestrial environments are affected by this phenomenon, but marine environments are more enriched overall with 15N than terrestrial ones. Terrestrial nitrogen is the relationship between nitrogen and animal body tissues. Ambrose (1991) found that climate and physiology play a large part in

5.2

Diet Reconstruction Based on Stable Isotope Analysis

63

Table 5.2 Trophic level effect on nitrogen fractionation Terrestrial

Marine

Food chain 2nd degree carnivores 1st degree carnivores ⬆ Herbivores ⬆ Terrestrial plants (base of food chain) 2nd degree marine carnivores 1st degree marine carnivores ⬆ Marine herbivores ⬆ Marine plants (blue-green algae reefs)

δ values 10–12‰ δ15N 6–10‰ δ15N 3–7‰ δ15N 0–6‰ δ15N 14–19‰ δ15N 11–15‰ δ15N 10–11‰ δ15N 4–9‰ δ15N

how much nitrogen gets taken up or fixed in the system. Organisms in hot and dry climates have more positive δ15N values, while those in cool and wet climates have less positive δ15N values due to how nitrogen is fixed from the atmosphere (see Ambrose, 1991 for a detailed explanation). The implication for reconstructing diets is that you need to know the fauna and flora of the region/locale in which the archaeological assemblage originates to truly understand the isotopic ratios of a given population. The differences in the carbon isotopic signatures of people can tell us about what people were eating. In terms of skeletal remains, we can analyze the ratio of 13C and 14C in bone collagen (the organic part of the bone). Carbon values in bone collagen reflect the isotopic ratios of dietary protein eaten during life. People who eat a diet that consists primarily of marine foods have a higher (more positive) 15N/14N and 13C/12C ratios than terrestrial eaters (Walker & DeNiro, 1986). C-4 plants (like maize) concentrate 13C, thus the 13C/12C ratios of maize-dependent populations may approach or exceed those of people who eat seafood (Walker & DeNiro, 1986). Carbon isotopes in bone apatite carbonate are mainly reflective of the whole diet. Thus, it is prudent to combine the analysis of 15N/14N with 13C/12C ratios from both bone collagen and apatite to assess the role of marine and terrestrial resources. Another consideration is the variation of stable isotopes within a plant (leaves, stems, seeds, etc.). For example in maize, it is advisable to analyze the edible portion (kernels/seeds) because lipids (fats) are considerably more negative in δ15N than other parts. In animals, different body tissues will have different values because of different biochemical fractions. The carbon source of marine plants is isotopically different from terrestrial plants. Marine environments are more similar to C4 than to C3 terrestrial plants. Freshwater organisms are more like those from terrestrial environments. If you are researching the differences between marine and estuary environments then use the values for both δ13C and δ15N (Tauber, 1981). Hutchinson et al. (2000) provide δ13C and δ15N values for 184 individuals from 28 archaeological sites spanning the pre-Mission (400 BC) through Mission periods

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(AD 1600–1700). The inland Florida sites during the Mission period returned average δ13C values of -13.7‰, while northern coastal Florida sites returned δ13C values of -16.1‰ (Hutchinson et al., 2000: Table 6–5.) The inland samples are less negative than their coastal counterparts, meaning the inland populations were eating more C4 plants than people at the coast.

5.3

Experimental Studies with Absorbed Residues

Stable isotope analysis of residues in ceramic cooking pots gives us insight into the meals that were prepared in them. Experimental studies of both carbonized and absorbed organic residues on ceramic vessels has shown that with different types of samples we can learn about the use-life of the pot, including a sum of all the meals cooked in a pot as well as the final meal (or cooking event) (Miller et al., 2020). The multi-year experiment included cooking weekly meals in new La Chamba ceramic pots, collecting roadkill, grinding maize and wheat in Christine Hastorf’s garage, and purposefully burning some of the meals (Anwar, 2020). The analysis of bone collagen and bone apatite is used to estimate the isotopic composition of human diet. These types of studies taken together with data from other foodways categories discussed in this book, can give us a more holistic and individualized look into foodways in the past.

5.4

Dietary Reconstructions of the Mission Period

Due to preservation issues in the Southeastern United States, few stable isotope studies have been conducted on Mission period populations. In the Guale Province of coastal Georgia, stable isotope analysis of human skeletal remains shows that the mission communities were eating more maize than their predecessors and less seafood (Larsen et al., 1992; Larsen et al., 2001; Schoeninger et al., 1990). Similar analyses in Apalachee Province show that the communities at San Luis de Talimali and San Pedro y Pablo de Patale were also eating more maize during the Mission period, with a slighter decrease in the consumption of marine-originating foods, though it appears that seafood was not as important during the pre-Mission period in this area as it was in coastal Georgia (Ezzo et al., 1995; Hutchinson et al., 2000:111) and for the people further south in Florida (Hutchinson et al., 2016). The extensive stable isotope analysis of the diets pre-Mission and Mission period communities shows that prior to Spanish colonization, Indigenous groups had more localized subsistence practices. The major differences were between coastal and inland communities in the preMission period. After Spanish colonization and missionization, the stable isotope values suggest diets across the region became more homogenous. Even more limited in number in the Southeastern United States are studies on organic residues on, and in, pottery. Eleanora Reber has conducted the bulk of these

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types of analysis, but none from vessels used during the Mission period. A study of 16 ceramic pots from the Late Woodland through Late Mississippian occupations of the George Reeves site (11S650), in the American Bottom, shows dietary variations and the presence of maize by AD 900–1000 (Reber et al., 2020). Other residue studies have focused on identifying the presence of the Black Drink – a ceremonial tea made from yaupon holly (Ilex vomitoria) (Crown et al., 2012; Dozier et al., 2020; Emerson, 2015, 2018; Emerson & Pauketat, 2015; Hudson, 1979). While the use of compound specific amino acid stable isotope analysis is still fairly new in archaeology, the implications for foodways studies are promising (Reber, 2022). Chakraborty et al. (2020) analyzed an assemblage of ceramic pots from the site of Kotada Bhadli, occupied during the Indus period. The faunal analysis suggests that cattle/water buffalo lived into old age and the majority of caprines (sheep and goats) were slaughtered when young (Chakraborty et al., 2018, 2020). The analysis of absorbed lipid residues indicates that cattle/water buffalo were raised on C4 type plant diets, and were mainly raised as dairy animals. Their research suggests that dairy was an important part of the diet and as evidenced through stable isotope analysis of lipid residues in ceramic pots, integrated with dietary, demographic, and mortality data of the animals themselves. This is important work that builds on decades of research in this area and can serve as a model for research in La Florida.

5.5

Summary

The potential of analytical techniques like stable isotope analyses to allow us to have a deeper more nuanced understanding of foodways and the associated material culture is great. Understanding what people ate through the analysis of bone apatite and collagen is exciting as we are able to see values on an individual level. Of course, there are ethical and legal concerns that need to be taken into consideration before any such work is initiated. Visible and absorbed residues can tell us how people in the past used ceramic vessels. Residue analysis is limited by the few number of labs and trained analysts available for such studies.

References Ambrose, S. (1991). Effects of diet, climate and physiology on nitrogen isotope abundances in terrestrial foodwebs. Journal of Archaeological Science, 18(3), 293–317. https://doi.org/10. 1016/0305-4403(91)90067-Y Anwar, Y. (2020) To recreate ancient recipes, check out the vestiges of clay pots. Berkeley News. Electronic document. https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/09/11/to-recreate-ancient-recipes-checkout-the-vestiges-of-clay-pots/. Accessed 18 April 2021. Chakraborty, K. S., Chakraborty, S., Le Roux, P., Miller, H. M.-L., Shirvalkar, P., & Rawat, Y. (2018). Enamel isotopic data from the domesticated animals at Kotada Bhadli, Gujarat,

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reveals specialized animal husbandry during the Indus civilization. Journal of Archaeological Sciences: Reports, 21, 183–199. Chakraborty, K. S., Slater, G. F., Miller, H. M.-L., Shirvalkar, P., & Rawat, Y. (2020). Compound specific isotope analysis of lipid residues provides the earliest direct evidence of dairy product processing in South Asia. Scientific Reports, 10, 16095. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-02072963-y Crown, P. L., Emerson, T. E., Jiyan, G., Jeffrey Hurst, W., Pauketat, T. R., & Ward, T. (2012). Ritual black drink consumption at Cahokia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(35), 13944–13949. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1208404109 Dozier, C. A., Kim, D., & Russell, D. H. (2020). Chemical residue evidence in Leon plain pottery from the Toyah phase (1300–1650 CE) in the American Southern Plains. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2020.102450 Emerson, T. E. (2015). Black drink (Cassina). In K. B. Metheny & M. C. Beaudry (Eds.), The archaeology of food: An encyclopedia (Vol. 1, pp. 63–64). Rowman and LittleField. Emerson, T. E. (2018). The history and prehistory of black drink. In T. M. Peres & A. Deter-Wolf (Eds.), Baking, Bourbon, and black drink: Foodways archaeology in the Southeastern United States (pp. 63–80). University of Alabama Press. Emerson, T. E., & Pauketat, T. R. (2015). Identifying black drink ceremonialism at Cahokia: Chemical residue analysis. Illinois Antiquity, 50(3), 6–7. Ezzo, J. A., Larsen, C. S., & Burton, J. H. (1995). Elemental signatures of human diets from the Georgia bight. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 98(4), 471–481. Fernandes, R., & Jaouen, K. (2017). Isotopes in archaeology. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 9, 1305–1306. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/10.1007/s12520-017-0507-4 Hudson, C. (Ed.). (1979). Black drink: A native American tea. University of Georgia Press. Hutchinson, D. L., Larsen, C. S., Norr, L., & Schoeninger, M. J. (2000). Agricultural melodies and alternative harmonies in Florida and Georgia. In P. M. Lambert (Ed.), Bioarchaeological studies of life in the age of agriculture: A view from the southeast (pp. 96–115). University Press of Alabama. Hutchinson, D. L., Norr, L., Schober, T., Marquardt, W. H., Walker, K. J., Newsome, L. A., & Margaret Scarry, C. (2016). The Calusa and prehistoric subsistence in central and South Gulf Coast Florida. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 41, 55–73. Larsen, C. S., Schoeninger, M. J., van der Merwe, N. J., Moore, K. M., & Lee-Thorpe, J. A. (1992). Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope signatures of human dietary change in the Georgia bight. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 89, 197–214. Larsen, C. S., Griffin, M. C., Hutchinson, D. L., Noble, V. E., Norr, L., Pastor, R. F., Ruff, C. B., Russell, K. F., Schoeninger, M. J., Schultz, M., Simpson, S. W., & Teaford, M. F. (2001). Frontiers of contact: Bioarchaeology of Spanish Florida. Journal of World Prehistory, 15(1), 69–123. Miller, M. J., Whelton, H. L., Swift, J. A., Maline, S., Hammann, S., Cramp, L. J. E., McCleary, A., Taylor, G., Vacca, K., Becks, F., Evershed, R. P., & Hastorf, C. A. (2020). Interpreting ancient food practices: Stable isotope and molecular analyses of visible and absorbed residues from a year-long cooking experiment. Scientific Reports, 10, 13704. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598020-70109-8 Reber, E. A. (2022). An archaeologist’s guide to organic residues in pottery. University of Alabama Press. Reber, E. A., & Hart, J. P. (2008). Visible clues: The analysis of visible pottery residues from New York state with gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. In J. P. Hart (Ed.), Current northeast paleoethnobotany II (New York state museum bulletin series) (Vol. 512, pp. 129–140). Reber, E. A., Kelly, J., Boswell, E., & Lane, C. S. (2020). Molecular evidence of changing foodways across the Mississippian transition at the George Reeves site (11S650). Southeastern Archaeology, 39(2), 71–88. Roffet-Salque, M., Dunne, J., Altoft, D. T., Casanova, E., Cramp, L. J. E., Smyth, J., Whelton, H. L., & Evershed, R. P. (2017). From the inside out: Upscaling organic residue analyses of archaeological ceramics. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 16, 627–640.

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Schoeninger, M. J., van der Merwe, N. J., Moore, K., Thorpe, J. L., & Larsen, C. S. (1990). Decrease in diet quality between the prehistoric and contact periods. In C. S. Larsen (Ed.), The archaeology of Mission Santa Catalina de Guale: 2. Biocultural interpretations of a population in transition (Anthropological paper no. 68) (pp. 78–94). American Museum of Natural History. Tauber, H. (1981). 13C evidence for dietary habits of prehistoric man in Denmark. Nature, 292, 332–333. Walker, P. L., & DeNiro, M. J. (1986). Stable nitrogen and carbon isotope ratios in bone collagen as indices of prehistoric dietary dependence on marine and terrestrial resources in Southern California. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 71(1), 51–61. https://doi.org/10. 1002/ajpa.1330710107 Webb, E., Honch, N. V., Dunn, P. J. H., Linderholm, A., Eriksson, G., Liden, K., & Evershed, R. P. (2018). Compound-specific amino acid isotopic proxies for distinguishing between terrestrial and aquatic resource consumption. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 10, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-015-0309-5

Chapter 6

Ceramic Analysis and Foodways

Abstract Ceramics – one of the most ubiquitous artifact types recovered from archaeological sites – are important for building and refining chronologies and site occupational histories, determining the origins of raw materials, tracing trade networks and the movement of people and ideas, understanding a culture’s iconography, symbolism, and foodways. Central to the focus of this book is the information that ceramics can give us about food storage, processing, cooking, and serving. We can identify changes in culinary equipment that indicate the ways in which foods were prepared (multi-ingredient stews, individual dishes, baking), served, and consumed eaten (communal versus individual). Archaeologists can document changes in foodways at the household, community, and regional levels with data gleaned from ceramics. Keywords Earthenware · Majolica · Colonoware · Vessel morphology · Vessel function Archaeologists regularly recover abundant amounts of ceramics (frequently fragmented, rarely whole or complete) during site excavations. These ceramics are what is left of the dishes, or vessels, that were used for food processing, storage, cooking, and serving. While fragmentary, when thoroughly analyzed, they provide us with information about how and where food was stored, processed, cooked, and served. Large vessels were often used for storage, such as Italian dolii used for storing grain, wine, or oil (Biggs, 2015; Pieraccini, 1996). Spanish olive jars were used for shipping and storing wine, oil, vinegar, grain, honey, and other foodstuffs, and are well known from Spanish Colonial period sites (Avery, 1997; PleguezueloHernández, 1993; Worth, 2023). Traditionally, ceramics were used by archaeologists as time-markers or indicators of the presence of one culture or another at a site (Dunnell, 1986; Gibson, 1993; Griffin, 1950; Kidder, 1931; Villing & Spataro, 2015; Watson, 1990). Fortunately, the value of ceramics to inform about social practices has been recognized and new ways of inferring or determining function of specific ceramics is now the focus of many research studies (Villing & Sparato, 2015). In the study of ceramics in the United States, the focus has been processual in nature, with an aim for collecting stylistic, decorative, and manufacture data points © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. M. Peres, Foodways Archaeology - Methods and Cases, SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41017-8_6

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and analyzing trends in the collective data (South, 1978; Stark, 2003), with limited interpretations of vessel function, social meanings, or daily practices (except see Ashley, 2001; Ness, 2015, 2017; Wallis & Pluckhahn, 2018). The production and use of ceramics signaled a new direction in food storage, processing, cooking, serving, and sharing. Archaeologists debate why ceramics were first produced – out of need or demand for utilitarian or elite purposes (Aikens, 1995; Hayden, 1995; Longacre, 1995). In some regions ceramics were adopted quickly over a wide area by all socio-economic classes, in others the adoption of ceramic technology was slower and not homogeneous (Sassaman, 1995). In this chapter, I follow Stark’s (2003:194) definition of ceramics as “low-fired earthenwares, made from low-refractory clays, which are fired in the range of 700–1200 °C, and manufactured in nonindustrial settings.” Though durable, ceramics often break during their use-life. Arthur’s (2009) ethnoarchaeological study of three Gamo villages in Ethiopia found that the reuse of vessels with cracks or breaks was lower in the wealthier village in his study and higher in the poorer village (which also did not have any resident potters). He also found that cooking pots had the shortest use-life (1.0–1.9 years) due to repeated thermal shock. Serving vessels tended to last slightly longer (1.5–2.0 years), though the repeated handling through communal eating caused much of the breakage. Vessels used for transport lasted about the same length of time as serving vessels (1.5–2.0 years), and were broken due to being dropped, the carrier slipping and falling, or the vessel banging up against a rock wall during transport (Arthur, 2009). The largest vessels, storage vessels, lasted the longest (2.5–6.0 years) and were handled the least (Arthur, 2009). With limited ways in which to reuse or recycle broken pottery, there were many opportunities for discard. Its overall durability means it does not completely disintegrate or decompose, even after millenia, allowing for the recovery of abundant samples. This translates into millions of broken pot sherds deposited and recovered at archaeological sites. In this chapter I give a basic overview of ceramic analysis including the attributes recorded, qualitative and quantitative data categories, and the number of vessels represented. Following this I discuss the importance of ceramic analysis and data to our understanding of foodways. I close the chapter with case studies of Indigenousmade and imported ceramics in the Spanish Atlantic Empire and how these objects can inform us of the changing foodways of that time and place.

6.1

Why Do We Study Ceramics?

Archaeologists can agree that ceramics are one of the most, if not the most, commonly recovered artifacts at archaeological sites from time periods in which ceramics were produced. The widespread use, durability, and discard rates of ceramics means we recover them in abundant quantities. Once ceramics become broken and unsuitable in their primary use role, they are often reused or recycled, altering their end-of-life function. This may be done through grinding or pounding

6.2

Data Collection on Archaeological Ceramics

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the sherds into smaller pieces for tempering of new ceramics (grog), used to scrape or smooth unfired ceramics (Smiley, 1979), shaped into spindle whorls (Torres & Carlson, 2014), buttons (Deagan, 1987), as building material or kiln furniture (Rice, 2015; Vuković, 2015; White et al., 2015), employed as pot lids or game pieces (Hudson, 1976; Roe & Montanez, 2014; Wallace, 2006), as portable smudge pots for insect control (Heide, 1999); as floor or patio fill (Deagan, 1987; Goggin, 1960; Lister & Lister, 1981; Ortega, 1980), or as burial walls or floors (Dowd, 2008). Rice (2015: Table 11.4) provides cross-cultural ethnographic examples of ways in which broken or damaged sherds or vessels are reused by peoples with long-established ceramic traditions. Most importantly, people of all ages, genders, and socio-economic classes used pottery in their daily, religious, and ceremonial lives. To gain a fuller understanding of the multiple roles of ceramics and their importance to the people that made and used them, archaeologists study the physical characteristics, including material components, production techniques, decorative techniques and styles, morphology and size. The next section is a review of ceramic data categories and their corresponding methods.

6.2

Data Collection on Archaeological Ceramics

This section is not meant to be an exhaustive guide to pottery analysis, rather I introduce the reader to the basic types of data collected from archaeological pottery that are relevant to foodways studies. For a deeper dive into pottery analysis consult Prudence Rice’s (2015) Pottery Analysis: A Sourcebook, Second Edition. This is considered to be the go-to sourcebook for archaeological pottery analysis, and bonus - it is well written, well organized, and accessible to all, from beginning students to seasoned professionals. Ceramic analysts collect both quantitative and qualitative data in the lab to characterize ceramic sherds as the basis for further study. These data categories include describing the raw material (mineralogical composition), manufacture method, surface treatment, decoration, attribute, and vessel shapes. All of these are considered to be baseline primary data that can be collected with low-tech methods and equipment, typically by visual inspection of each sherd.

6.2.1

Raw Material

Identifying the mineralogical composition of ceramics, even at a basic level, is the first step in analysis. Identifying the paste type of ceramic sherds involves sorting sherds into four basic categories: coarse earthenware, refined earthenware, stoneware, or porcelain. Each category has a specific definition and the reader is referred to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s “Introduction to Ceramic Identification”

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webpage for these definitions and examples (FLMNH, 2019). In the case of coarse earthenwares, the paste will have inclusions, called temper, that need to be identified. At the basic level this is done through a visual inspection of a freshly broken corner of the sherd (Rice, 2015:267) to more advanced petrographic analyses using sherd thin sections (Cordell & Deagan, 2013; Cordell et al., 2017; Wallis et al., 2014, 2015). Examples of tempering in coarse earthenwares commonly recovered from Mission period sites include grit, sand, grog (crushed up ceramics), shell, and mica. Cordell (2013:84) determined that the majority of the traditional Apalachee and plain Colonoware vessels identified at Mission San Luis were made from locallysourced non-micaceous clays, while the majority of the Mission Red Filmed Colonoware vessels were made from nonlocal micaceous clays.

6.2.2

Surface Treatment

Surface decorations are analyzed to determine design motifs, iconographic elements, to assign sherds to established types, which are used to answer standard and novel anthropological research questions. For instance, Vernon and Cordell (1993) analyzed Colonoware ceramic sherds from San Luis de Talimali to determine the technological continuity between traditional Apalachee pottery (pre and post-Mission period) and Colonowares that were produced for use by Spaniards at mission sites. By combining data recorded on surface treatments, manufacture techniques, and raw material, Vernon and Cordell show that Apalachee potters produced wares that were highly consistent across types (traditional vs. Colonoware). Of course, in other areas impacted by Spanish colonization new methods of production and decoration were adopted (Hernández Sánchez, 2012). The treatment of the exterior and interior surfaces of ceramic sherds are recorded using standard nomenclature. Some surface treatments are the result of the manufacturing process – hand built (coil) (Vernon, 1988), mold, or wheel thrown. Surface treatments are also called finishing treatments and enhancements. Finishing treatments fall into two main categories – smoothing or texturing (Rice, 2015:149). Smoothing treatments are applied to vessels that are partially dried to create a more regular surface. The potter may wipe or brush the surface with cloth, leather, grass, or their hand (Rice, 2015:149). The surface may be rubbed with a smooth hard object (pebble, bone, horn, seeds) to create a burnished appearance (Rice, 2015:149). Polishing the surface can be achieved by rubbing the dried vessel with cloth or hide (Rice, 2015:149). Texturing is a broad category that includes patterns on the exterior surface as a result of the construction method or intentional designs. Rice (2015:151) notes that textured surfaces are most common on vessels used in cooking and transport because the rough surfaces allow for a person to better grip and carry the vessel, especially when wet, or to improve the vessel’s ability to withstand thermal shock. Textures include a wide range of possibilities including stamping or dragging the wet clay

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Data Collection on Archaeological Ceramics

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Fig. 6.1 Reconstructed majolica plato, with recovered utensils, San Luis de Talimali. Majolica wares are earthenware bodies with a tin-enamel glaze and often highly decorated with two or more colors. Image courtesy of the Florida Division of Historical Resources

with a shell edge or exterior surface of a shell; impressing with a cord wrapped paddle, corncobs, baskets, mats, fish spines or vertebrae; use of a pointed stick, bone, or bird feather to make incised lines, dots, or other shapes; and paddle stamping. Other decorative techniques include cutting, incising, excising, applique, inlay, and color treatments (Rice, 2015). Ceramic surfaces can be glazed, unglazed, painted, slipped, or transfer-printed (Fig. 6.1). Ceramic analysts record the colors in the glazing, painting, or printing, preferably using the Munsell Color Chart to standardize the color descriptive data across analysts. Munsell colors can be used to determine ceramic types, and when transformed into interval-scale data can be analyzed using spatial and non-spatial statistics to test common hypotheses and research questions (Ruck & Brown, 2015).

6.2.3

Vessel Shapes

Vessel shape is often correlated with its real or inferred function. Colonial period vessels are divided into flatwares (plates) and hollowares (vessels that have an orifice) (Beaudry et al., 1983; Rice, 2015). Rice (2015:232–244) provides a useful “anatomy of a pottery container.” To determine the shape and size of a ceramic vessel, archaeologists rely on data derived from rim sherds and bases. Rim sherds are used as proxies for individual vessels. The diameter of the orifice is measured as it has been shown that orifice diameter can strongly correlate with vessel height or maximum vessel diameter with most forms (Hally, 1986). It is advisable to measure diameters of rim sherds that represent at least 5% of the total opening (Wilson & Rodning, 2002).

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In instances where enough of a vessel is likely represented, ceramic sherds can be used to mend or reconstruct the original vessels. According to Cordell and Bloch (2019:2), “Mending or reconstruction is undertaken to obtain data on vessel form and size, and for purposes of “crossmending,” to establish associational and chronological relationships among strata and features within a site.” Ann Cordell (personal communication, May 2023) is one of the archaeologists that worked with the thousands of ceramic sherds from San Luis to reconstruct the majolica plates and a large lobed jar on display at the museum at Mission San Luis. These reconstructions allow archaeologists and the public to better understand the skill of the potters and visualize how these vessels were used.

6.3

Ceramic Quantification

The abundant ceramic sherds recovered from archaeological sites can be quantified in several different ways, depending on the goal of the quantification. One goal is to determine or approximate the relative abundances of pottery, especially different types of pottery, in different contexts such as features, houses, across a site, or a region (Smith et al., 2012). Another goal of ceramic quantification is to determine the number of individual vessels represented in an assemblage. These data may then be used to discuss relative abundances of different ceramics based on ceramic type, vessel morphology, vessel volume (Rodriguez & Hastorf, 2013), use-wear, or vessel function.

6.4

Ceramic Classification Systems

Ceramics are often used to determine the baseline chronology and occupation of a site or region. For example if the ceramics from a discrete feature context can be dated, that information can tell us when people were at the site and discarding artifacts in that area. This is done by quantifying and comparing the attributes that change over time, such as shape/morphology, decorative technique, or design motif. This is most often accomplished through the use of ceramic typologies. Typologies classify objects according to their physical properties. The “classes” that result from this are called “types.” There are three general typologies used by archaeologists: morphological (external features), functional (use), and chronological (diagnostic forms, time-markers). Ceramic types consist of a group or series of defined and agreed upon attributes that are used to distinguish one class of pottery from another. These attributes are typically markers such as paste, temper, decoration (technique and style), or color. While ceramic typologies are not fail-safe or infallible, they are an important tool for collecting and analyzing data on one of the most ubiquitous artifact classes.

6.4

Ceramic Classification Systems

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Archaeologists working in the Historic period employ a method of dating called the Mean Ceramic Date (South, 1972). This method uses the beginning date of manufacture of a ceramic type (terminus post quem) and the end date of manufacture of that type, along with presence/absence data. This method was developed based on eighteenth century British ceramics, but has been successfully applied to Spanish majolicas (earthenware vessels with a lead and tin glaze produced mostly in Europe and later in Mexico and Panama) at Colonial period sites in La Florida and New Spain (Bonath, 1978; South, 1974). From a foodways perspective, the mean ceramic date can be used to track changes in the ceramic technologies used for food storage, transport, processing, cooking, and serving foods. Archaeologists are interested in the study of trade and exchange and rely on the study of ceramics as proxies for these interactions. The paste, or the clay that is used to make the ceramic vessels, can be identified to its location of origin. If the clay originated from an area that is nonlocal to the archaeological site, this may indicate the vessel(s) were brought to the site through trade, exchange, gifts, offerings, as provisions, or with people immigrating to an area (see Wallis et al., 2014). The same concept is applied to decorative techniques, design or motifs, colors, and other components (such as handles, footrings, etc.) in Spanish period contexts of La Florida and New Spain (Deagan, 1978; Lister & Lister, 1978). On the one hand, ceramic typologies created by archaeologists are useful in documenting spatial and temporal continuity or changes in decorative styles and techniques. In this way, ceramic types are used as time-markers, but also as cultural markers. However, type-variety systems and Culture-Historical typologies treat ceramic vessel morphology as a subsidiary (i.e., less important) attribute for understanding cultural processes. Ness (2017:23) takes a functional approach to Spanish majolicas, stating “...individuals using the ceramics in question saw these objects in terms of function rather than decoration” (Ness, 2017: 23). In reality, it was likely a mix of form, function, and decoration, especially in situations where social status expectations were in play (e.g., Pavao-Zuckerman & Loren, 2012). Ceramic sherds recovered from archaeological sites in La Florida are classified based on one of a handful of ceramic typologies (Deagan, 1987; FLMNH, 2019; Goggin, 1968; McEwan, 1988, 1992) and sometimes with great debate (see all of volume 38 issue 3 of The Florida Anthropologist 1985). These typologies stem from the type-variety systems inherent in American Archaeology, a direct result of early archaeologists working in areas and time periods that lacked written records that mentioned or described the forms and functions of ceramics. Archaeologists created typologies based on the paste, temper, decoration, or glaze to make sense of the thousands of sherds recovered from archaeological sites across North America and Spanish America (Deagan, 1987; Rice, 1987; Willey & Sabloff, 1980). While these typologies can tell us about change in paste type (coarse earthenware, refined earthenware, stoneware, porcelain), decorative techniques and patterns, glazes (slipped, lead-glazed, tin-enameled) temporally and spatially, as well as the date and region of manufacture, they cannot inherently tell us about the specific foods and dishes stored, cooked, or served in certain vessels.

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Ness (2015) created the Ceramic Organization in the Spanish Atlantic (COSA) typology to provide an emic perspective on ceramic vessels in use during the sixteenth–eighteenth century in Spain and Spanish Florida in domestic contexts. COSA was developed using multiple lines of documentary, visual, and archaeological sources (Ness, 2017:22). It is not my intention to debate the pros and cons of the extant typology systems, rather by integrating data from analyses completed using both the standard type-variety system and COSA with other lines of foodways evidence, we can better understand the cuisine and foodways in La Florida, during the Spanish Colonial period.

6.5

The Functional Vessel

In La Florida we recognize vessels and containers that were used for different foodways activities by their form (size, shape, rim style/treatment), use-wear evidence (Braun, 1983; Briggs, 2015; Hally, 1983, 1986; Ness, 2015, 2017), and compound analysis of visible and non-visible residues. Vessel shape or morphology – which is often attributed to the vessel’s function, may have been more important to the people using the vessels than the decorations on them (though see Pavao-Zuckerman & Loren, 2012). Use-wear evidence can include exterior sooting or food residues, interior pitting and scratching, and/or interior residues or crusts.Ceramic sherds with visible or absorbed interior residues and/or visible exterior residues can be analyzed for their molecular and isotopic signatures. These biomolecular markers, especially those that are unique to certain plants (such as yaupon holly used to make the Black Drink) or the major fatty acid components of animals (i.e., cow vs. fish), are used to determine what an individual pot held prior to being discarded (Copley et al., 2003; Cramp et al., 2014; Crown et al., 2012; Evershed, 2008; Reber et al., 2019; Salque et al., 2013). These lipids and other carbonized remains can be AMS dated to allow us to plot out changes or continuity in cookware and serving dish styles and exactly the types of foods they held. In this section I divide ceramics into four functional categories to discuss the ways in which different vessels were used based on morphological attributes with a focus on sites from the sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish Atlantic region. I base the categories on historic documents, cookbooks, archaeological sources and typologies. The five functional groups are processing, storage, cooking, and serving. Several morphological styles overlap between functional groups and will be discussed in all of the groups in which they fit.

6.5.1

Processing

The processing of foods in preparation for storage, cooking, or serving varies among cultures, cuisines, and foodways. Within the processing category are vessels used for food preparation, such as mortars (mortero) (and pestles), metates (and manos),

6.5

The Functional Vessel

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bowls, cazuelas, ollas, and lebrillos. Hard food items, such as nuts, acorns, and maize, were ground to make flour or meal. The grinding was done with a manual food processor, often a mortar and pestle or a mano and metate. In modern times we use electric versions of these, such as food processors and coffee grinders, which save us from having to exert manual labor energy over a long period of time to reach the desired results. While some of these tools may have been ceramic, others would have been made of wood or stone (Briggs, 2015). Dried maize kernels were soaked in a solution of water and wood ash or water and lye for hours until the hulls were loose or the kernels changed color (Briggs, 2015:120). After rinsing, the kernels were ground for pounded with a pestle or ground/rubbed on a metate with a mano, and “then boiled in an earthenware pot, a step that lasts anywhere from one to ten hours” (Briggs, 2015:121). Lebrillos are large, flat-bottomed dishes or basins. The opening is wider than the base, and these vessels were used for preparing and serving food as well as other household tasks (Ness, 2015, 2017). Ness (2015) cautions that some authors confuse lebrillo with bacin, but the latter was used for hygiene purposes, far different from food processing and serving.

6.5.2

Storage

Spanish globular jars (tinajas and orzas) were used for food transport storage, especially cereals, oil, wine, vinegar, honey, and preserved food such as bread, sausages, dried vegetables, and meat in fat (Ness, 2017:25; Pleguezuelo-Hernández, 1993:40). The Spanish globular jars were not unlike the ones used by indigenous communities in La Florida. However, during the early seventeenth century, Spanish tinajas faded in popularity and were replaced by a new storage container – the olive jar (botija or jarra de aceite). While olive jars had a smaller capacity than the botijas, they were bigger and sturdier than the indigenous cazuela forms, and were used to store and transport a variety of foodstuffs, the most common of which were olive oil, vinegar, and wine, and sometimes honey (Pleguezuelo-Hernández, 1993:48). Other items stored and transported in botijas were rice, almonds, hazelnuts, raisins, capers, and olives. Once full, olive jars were sealed with plaster or a cork and a merchant’s mark (Pleguezuelo-Hernández, 1993:48). John Worth notes that 520 olive jars (in addition to 192 casks and 48 barrels) are listed in the supply records for a fleet of four vessels that sailed from Seville, Spain to the New World in 1558 (Worth, 2023). These olive jars held all or some of the food items listed in the supply records, including fava beans, chickpeas, rice, chestnuts, cheese, wine (2 types), and vinegar (Worth, 2023). Olive jars (also called botijas) are a wheel-thrown, high-porosity coarse earthenware formed as ovoid-shaped vessels with restricted necks and mouths that changed slightly in shape and volume over time (Deagan, 1987:30, Fig. 4.2; Goggin, 1960:28). The style of the neck ring changed through time, allowing archaeologists to relatively date individual vessels (Deagan, 1987; Goggin, 1960). The middle-style

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Fig. 6.2 Modern replicas of middle-style (ca. 1580–1800) olive jars on display in the fort exhibit at Mission San Luis. (Photograph by author)

(ca. 1580–1800) olive jars, as defined by Goggin (1960), lacked handles but possessed a ring neck instead of the earlier everted neck (Fig. 6.2). The thicklipped ringnecks enabled the bottles to be easily picked up. Some olive jars were glazed on the interior surface with a yellow, white, or gunmetal blue glaze (Deagan, 1987:34). Olive jars were used for storing, transporting, and possibly even cooking foods. The primary food stored in olive jars were liquids – wine, vinegar, and olive oil. Orzas (Deagan, 1987:38–39; Ness, 2017:25) were large (ca. 115 cm high) round vessels used for water-storage containers. Tina/tinaja (Ness, 2017:27) were large flat-bottomed earthenware storage jars, similar to Italian dolia. The volume of tinas/ tinajas likely varied, but could hold approximately 48 L (12 2/3 gallons) (Lister & Lister, 1978:86). Native made globular jars and bowls were locally made and likely in heavy rotation at mission sites and surrounding farmsteads. Globular jars and bowls were multi-purpose, serving storage and cooking functions. The Spanish olive jars were not locally made, but brought to La Florida as transport containers for necessary food items. Olive jars were likely reused as storage containers throughout their lifehistory.

6.5.3

Cooking

Cookware are those containers or tools used in the cooking of food. Determining an item’s use in cooking is based on a number of factors such as morphology, exterior sooting, interior use-wear, interior residues, documentary sources, representation in art and texts, and oral histories. Documentary sources can include ethnographies, ethnohistoric narratives, cookbooks, legal documents (wills, probate inventories), journals and letters, price lists, and ship manifests. Here I provide examples of cookware commonly used in La Florida during the Spanish Colonial period.

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Cazuelas served dual duty and were also used as cookware. Cazuelas are wider at the top than the bottom and resemble a very deep dish bowl (Ness, 2017:24). They lack a footring and were often placed directly over a fire for cooking. According to the COSA system, cazuelas were primarily used for stewing or cooking meats, fish, eggs, or other foods over a fire without other ingredients or sauces (as opposed to multi-ingredient dishes like soups and stews) (Ness, 2015). This fits well with the dietary rules that practicing Catholics were expected to follow in the seventeenth century (Peres, 2021). Ceramic vessels similar in form and function were well known to the Indigenous cooks of La Florida. Ollas were round earthenware vessels with an incurvate rim and a shoulder that expands out to a globular/gourd-shaped body (Ness, 2017:25). The body then narrows into a foot-ringed base. Ollas have at least one loop handle. When two handles are present they are on opposite sides of the opening. They may have burn marks on the exterior due to their use as an open-fire cooking vessel. Ollas were used to cook stews and soups. Nativemade ceramics in Apalachee Province and other areas of La Florida were often globular in form. In the larger Mississippian sphere, globular shaped pottery is common. At Mission O’Connell – despite the fact that the ceramics of Feature 118 come from a location that suggests discard from the convento where the Spanish priests lived, there is little evidence of any attempt by the native potters to copy extant Spanish vessels, or to modify their own vessels for Spanish use as is seen at other sites such as San Luis. If it was indigenous women working for the friar as cooks they would probably have preferred using their own traditional wares (Wallace, 2006).

6.5.4

Uncommon Cookware

There are several additional forms of ceramic cookware that are less common in La Florida. Anafes, commonly called braseros (braziers), were small portable stoves typically made from earthenware (Lister & Lister, 1978:26–27; Ness, 2017:26). McEwan (2014) states that the lack of identified stoves inside of excavated structures (except for the one in the cocina associated with the friary) at San Luis suggests cooking was done mainly outside or using anafes. No complete or fragmented anafes have been identified at San Luis to date – at least none that have been included in published data from the site (Fig. 6.3). A Colonoware cookware form unique to San Luis in Apalachee Province is that of the long-handled skillet (Figs. 6.2 and 6.4). These vessels are flat bottomed with straight walls and a slightly flared lip. The skillet is approximately 15 cm in diameter (rim and base), is less than 5 cm deep, with a handle that measures approximately 20 cm in length (see Fig. 6.4). To date, fragments of long-handled skillets have been identified from Structure 1 and three trash pits from the Spanish Village at San Luis de Talimali (Lee, 2021). All of these deposits date to post-1680 (Lee, 2021).

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Fig. 6.3 Selected artifacts recovered from structures and associated trash pits excavated at San Luis de Talimali. (a) Lamar Complicated Stamped, var. Jefferson jar (Feature 174: FS#s 12,907 and 12,908); (b) Puebla Polychrome (left) and San Luis Blue on White (right) majolica (Feature 174: FS# 12,908); (c) Colonoware brimmed plate (Feature 174: FS# 12,908); (d) Mission Red Filmed bowl (Feature 174: FS# 12,908); (e) Colonoware pitchers (Feature 174: FS#s 12,907 and 12,908); (f) Colonoware cup (Feature 174: FS# 12,908); (g) Colonoware bacín form with handle (Feature 174: FS#s 12,822 and 12,908); (h) Colonoware skillet (Feature 174: FS# 12,908); (i) Colonoware

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The third artifact type included here is what has locally been called “Apalachee clay cooking balls.” These hardened clay balls are round and roughly 2.5–3.5 inches in diameter (approximately the size of a baseball). All are stamped on the exterior surfaces. It is hypothesized that they would have functioned in cooking or reheating foods in pots, much like Poverty Point objects or boiling stones (Hays et al., 2016). They may have been used in earth oven cooking based on experimental cooking tests (Hunter, 1975). Further analysis of these artifacts is needed to determine their ultimate function. I estimate 80 fragments of clay balls have been identified from San Luis to date (based on data in Lee, 2021). More than 50 (complete and nearly complete) of these objects were excavated from a burned feature on the campus of Florida State University in the 1950s (Fig. 6.5). Two nearly complete specimens can be viewed on the Mission San Luis website (https://missionsanluis.org/learn/ archaeology/artifact-categories/apalachee-clay-balls-and-shell-hoe/).

6.5.5

Serving

Tablewares are the dishes, glasses, and utensils used for serving and eating meals at a table. For Apalachee-Spanish Mission sites we have the most information about the dishes that were used as tableware, and less information on glasses and utensils due, in part, to their friable nature. Tableware dishes at these sites may have included native made ceramics in indigenous forms; Colonowares – native made ceramics but in Spanish forms; and majolicas – tin-glazed or enameled pottery painted with designs or scenes. Majolicas used by people living in La Florida may have originated in Spain or Mexico. Locally produced tableware dishes include plain and decorated ceramic bowls of various shapes and sizes, and Colonowares in traditional Spanish forms. Unfortunately, due to the fragmentary nature of most ceramics recovered from archaeological sites, we have little information on preferred native vessel forms. Much of the majolicas identified from Apalachee Province were likely produced in either Puebla or Mexico City, Mexico (see Fig. 6.2b) (Deagan, 1987). The common vessel forms produced in these potteries were deep brimmed platos or bowls and small hemispherical bowls (called tazas or pocillas) (Deagan, 1987; Lister & Lister, 1981). San Luis Blue on White is thought to be a product of the Mexico City kiln from the latter half of the sixteenth through the first half of the seventeenth century (Deagan, 1987:74–75; Goggin, 1968:154–157; Lister & Lister, 1981:18). The deep-brimmed plato or platos viejos are the most common form of

 ⁄ Fig. 6.3 (continued) candle holder fragments (Feature 177: FS# 13,089); (j) Wound glass beads (top left: Structure 1 interior: FS# 6413, bottom left: Feature 174: FS# 12,908), and decorated ceramic beads (Feature 177: FS# 13,089). (Image courtesy of the Florida Division of Historical Resources)

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Fig. 6.4 Refitted sherds of Colonoware, long handled skillet form, San Luis de Talimali (8LE4). (Image courtesy of the Florida Division of Historical Resources)

San Luis Blue on White, measuring 9 inches in diameter, 3.5 inches at the base, and 1.5 inches in height (see Figs. 6.3b and 6.6) (Goggin, 1968:155). These are considered individual tableware vessels. San Luis Polychrome is present in abundance at the site of San Luis de Talimali (Deagan, 1987:76).

6.5

The Functional Vessel

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Fig. 6.5 Sample of Apalachee clay balls recovered from a burned feature, Site 8LE34, campus of Florida State University, Tallahassee. (Photo by author)

Puebla Polychrome was often used in the following forms: small brimmed platos, tazas, pocillos, and lebrillos (Fig. 6.7) (Deagan, 1987:81). Deagan (1987:81) notes that “All tableware forms of Puebla Polychrome have ring feet.” A near complete deep brimmed plato (plato viejo in the COSA typology) of Puebla Polychrome was recovered from a trash deposit in the Spanish Village area at San Luis (McEwan, 1992: Fig. 11.7). A mended rim and base of a Puebla Polychrome plato was identified in Feature 174 at San Luis (Fig. 6.3b). Very few tableware data are available from excavations conducted at San Luis prior to 2018, though McEwan (1992:312, Table 11.2) states that 90% of ceramics were indigenous-made, and 10% of that figure (approximately 117 sherds) were Colonowares. My 2018 excavations yielded both plain Colonoware and Mission Red Filmed Colonoware sherds (Bruin, 2019: Table 2). Former FSU Anthropology

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Fig. 6.6 Brimmed plato decorated in the San Luis Blue on White motif, San Luis de Talimali (8LE4). (Image courtesy of Florida Division of Historical Resources)

Fig. 6.7 Refitted sherds of a pocilla, Puebla Polychrome decorative motif, San Luis de Talimali (8LE4). (Image courtesy of the Florida Division of Historical Resources)

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Fig. 6.8 Mended Colonoware sherds, double handled pitcher, San Luis de Talimali (8LE4). (Image courtesy of the Florida Division of Historical Resources)

graduate student, Alison Bruin, analyzed these sherds to determine vessel form and estimated a minimum number of 78 plain Colonoware vessels and 15 Red Filmed Colonoware vessels recovered from a structure in the Spanish Village and a trash pit (Bruin, 2019). The majority of the vessels were platos, brimmed platos, brimmed soperas, and pitchers, though other forms, such as cups (Figs. 6.8, 6.9, and 6.10), have been identified. These are used as table service for individual place settings and meal consumption.

6.6

Summary

Ceramic sherds are nearly ubiquitous in the archaeological record. Their widespread use and durability in various preservational environments makes them invaluable in foodways studies. The majority of ceramics were, and are, made for activities associated with foodways. This chapter provides a brief overview of the types of data we collect from ceramics and how to use those data to determine ceramic functions as related to four foodways activities: processing, storage, cooking, and serving.

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Fig. 6.9 Mended Mission Red Filmed ceramic sherds, cup with handles, San Luis de Talimali (8LE4). (Image courtesy of the Florida Division of Historical Resources)

Summary

Fig. 6.10 Mended Mission Red Filmed ceramic sherds, brimmed plato, San Luis de Talimali (8LE4). (Image courtesy of the Florida Division of Historical Resources)

6.6 87

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Chapter 7

Documentary Analysis of Foodways

Abstract Documents are important artifacts in historic foodways studies. Information gained from government documents, ship inventories, journals, diaries, religious doctrine, cookbooks, and artwork can give valuable insight into the beliefs and uses of foods, cooking practices, culinary equipment and spaces, nutrition, identity, socio-economic status, and living conditions in the past. This chapter discusses several types of historic documents used in foodways research, methods to analyze texts, and how to incorporate big data and lessons from the Digital Humanities into the study of past foodways. Keywords Cookbooks · Religious doctrine · Art · Ethnohistory · Digital humanities · Text mining When documents are available, archaeologists may use them as one type of evidence or artifact and integrate the information gained from them with archaeological datasets. Documents are as important as any other class of artifact, and they are unique in that even if they are not in their original context, they can still be read and understood. There are a number of different categories of documents we may interrogate in our research, written by different types of people with a variety of backgrounds and intentions. For foodways research, I have found that information about foods, cooking, cuisine, tools, and other culinary ideas are found in both expected and unexpected places. Here I give a brief overview of the most common types of historic documents used for foodways research, including some of the ones that have been useful in studying foodways of the Spanish Colonial period in La Florida. I follow this with a brief starter on text analysis methods for the foodways archaeologist and the role of Digital Humanities and big data in foodways research.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. M. Peres, Foodways Archaeology - Methods and Cases, SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41017-8_7

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Documents Written About the Lived Experience

Ethnohistory, as defined by Orser and Fagan (1995:9) “is the study of the past using non-Western, indigenous historical records, and especially oral traditions.” The focus of ethnohistory has been on groups, especially the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, that are known to have existed in the past, and often still exist; however, their history is written down by outsiders (Orser & Fagan, 1995). As Fontana (1961:10) summarizes “it is the study of the past of non-literate groups as gleaned from the record of literate people with whom they come into contact. In other words, it is the history of non-literate peoples as written by someone else.” The history of ethnohistorians and their importance to Native Americans starting in the middle twentieth century is described by McMillen (2007) and Orser and Fagan (1995:9). Modern ethnohistorians may be community members, archaeologists, linguists, ecologists, historians, or cultural anthropologists that share the goal of documenting the histories of Indigenous groups, ensuring they are placed in their rightful context. Ethnohistoric documents consist of colonial and historic period documents such as letters, chronicles, diaries, travel journals, missionary or church records, and other documents that are administrative, judicial, or political in nature. These documents are often written in the language of the dominant culture (i.e., Spanish, French, English). The authors of these records were not usually historians or anthropologists but members of the dominant culture. The perspective is that of the dominant culture and can be telling about attitudes and prejudices towards indigenous cultures. However, this category also includes documents written in indigenous languages or in oral-only languages that were translated into the dominant colonial language. Ethnographic documents are those created by cultural anthropologists during the study of a specific cultural group. These may include original participantobservation field notes, interviews, linguistic notes and documentation, photographs, and audio and/or video recordings (Krech & Sturtevant, 1995). These documents should have been created with the consent of the consultants. Ethnographers may also be ethnohistorians in that they are interested in recording or writing down a cultural group’s past to turn it into history – a written record of past events (Fontana, 1961). Historic documents were produced at least 50 years ago and are from, and about, the same culture as is being studied (i.e., nineteenth century land deeds in a county courthouse in Kentucky). Historic documents record the lived experience, much like ethnohistoric documents, but are written by a third party. Examples of historic documents include maps, wills, deeds, estate probate inventories, insurance records and maps; provision lists, inventories, ship manifests, newspapers, medical documents, diaries, letters, church records, cookbooks, recipes, photographs, and drawings, among others. Often these documents were part of past events that are used to build a cohesive historical timeline or narrative. Like any dataset, ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and historic documents have limitations and issues. They were written from the viewpoint of the dominant culture – the old saying that history is written by the victor – is true. Social and cultural biases

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are evident in the Europeans’ chronicles of their encounters with Native Americans. Often, documents were written to persuade the reader to take action – send more food, rations, money, or labor. We have to understand the context in which the documents were written to be able to understand the filters that were applied. It was not uncommon for residents of St. Augustine and other areas in La Florida in the sixteenth-century to write letters or testify that they had little to no food and were in fact starving (Bushnell, 1981). These personal narratives are sometimes in direct contrast to the official inventories of storerooms and/or the archaeological record. For instance, after Spanish soldiers abandoned Fort San Mateo during an assault by the French, they complained that they were basically starving and undernourished, having to “eat grass, snakes, rats, and vermin and to boil their leather sandals, doublets, and sword belts: (AGI, Justice 1001, No. 2, R. 5 in Reitz & Scarry, 1985:2). Thus, they were forced to abandon the fort due to their weakened state. Official documents (AGI, Justice 1001, No. 2, R. 1 in Reitz & Scarry, 1985:2) note that “sworn testimony about the abandoned fort indicated it contained 9 pipes of corn, 15 jars of oil, 2 large jars of vinegar, 1 barrel of garbanzo beans, 50 pounds of meal, 7 cows, 10 goats, and 22 chickens.” Basic language, terms, spellings, abbreviations, and jargon may be periodspecific, thus we need to know how to convert or translate them. For instance, in English cookbooks from the eighteenth century, recipes are called “receipts” and often words are spelled phonetically, i.e., flower (flour), harty Choake (artichoke), or soop (soup) (Moss 2013:xix). John Worth (2007a) notes that during the Spanish colonial period, weights and measures were not standardized, varied geographically and sometimes by individuals. It is critical that scholars of historic foodways be familiar with and comfortable working in the measurement system used at the time to understand quantities described in historic texts. In the example above, six different units of measure are used to describe the quantities of foodstuffs stored at Fort San Mateo. To understand the actual difference between “jars of oil” and “large jars of vinegar,” one must know that olive oil was measured differently from other liquids since it has a higher viscosity than vinegar or wine (two liquids deemed essential to Spanish foodways and religious life that were imported into La Florida). Worth (2007a) explains, “the Spanish arroba was used both as a measure of dry weight and separately as a measure of liquid volume, as indicated below in a single chart. All liquids but olive oil were measured using a larger arroba, while olive oil was measured using a smaller arroba (because of its greater density). The half-arroba of olive oil was the basis for the small-sized Spanish botija (olive jar, an earthenware), while the full-arroba of regular liquid was the basis for the large-sized botija.” Using Worth’s (2007a) measurement conversion charts, we can understand the actual quantities of food stored at Fort San Mateo in modern units (Table 7.1). Based on information provided by Chatelain (1941), it is likely that the garrison of Spanish soldiers was no more than 50 men, with possibly some non-military residents including women and children. Access to the foodstuffs in Table 7.1 was controlled by Spanish officials, thus exact quantities were documented. It is likely

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Table 7.1 Food quantities stored at Fort San Mateo according to sworn testimony Food item Corn Oil Vinegar Garbanzo beans Meal (ground maize?) Cows Goats Chickens a

Quantity 9 15 2 1 50 7 10 22

Spanish measurement Pipas Jars Large jars Barrel Pounds Individuals Individuals Individuals

Converted to modern measurementa ~813 gallons ~15 gallons ~8.5 gallons ~42 gallons Same Same Same Same

My conversions are based on Worth’s (2007a, b, c) conversion tables

that other food items were available, including fresh fruits, vegetables, and nuts (wild foraged, garden grown, or traded for), fish and shellfish, turtles, deer, wild turkey, and other small mammals and birds. These are not necessarily recorded in official documents but may be preserved archaeologically. Integrating the archaeological record with information from the historic documents gives a more holistic picture of the diet and foodways in La Florida.

7.2

Historic Documents and Foodways

We are indebted to those scholars that dedicate their lives to translating and interpreting ethnohistoric and historic documents, especially those written in colonial period languages (see for example Broadwell, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020; Bushnell, 1981; Dubcovsky, 2016; Dubcovsky & Broadwell ,2017; Gannon; Hann, 1986, 1988; Lyon, 1981; Smith, 1968; Wenhold, 1936; Worth, 2007a, b, 2014). Their job is time and labor intensive and requires a highly specialized skill set and knowledge of the languages, cultures, and histories entangled with the documents. However, there is a distinction between translation and interpretation, even though they may overlap. Historians that translate documents do so within their cultural purview, meaning that they bring their language and cultural references to bear on the translations of historic texts (Glanville & Baca, 2014). A 1940s translation of a colonial period document may read differently than one completed in 2020. While Glanville and Baca (2014) caution that all translations are interpretations to an extent, foodways archaeologists need to understand the context in which documents are translated and the skill level of the translator. When possible, archaeologists should rely on the most straightforward translations of documents that are available. In this way, archaeologists may obtain information about the “attitudes, beliefs, and actions as well as evidence of the character and standpoint of documents’ authors, recorders, or subjects” (Beaudry, 2015:142) with as little modern cultural filter as possible.

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Hann (1988:126) notes that few historic documents contain information about how Indigenous peoples grew, harvested, and processed the abundance of foodstuffs that sustained their communities. This is likely due to the fact many of these activities were part of the daily life of women, which are all but absent from the historic chronicles. An exception to this is the report written by Gabriel Diaz Vara Calderon, Bishop of Cuba, from his 1674–1675 visitation in Florida (Matter, 1981: 404). Fortunately, Bishop Calderon was interested in which foods Indigenous peoples produced and made notes of his observations when he visited the region. He commented on the practice of slash and burn agriculture, an activity where both men and women participated. Slash and burn agriculture is a method of field clearing in which people use fire to clear fields of undergrowth and undesirable plants. These scorched fields are then left for a few months before planting. Bishop Calderon noted that fields were prepared using slash and burn methods in January. At the same time the community “would surround the area to be burned and slay the deer, wild ducks, and rabbits fleeing the fire.” Calderon further explained how the natives began to plant in April, the women sowing seeds in the trenches dug by the men. He reported that community members shared in the cultivation of agricultural lands of the caciques (Matter, 1981:416). Likewise, the friars were dependent on the INdigneous community members to share their successful hunts and harvests with them (Matter, 1981:416). Diego de Quiroga y Losada, Governor of La Florida in 1692, noted that the Franscisan friars were better provisioned than most Spaniards in the territory (Matter, 1981:417). In this section I discuss the use of three types of primary sources useful for extrapolating cultural choices and ideas about foodways in Spanish La Florida: religious doctrine, cookbooks, and art.

7.2.1

Religious Doctrine

The motivations of the Spanish Empire are well known and much written about – wealth, status, territory, new religious converts, or “God, gold, and glory” were the drivers of colonization (Milanich, 2005:56). Communities across Spanish La Florida were colonized or established by conquistadores, Fransiscan friars, peninsulares, and criollos. Converting Indigenous peoples to Catholicism was a main objective of the missionaries that were sent to La Florida, first the Jesuits (who were unsuccessful) followed by Franciscans. The Fransicans did have some success in conversions and establishing mission communities in La Florida. To buffer the potential political upheaval caused by massive social unrest and population loss, Apalachee chiefs sought alliances with the Spanish. Historical documents show that Apalachee leaders sent requests to the governor of St. Augustine asking that Franciscan friars be sent to the province as early as 1607 (Boyd et al., 1951). The chiefs wanted to convert to Christianity and align themselves with the Spanish in order to make strong military, economic, and social ties with the Europeans (Hann, 1988). Once they became baptized Christians and Spanish subjects, many of their followers willingly

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converted and lived in mission communities “under the bell.” The liturgical calendar would have driven much of daily life in these communities, thus it behooves us to understand the role of food in the life of a seventeenth century Catholic. The liturgical calendar includes the cycles observed by Catholic churches, feast days, and saints’ days, and specifies which scriptures are read and which colors are worn for vestments or in wall hangings. The calendar also dictated the quantity and types of foods consumed or not consumed on any given day. Worth (2007b) describes the Spanish Catholic liturgical calendar in use at the mission communities that were occupied in La Florida during the seventeenth century. This calendar restricted activities, including work and the types and quantities of foods that could be eaten on Sundays, major feast days, and other specific days. Spanish Catholics were expected to abstain from meat on certain days, specifically “Fridays and Saturdays throughout the year, Sundays in Lent only, Major Rogation (Greater Litanies) on the day of St. Mark [April 25] Minor Rogations on the three days (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) preceding Ascension Thursday” (Worth, 2007b). On other specific days they fasted (limited to one meal in a day) and abstained from meat for that one meal (Worth, 2007b). The consumption of meat from land animals – cows, pigs, chickens, goats, sheep, or birds – was forbidden during abstinence days. Fish and shellfish were acceptable to eat on abstinence days because they are aquatic animals, and thus not considered to be meat. Derivative foods such as gelatin, butter, cheese and eggs were consumed because they do not have a meaty taste. Depending on the extent to which an individual was devout, they might also consume soups, gravies, stews, or broths made from chicken or beef on abstinence days (Diocese of Dallas, 2012). Understanding the frequency and extent to which abstinence from meat was expected and practiced can help us to readjust our expectations for the types and quantities of meat-based foods and foodways present in the archaeological records of Spanish Catholic communities.. If the use of animal derivatives were used widely on abstinence and fast days, then we may need to look for other types of evidence that point to the presence of dairying economies, such as mortality profiles of milkbearing animals (cows, sheep, goat) or absorbed residue analysis of ceramics to determine the type of fatty acids present in storage vessels, cookware, and serving dishes. These types of data explorations need not be limited to Spanish colonial or Catholic sites, but can be applied to any site where religious doctrine was a prime factor in prescribing foodways.

7.2.2

Cookbooks

Cookbooks or recipe collections are important sources of information and lie at the intersection of food, cookware, and culinary practices in a given time and place. The use of cookbooks as primary historic documents is important to a deeper understanding of culinary history (Driver, 2009; Mitchell, 2008; Moss, 2013). Research that centers cookbooks as historical texts was pioneered by Barbara Ketcham

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Wheaton (1983) using her structured approach. Wheaton also pioneered The Sifter, a public database for food history (https://thesifter.org/). “Cookbooks tell us about joy and sorrow, feasting and fasting, the spectacular and the quotidian. These are stories of nature and humanity; tales of seasonality, locality, and geography; and accounts of trade routes and global relationships. These are histories and transformations of religion, philosophy, medicine, and technology; of literature and literacy, markets and marketing” (Contois, 2018). Several cookbooks written by and for sixteenth through nineteenth century Spanish cooks exist, and can be interrogated as sources of information about the food, cookware, culinary practices, religious, social, and nutritional/health beliefs of the time. Three of these cookbooks have been completely, or are in the process of being, translated for historical foodways research. These include: Nuevo Arte de Cocina, Sacado de la Escuela de la Experiencia Economica, written by Fransican Friar Juan Altamiras of Aragon; Arte de Repostería, by Juan de la Mata; and Arte de Cocina, Pastelería, Viscochería, y Conservería, by Francisco Martínez. These three cookbooks, and other contemporaneous sources, are helpful in piecing together the resources that were needed to prepare the cuisine or dishes preferred by the people that lived in seventeenth century Spanish La Florida. Here I rely on modern translations of the original Spanish cookbooks by Altamiras (1758), de la Mata (1755), and Martínez (1763) as translated by John Worth (2007c, all three of these texts) and Vicky Hayward (2017, Altamiras’s book only). These cookbooks include recipes for popular beverages, dishes with a specific animal as the main ingredient (i.e., fish, poultry), and those that feature or include New World ingredients such as turkey or tomatoes, among others. What is striking about these cookbooks is the sheer number of recipes included. This serves as a reminder that ancient diets and cuisines were more complex than the mere cooking of staple foods for consumption. People in the past ate a varied and flavorful mix of dishes that were often driven by social, political, economic, and religious rules. Seventeenth century Spanish cuisine was a fusion of flavors, ingredients, and culinary techniques intimately tied to Spain’s long history. Given archaeology’s limited window into past culinary practices, presently we cannot know how many recipes were in the repertoire of the average Spanish Colonial cook. However, based on the recipes included in Altamiras, Martinez, and de la Mata’s cookbooks, we can be assured that seventeenth century colonists likely invented some of the flavorful dishes, combining New and Old World ingredients. The newly invented recipes were passed around from kitchen to kitchen, ultimately becoming popular enough that they were recorded for posterity. The recipes in Altamiras’s book are a testament to how faith and religion shape our foodways.Altamiras, a Franscican friar who’s real name was Raimundo Gomez (b. 1709), divided his kitchen notebook into two “books’‘ – one that includes dishes for meat-eating days and the second for lean days and fasting (Hayward, 2017). His book was published in 1745 during the Spanish Inquisition – a time when any signs of heresy were punished, including within the clergy. Altamiras lived his entire life under the Inquisition and would have known to make it clear he followed Spanish Catholic food rules (part of what he calls Evangelical Law). For example, in a recipe

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for trout, Altamiras encourages the cook to fry them with bacon (Worth, 2007c), but only on delicacy days. Altamiras (1763:102–105, as translated by Worth, 2007c, [emphasis added by author]) is clear that he does not give permission to prepare this recipe on any food abstinence day: It is true that my intention is to pursue fish dishes in this chapter, and for this I discuss trout, which, attending to their nature, can be eaten on a day of abstinence from meat, but the manner of stewing them mentioned above is normally done as a delicacy on days that one does not fast, with which you will not burden my conscience, which, though that of a cook, cannot permit you this pleasure, even being of such little expense, because the pleasure and expense of this poor cook is very aligned with Evangelical Law, as you will note.

Peres (2021) shows how we can weave together recipes from period cookbooks with our knowledge of archaeological food remains to gain a broader and more specific understanding of ancient foodways. She digs into the religious liturgical calendar of the sixteenth and seventeenth century Catholic church (Worth, 2007b), the aforementioned translated cookbooks, ethnohistoric documents, and archaeological food remains to develop a picture, albeit an incomplete one, of the types and popularity of foods produced and harvested and some information about how they were prepared, and when they may have been eaten, or not. We know from the archaeological and ethnohistoric records that Indigenous groups relied heavily on their staple crops of maize, beans, and squash, acorns and hickory nuts, and the native fruits available in their own orchards. The presence of cattle, pigs, and chickens are certain, many of these animals were raised by Indigenous farmers, if not necessarily to be consumed by them. The mission friars and other Spaniards tried to maintain their traditional diet, and thus were likely the biggest consumers of European livestock. The extent to which the Indigenous community members (of any sociopolitical status) dined on them is unclear. Interestingly, devout Catholics following the proscribed dietary restrictions would have dined on more derivative non-meat animal products, which would leave a different signature than straight cuts of meat. These types of dishes (soups, eggs, etc.) were important in the traditional Spanish diet, and some were an integral part of the Indigenous diet prior to missionization. That they were maintained during the mission period shows in some ways the persistence of cuisine preferences but also the adoption of, or shifting in, cuisine from the Spanish recipe book into the Apalachees repertoire – in part because the mouthfeel of the dishes were similar to traditional dishes.

7.2.3

Art/Paintings

Art is the visual expression of an idea, emotion, or worldview, typically as a painting or sculpture. Archaeologists can consult artistic depictions of daily life to analogize about foodways related artifacts and practices. The use of art in advancing our knowledge of ancient foodways is known from the world over. For example, Guagnin (2015) developed a standard methodology for identifying animals in rock art that can be analyzed quantitatively and integrated with zoarchaeological studies.

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These methods were used by Guagnin et al. (2018) to identify the earliest evidence for dogs on the Arabian Peninsula in rock art. The rock art panels indicate that packs of dogs, many on leashes, worked with humans to hunt large prey (lions, ibex, cattle, and equids), and predate domesticated dog remains in the archaeological record by two millennia (Guagnin et al., 2018). Mesoamerican archaeologists have conducted, and continue to conduct, extensive analysis of foodways as depicted in the various art media of the Olmec, Maya, and Aztecs (Staller & Carrasco, 2010). Scholars working on foodways of Spanish colonies in the Americas increasingly consult two collections of paintings that are useful for studying foodways in colonial period Spanish America are De Bry’s engravings of Le Moyne’s paintings and casta paintings. The De Bry engravings are purported to depict events that occurred along the Atlantic Coast of La Florida in the sixteenth century. In contrast, the casta paintings are prescriptions for how one should live their life based on their social status in New Spain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Leibsohn & Priyadarshini, 2019). While neither of these two collections can be taken as a one to one analog of life in the New World, they offer us a glimpse at foodways that are not always tangible in the archaeological record. De Bry engravings. In 1591, Theodor de Bry published a volume of engravings that depict eye-witness accounts of Timucuan Indians living along the Atlantic coast of La Florida (near present-day Jacksonville) in 1564–1565. De Bry never visited La Florida, and instead based his engravings on the watercolor paintings of Jacques le Moyne de Morgues. Archaeologists accepted these as a “Rosetta Stone” or sorts, and have used them to gain insight into Timucuan lifeways of the sixteenth century. A number of these engravings depict foodways-related activities or ceremonies, such as roasting animals on a barbacoa rack and the cooking of the Black Drink. However, the le Moyne watercolors that de Bry used were not the original drawings made while le Moyne was in La Florida. The originals were lost during the attack on Fort Caroline. Le Moyne redrew them from memory once he returned to France (Lanham, 2021). Jerald Milanich (2005), Curator Emeritus at the Florida Museum of Natural History, questions the accuracy of the De Bry engravings. Milanich (2005) points out several inconsistencies and inaccuracies with De Bry’s depictions including headdresses worn by the Timucuan that resembled those from Brazil and wooden clubs common to the Amazon, not Florida. Other details that are “off” include Native American bodies drawn in the Greco-Roman style (De Bry never actually saw a Native American in real life), and the serving of the ritual Black Drink in a cup made from a nautilus shell, which is native to the Pacific. Southeastern Indigenous groups served the Black Drink from cups carved from whelk shells. Milanich (2005) suggests that Le Moyne did not paint or draw any Southeastern Native Americans and that De Bry created the engravings by borrowing imagery from other parts of Spanish Atlantic Empire. You can view these images for yourself. A digital collection of De Bry’s engravings is curated by the University of Houston Libraries (https://digitalcollections.lib.uh.edu/collections/r494vm244?locale=en). Casta Paintings Seventeenth century Spanish society was organized hierarchically based on lineage and blood purity that were codified into a system called the regimen

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de castas (Boyer, 1997). Blood purity, or limpieza de sangre, “meant that varieties of mixed blood peoples, including mestizos and mulattos, were situated within the social system according to percentages of “Spanish“ or “Indian“ blood, determined by their skin color” (Loren, 2007: 23). Individuals born of Spanish parents in Spain were at the top of the hierarchy, followed by Spaniards born in La Florida or New Spain (called criollos). Individuals with mixed-blood ancestry were hierarchically ranked, those with more Spanish blood were of higher status than those with Native American or African ancestry (Loren, 2007). Casta paintings were created to illustrate the ideals that all members of specific classes should ascribe to. These ideals were often expressed in material culture, including clothing, personal adornment, cookware, servingware, and foodstuffs. Over 100 casta paintings are extant, produced by eighteenth-century Mexican painters. Casta paintings were created in groups of 16 – either 16 separate panels or one canvas divided into 16 fields (Deans-Smith, 2005) (Fig. 7.1). A sample gallery of casta paintings can be found on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta). Pavao-Zuckerman & Loren, (2012) interrogate casta paintings for foodwaysrelated information. They note the differences in the types of food, ceramic dishes, cookware, and activities (cooking, food sharing) between high and low social classes depicted in casta paintings. They combine zooarchaeological, textual, and visual data to understand how members of Spanish colonial society living at Presidio Los Adaes, the capital of Spanish Texas from 1729 to 1772, tried to fulfill the ideals expected of their respective classes (Pavao-Zuckerman & Loren, 2012).

7.3

Text Analysis Methods for the Foodways Archaeologist

The study of historical documents, or primary sources, should be methodical and systematic. You will want to examine the document’s physical attributes, its content, and assess it for reliability. The National Archives provides a suite of analysis worksheets for download to be used when analyzing primary sources (NARA, 2018). NARA recommends the following steps when working with primary sources (documents, photographs, artifacts, sound recordings, and artwork, among others): • “meet” the document/object – what type of document is it - letter, note and does it have special markings; • observe its parts – noting if it is typed or hand-written, dated, name of author, etc.; • make sense of the document/object – summarize it, write down the main point, write down notable quotes from it; and • use it as historical evidence – think about where you might find additional information relating to this document. When working with cookbooks as primary sources, a structured approach will yield detailed information about the types and quantities of foods cooked, material objects used in food preparation, but also important are the data generated beyond lists of

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Fig. 7.1 An oil painting describing the different casts within the caste system present in New Spain. Oil on canvas, 148 cm × 104 cm (58 1/4 inches × 40 15/16 inches). (By Unknown author – Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán, Mexico, Public Domain)

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ingredients or culinary equipment. For example, a close reading of individual cookbooks can result in learning details about the kitchen, the type of fuel used, cooking temperatures and times, and the cook’s knowledge that was taken as a given (Contois, 2018; Wheaton, 1983). We can also learn about the prevailing social, cultural, economic, and religious attitudes at the time the book was written, updated, and/or published.

7.4

Big Data, Digital Humanities, and Foodways

Advances in the use of big datasets in the Digital Humanities include digitizing large amounts (i.e., millions of pages) of text documents with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, text mining, georeferencing, geographical text analysis, natural language processing, and data visualization (Alex et al., 2016). The goal of these different methods, especially text mining and georeferencing, is to turn unstructured data into structured data. The process is not as simple as scanning documents with OCR – the data must be cleaned and processed and metadata captured and entered into a database (Alex et al., 2016). However, once the original documents (handwritten, various formats, text, tables, images) have been transformed and entered into a database, users can query the data in a multitude of ways to answer specific and broad questions. The use of “text mining is often employed in an attempt to see through dense or copious text to see the bones that lie beneath, whether it is the information carried by the text, or incidental information about the writer” (Tonkin, 2016:5). Text mining big datasets for historical research is not new, but it has also not been perfected. The ability to analyze large bodies of text is the end process that is time and labor intensive and requires an interdisciplinary team of specialists. JimenezBadillo and colleagues (2020) created the Digging into Early Colonial Mexico: A Large–Scale Computational Analysis of Sixteenth–Century Historical Sources. This resource has potential for colonial foodways studies using geographical text analysis of food-related terms. For example, the database can be queried using keywords to analyze the availability of native and introduced foods across time and space included in the scanned documents. Data retrieval and analysis tasks that are impossible for humans to do in weeks or months with the original documents or even digital versions, takes seconds to retrieve in the database.

7.5

Summary

Documents are one type of evidence that can yield foodways information pertinent to interpreting archaeological datasets. There are different categories of documents we may interrogate in our research, written by different types of people with a variety of backgrounds and intentions. Information about foods, cooking, cuisine,

References

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tools, and other culinary ideas are found in both ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and historic documents, cookbooks, and art. This chapter provides a brief overview of the most common types of historic documents used for foodways research, including some that are useful in studying foodways of the Spanish Colonial period in La Florida, and an introduction to text analysis methods for the foodways archaeologist.

References Alex, B., Grover, C., Klein, E., Llewellyn, C., & Tobin, R. (2016). User-driven text mining of historical text. In E. L. Tonkin & G. J. L. Tourte (Eds.), Working with text: Tools, techniques, and approaches for text mining (pp. 209–230). Chandos Publishing. Beaudry, M. C. (2015). Documentary analysis. In K. Bescherer Metheny & M. C. Beaudry (Eds.), Archaeology of food: An encyclopedia, volume 1 (pp. 142–143). Rowman & Littlefield. Broadwell, G. A. (2016). A Timucua-English dictionary. http://timucua.webonary.org. Broadwell, G. A. (2017). Shadow authors: The texts of the earliest indigenous Florida writers. In J. Burns & T. Johnson (Eds.), Franciscans and American Indians in pan-borderlands perspective: Adaptation, negotiation, and resistance (pp. 161–174). Academy of American Franciscan History. Broadwell, G. A. (2019). Honorific usage in Timucua exempla. In T. Johnson, K. W. Shelby, & J. D. Young (Eds.), Preaching in new worlds. Routledge. Broadwell, G. A. (2020). The things they formerly worshipped: Timuca Christian texts on native worship. In T. Johnson & J. Burns (Eds.), Facing Florida: Essays in culture and religion in early Southeastern America (pp. 51–62). Academy of American Franciscan History. Bushnell, A. T. (1981). The King’s coffer. University Presses of Florida. Boyd, M. F., Smith, H. G., & Griffin, J. W. (1951). Here they once stood. University of Florida Press. Boyer, R. (1997). Negotiating calidad: The everyday struggle for status in Mexico. Historical Archaeology, 31(1), 64–73. Chatelain, V. E. (1941). The defenses of Spanish Florida, 1565 to 1763. Carnegie Institute of Washington Publication 511. Contois, E. J. H. (2018). Structure and joy: On reading historic cookbooks. The Historical Cooking Project. Electronic document. http://www.historicalcookingproject.com/2018/07/guest-poststructure-and-joy-on-reading.html. Accessed 8 May 2021. Deans-Smith, S. (2005). Creating the colonial subject: Casta paintings, collectors, and critics in eighteenth-century Mexico and Spain. Colonial Latin American Review, 14(2), 169–204. Diocese of Dallas. (2012). Pastoral guide regarding fast & abstinence by catholics during the season of lent. Office of Worship, Lenten Fasting Regulations. https://www.cathdal.org/Lenten_ Regulations.pdf Driver, E. (2009). Cookbooks as primary sources for writing history. Food, Culture & Society, 12 (3), 257–274. https://doi.org/10.2752/175174409x431987 Dubcovsky, A. (2016). Informed power: Communication in the early American south. Harvard University Press. Dubcovsky, A., & Broadwell, G. A. (2017). Writing Timucua, recovering and interrogating indigenous authorship. Early American Studies, 15, 409–441. Fontana, B. L. (1961). What is ethnohistory? Arizoniana, 2(1), 9–11. Glanville, H., & Baca, M. (2014). Issues and challenges in translating historical texts. In M. Baca, et al. (Eds.), Pietro Mellini’s inventory in verse, 1681: A digital facsimile with translation and

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commentary. Getty Research Institute. Electronic document. http://hdl.handle.net/10020/ mellini/e9. Accessed 3 Sept 2019. Guagnin, M. (2015). Animal engravings in the Central Sahara: A proxy of a proxy. Environmental Archaeology, 20(1), 52–65. Guagnin, M., Perri, A. R., & Petraglia, M. D. (2018). Pre-neolithic evidence for dog-assisted hunting strategies in Arabia. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 49, 225–236. Hann, J. H. (1986). Church furnishings, sacred vessels and vestments held by the missions of Florida: Translation of two inventories. Florida Archaeology, 2, 147–164. Hann, J. H. (1988). Apalachee: The land between the rivers. University Presses of Florida. Hayward, V. (2017). New art of cookery: A Spanish friar's kitchen notebook by Juan Altamiras. Rowman & Littlefield. Jiménez Badillo, D., Flores, P. M., Martins, B., Gregory, I., Favila-Vázquez, M., & LicerasGarrido, R. (2020). Developing geographically oriented NLP approaches to sixteenth–century historical documents: Digging into early colonial Mexico. Digital Humanities Quarterly, 14(4) http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/14/4/000490/000490.html# Krech III S., & Sturtevant, W. C. (1995). The use of ethnographic records. In S. Silverman & N. J. Parezo. (Eds.), Preserving the anthropological record (2nd ed.). Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Electronic document. http://copar.org/par/par8_krech_sturtevant. pdf. Accessed 3 Sept 2019. Lanham, V. (2021). Jacques Le Moyne, narrative. Electronic document. https://earlyfloridalit.net/ jacques-le-moyne-narrative/. Accessed 8 May 2021. Leibsohn, D., & Priyadarshini, M. (2019). Indigenous portraits and Casta paintings in the Spanish Americas. In Oxford research encyclopedia of Latin American History. https://doi.org/10.1093/ acrefore/9780199366439.013.243 Loren, D. D. (2007). Corporeal concerns: Eighteenth-century casta paintings and colonial bodies in Spanish Texas. Historical Archaeology, 41(1), 23–36. Lyon, E. (1981). Spain’s sixteenth-century north American settlement attempts: A neglected aspect. Florida Historical Quarterly, 59, 275–291. Matter, R. A. (1981). Mission life in seventeenth-century Florida. Catholic Historical Review, 67, 401–420. McMillen, C. W. (2007). Making Indian law: The Hualapai land case and the birth of ethnohistory. Yale University Press. Milanich, J. T. (2005). The devil in the details. Archaeology, 58(3) https://archive.archaeology. org/0505/abstracts/florida.html Mitchell, J. (2008). Cookbooks as a social and historical document: A Scottish case study. Food Service Technology, 1(1), 13–23. Moss, K. K. (2013). Seeking the historical cook: Exploring eighteenth-century southern foodways. University of South Carolina Press. NARA (National Archives and Records Administration). (2018). Document analysis worksheets. Electronic document. https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/worksheets. Accessed 3 Sept 2019. Orser, C. E., Jr., & Fagan, B. M. (1995). Historical archaeology. Harper Collins. Pavao-Zuckerman, B., & Loren, D. D. (2012). Presentation is everything: Foodways, tablewares, and colonial identity at Presidio Los Adaes. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 16, 199–216. Peres, T. M. (2021). Feeding families and friars in Apalachee Province during the mission period. In T. M. Peres & R. A. Marrinan (Eds.), Unearthing the Spanish missions of Florida. University Press of Florida. Reitz, E. J., & Scarry, C. M. (1985). Reconstructing historic subsistence with an example from sixteenth-century Spanish Florida (Special publication series, number 3). Society for Historical Archaeology, Braun-Brumfield. Smith, B. (1968). Narratives of De Soto in the conquest of Florida as told by a gentleman of Elvas and in a relation by Luys Hernandez de Biedma. Palmetto Books.

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Staller, J. D., & Carrasco, M. D. (Eds.). (2010). Pre-Columbian foodways interdisciplinary approaches to food, culture, and markets in ancient Mesoamerica. Springer. Tonkin, E. L. (2016). Working with text. In E. L. Tonkin & G. J. L. Tourte (Eds.), Working with text: Tools, techniques, and approaches for text mining (pp. 1–21). Chandos Publishing. Wenhold, L. L. (translator) (1936). A 17th century letter of Gabriel Diaz Vara Calderon, Bishop of Cuba, describing the Indians and Indian missions of Florida. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 95(16):1–15. Wheaton, B. K. (1983). Savoring the past: The French kitchen and table from 1300 to 1789. University of Pennsylvania Press. Worth, J. (2007a). Spanish weights and measures. Electronic document. https://pages.uwf.edu/ jworth/jw_spanfla_measures.html. Accessed 1 Sept 2019. Worth, J. (2007b). Colonial era Spanish Religion. Electronic document. https://pages.uwf.edu/ jworth/jw_spanfla_religion.html#Rules. Accessed 25 May 2017. Worth, J. (2007c). Spanish colonial recipes. Electronic document. https://pages.uwf.edu/jworth/ jw_spanfla_recipes.html. Accessed 22 July 2019. Worth, J. (2014). Discovering Florida: First contact narratives from Spanish expeditions along the lower Gulf Coast. University Press of Florida.

Chapter 8

Cooking Tools and Spaces

Abstract In the previous chapters of this book I discuss different ways of learning about the material correlates of foodways and what people ate in the past. These include foodstuffs, dietary reconstruction, nutrition-based and occupational pathologies, ceramic vessels, and documentary evidence. To round out our pursuit of a comprehensive understanding of foodways, I focus here on culinary archaeology or the study of cooking tools and food preparation areas. I include information on culinary tools for food processing and cooking. I also discuss foodways features related to cooking. Keywords Oven · Mill · Mano · Metate · Mortar · Pestle · Culinary tools · Cooking equipment · Barbacoa In archaeology there are several data categories that are invaluable for information about foodways. The first are features, or areas of human activity identified during archaeological excavations that are distinguished from the surrounding matrix by soil color, soil texture change, and/or artifact inclusions. Features that are of interest to foodways scholars include those used in food storage, processing, cooking, and disposal. Features used in food storage include subsurface pits with or without internal architecture (Peres, 2008) and above ground granaries or corn cribs (Hally, 2008). Cooking features may include hearths (Mentzer, 2017), earth ovens (Walls & Keith, 2018; Wilson & VanDerwarker, 2015), rock cooking facilities (Thoms et al., 2018), and prepared surfaces (Homsey-Messer & Sherwood, 2010; Sherwood & Chapman, 2005). Processing features include kill and butchery sites (Lyman, 1987), marrow extraction or bone grease production areas (Karr et al., 2014; Mulville & Outram, 2005; Outram, 2001; Peres, 2018a, b), areas for plant processing (VanDerwarker et al., 2014), and fish processing areas (Zohar & Cook, 1997), among others. Food waste disposal features include sheet middens, middenmounds, and pits backfilled with trash, and areas in and around structures.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. M. Peres, Foodways Archaeology - Methods and Cases, SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41017-8_8

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Culinary Tools and Missions

Friars were provisioned with food and clothing and all the necessary items to establish and maintain a mission complex. The types and amounts of supplies provided to each friar establishing a new mission and then for their annual upkeep have been pieced together from a variety of official documents (Bushnell, 1994). While there are no surviving supply contracts for the Florida missions, we can look at the contracts for the New Mexico mission to understand which items were necessary for a friar to set up a mission kitchen, which would ultimately be worked in by native women. I extract those kitchen and cooking supplies given to each Friar by the Spanish government when first going to New Mexico as an example to be applied to La Florida (Table 8.1). For the most part the tools listed are made of glass or metal, with fewer items made from more perishable materials like gourds ( jicarillas), clay (comal), and wood (batea). As part of the contract, friars already serving at missions in New Mexico were given supplies for the administration of the Mission, for the Infirmary, and for personal needs (like clothing). Those that are kitchen-related include two decals of Table 8.1 Cooking/Kitchen Supplies given to each Friar by the Spanish Government for the Journey to New Mexico Supply/Tool Wine-bottle Drinking jug Frying pan comal Grinding bowl Pewter plates Pewter bowls Bronze olla Bronze saucepan Wooden bowl (batea) Small Mexican bowl ( jicarilla) Metates Table cloths Napkins Iron spoons Tin grater Spits Sieves

Quantity 1 1 1 1 1 6 2 1 1 6 12 2 2 24 2 1 3 2

After Scholes (1930: 101–104)

Notes

One for every three friars. One for every three friars. One dozen; possibly made from gourds; also a word used for chocolate cup.

For kitchen One of which was large

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Culinary Tools and Missions

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Table 8.2 Cooking equipment used in the seventeenth century Catholic kitchen, extracted from Altamiras’ kitchen notebook (Hayward, 2017) Item cazuela (flat bottomed) olla puchero Mortar and pestle (note – Altamiras references mortars made of metal or china) Paper Skillet Knives Spoons Cane Pitcher (nine pint) Whisk (“as broad as your finger, with rounded spokes like a dome”) Wooden spoons (various sizes) Grater Spoon holes Spatula

Use Slow-cooking Cooking over direct heat, in oven, stews Pot for soup or stew Crush, grind, bash, powder spices, herbs, garlic, nuts Folded to be used as pot lids for sealing pots Frying Cutting, dicing, chopping Stirring, measures Slit for hollowing out vegetables Brines Whisking Mixing, scooping, stirring Grating bread or cheese Skimming Pressing, turning, removing food from pan

butcher knives (n = 20 knives total) and 2 horse-hair strainers/filters/sieves (cedazo) – 1 black and 1 white. The remainder of the supplies were clothing for the priest, items for the mission, with the bulk of the supplies going to the Infirmary. Bushnell (1994:114) states “the same items or similar ones would have been brought from New Spain to the Florida doctrinas.” The cargo was sent via ship which meant it was often lost to pirates or ships being damaged or sunk in storms, before being carried overland on the backs of the indios de carga (burden carriers) (Bushnell, 1994:114). Many, if not all, of the Franciscan friars in La Florida were peninsulares, meaning they were Spaniards, born in Spain, living in the “New World.” Their ideas about what was necessary to equip a properly functioning cocina that was to feed the friar and the poor were influenced by their experiences in Spain. We can turn to Altamiras’ kitchen notebook (Hayward, 2017) for information about the expected culinary equipment in a proper devout Catholic kitchen (Table 8.2). Theoretically, some of the necessary kitchen items were part of the friar’s allotments charged to his stipend, and included items such as earthenware plates, rimless bowls, and pewter plates (Bushnell, 1994:57). It is not specified whether the earthenware plates were imported tin-enameled majolicas or unglazed types made by local indigenous potters.

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Tools for Food Processing

Much of food processing or cooking is completed with the use of culinary or kitchen tools. Items such as manos and metates, pestles and mortars, knives, spoons, ladles, spatulas, and tongs were (and still are) indispensable to kitchen work. The 1646 painting “The Angels’ Kitchen,” by Bartolome Esteban Murillo, shows a Francican friar in ecstasy at the sight of angels cooking. Another Franciscan friar and two Spaniards open the door on the scene. The various angels are depicted performing normal mundane kitchen tasks. In the background one is stirring a cooking pot that is placed over a wood-fired stove with a long-handled implement, likely a spoon or ladle. Another angel, in a teal-green dress, appears to be holding a pestle in their right hand while processing herbs or spices in a mortar. This task is in the center middleground and the mortar is placed on a stool or small table/cabinet. Tools used for processing foods were an important part of the seventeenthcentury kitchen for both Indigenous and Spanish cooks. Spanish cuisine relied on the use of “grinding grains in communal power-driven mills and baking bread in communal or household ovens” (Otto & Lewis, 1974:106). Power-driven mills were established in Mexico by the Spanish to grind wheat for Spanish consumption (Otto & Lewis, 1974). There are only two mills documented for La Florida. One was a horse-powered flour mill located in St. Augustine in 1596 (Mauncy, 1962:18). The other was further west on the border of Apalachee and Timucua provinces. The estate inventory of Governor Salazar’s wheat farm in eastern Apalachee Province lists “...a kitchen of wood with its oven and two mills on pedestals, with a loft of planks” (Bushnell, 1994:112; Worth, 2017a). With these few exceptions, mills were not a frequent sight on the Spanish colonial landscape of La Florida. The lack of mills can be attributed to the poor agricultural lands in and around St. Augustine – at least for growing staple Mediterranean crops; shortage of skilled craftsmen to build them; and few suitable water sources or irregular winds to power them (Otto & Lewis, 1974:110). Additionally, the demographics of the Spanish colonists were not a true cross-section of Spanish society. Rather, the majority of the people that immigrated to St. Augustine (at least in the sixteenth century) was predominantly male, young to middle-aged, and belonged to the occupational categories of soldier, government official, laborer, craftsman, or priest (Chatelain, 1941). It is likely that many of these men knew little to nothing about food preparation. Some brought their families with them and some married local Indigenous or mestizo women. Spanish women would have had to adapt their recipes and cooking methods to what was locally available, as supply ships were notoriously delayed or absent. Indigenous women, either as heads of their own kitchens or as domestic servants for Spanish families, were better equipped to cook the foods that were locally available. These methods, and their material correlates, were sure to be adopted by Spanish cooks as a matter of necessity, if not want. Manos and metates were used to hand-grind maize throughout the Americas (Fig. 8.1), a technique endemic to the hominy foodway (Briggs, 2015, 2018). Manos and metates were also used for grinding other foods, like cacao beans. The manos

8.2

Tools for Food Processing

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Fig. 8.1 Scene of a 13-year-old Aztec girl taking over the grinding of corn from her mother. The corn meal will be used to make tortillas, cooked on the comal. (Codex Mendoza, Ross 1978)

could be made from wood, basalt, limestone or other types of stone (granite, quartzite), and even ceramic (Duffy, 2011). The metates, likewise, could be made from any of these material types, though limestone dominated, followed by basalt, seems to have been the most common material type across Mesoamerica (Duffy, 2011; Rathje, 1972). For all intents and purposes, St. Augustinians lacked communal mills and regular supplies of wheat flour, meaning locally grown or traded maize had to be processed domestically. Spaniards in Mexico frequently encountered manos and metates for domestic maize processing. A 1569 document shows that the St. Augustine factor (business agent; head merchant), “...received 39 metates with their manos for grinding grain” (Otto & Lewis, 1974:108). Archaeologically, mano fragments have been recovered from domestic contexts in St. Augustine (Otto & Lewis, 1974), San Luis de Talimali (Lee, 2021), 8JE100 (possibly San Lorenzo de Ivitachuco) (Jones & Shapiro, 1990; Marrinan & Heide, 1993), and Santa Maria in Pensacola (Sappington, 2018). A possible “flat grinding slab (?) frag.” was recovered from Fig Springs (Weisman, 1992:173). In the Asile Hacienda inventory of 1651, two chocolate grinding stones (dos piedras de chocolate) are listed (Worth, 2017b). The 1569 inventory of the Santa Elena Warehouse includes “1 small grindstone for grinding” (Worth, 2017b). Worth (2017c) has recovered fragments of manos and metates from the sixteenth-century Luna Settlement in Pensacola. Mortars and pestles are another common manual tool used for grinding, pounding, crushing, or powdering foods (and medicines) (see Table 8.2). Mortars

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and pestles (molacajetes or mortero con su mano) can range in size from small to very large, but are most often meant to be hand-held size. They were made from brass, bronze, china, wood, and possibly earthenware, and were a necessary tool in colonial kitchens (Worth, 2019). From the site of Ivitachuco, a possible limestone pestle was recovered (Marrinan, personal communication, 2021). A bronze mortar and pestle were recovered from the 1559 Emanuel Point shipwreck (UWF, 2019).

8.3

Cookware

Spanish cooks in the colonial period used pots, pans, cauldrons, kettles, and griddles made from either metal or ceramic materials. Indigenous cooks used ceramic cookware in traditional and hybridized forms. Few, if any, metal cookware pieces have been recovered from seventeenth century sites in La Florida. A copper skillet was recovered from the sixteenthcentury Emanuel Point shipwreck off of Pensacola, Florida (UWF, 2019). The inventory of food-related tools on the 1558 Fleet lists numerous pots and cauldrons (Worth, 2017c). Unique to the site of San Luis are Colonoware (earthenware ceramic) pans or skillets (see Fig. 6.4). These are flat-bottomed pans approximately 7.5 inches in diameter with simple rims and a handle approximately 15 inches long (Tesar, 2015:73). Fragments of skillets, some of which were refitted during lab analysis, were recovered from four different contexts at the site including the elite Apalachee residence (Structure 1) and three refuse pits in the Spanish Village (Lee, 2021). The skillet described by Tesar (2015:73) was recovered from the area of the site known as the Spanish Village. There were many other shapes and sizes of cooking ware in use during the Spanish Colonial period (see Table 8.2). The reader is referred to Chap. 6, this volume, for information on ceramics in use at that time, and Chap. 5, this volume, for analysis methods to determine the contents of vessels.

8.4

Cooking Features and Spaces

Altamiras’s kitchen notebook calls for indoor and outdoor cooking facilities. As seen from the Asile Hacienda inventory mentioned above, indoor or covered kitchens (but open on the sides) were a part of colonial life, though likely only in upper-class residences. In St. Augustine, “the more substantial dwellings...had kitchens and even ovens. These kitchens could be located in detached buildings or in separate rooms” (Otto & Lewis, 1974:109). In these kitchens the firechamber charcoal stove was the focus. The firechambers were covered on top with grates that were suitable for boiling, simmering, and frying in flat-bottomed pots. Such an oven was identified archaeologically in the cocina at San Luis and is part of the living history museum reconstructed cocina (Fig. 8.2). Several kitchens in St. Augustine were identified by

8.5

Summary

115

Fig. 8.2 Reconstructed firechamber charcoal stove in the cocina at Mission San Luis. (Photo by the author)

the presence of a hearth and hard-packed clay floor (Deagan, 1983:75). Saunders (1993) identified a possible kitchen at Santa Catalina de Amelia. Courtyard spaces, called loggias, were used for outside cooking, especially useful in hot and humid Florida. Outside, food would have been cooked over an open fire, on a spit, or a roasting rack (barbacoa?). Indigenous cooking methods made use of cooking meals in earthenware pots over an open fire. In St. Augustine, several one and two-room houses were excavated and no evidence of an indoor kitchen was found, thus it is assumed that the residents cooked in their loggias. Evidence for spit or roasting rack cooking might include a burned area with small post holes around the edge of the fire and the presence of fire-cracked rock.

8.5

Summary

Foodways are a tangled web of ideas and behaviors that structure diet, subsistence strategies, cuisines, and the use of food to express identity. While foodstuffs are primary components to foodways, the consumption of material foods is inherently social. Food, dishes, and cuisines are expressions of the people, culture, and time in which they are created. In this volume I focus case studies on the foodways of the

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Spanish Colonial period in the Atlantic World to allow for an exploration of their importance to understanding the archaeological signatures of culture contact and change, identity formation and maintenance, religious conversion and dominance, and socioeconomic status. From the review of information provided by historical and religious documents relating to foods and foodways practiced in La Florida during the Spanish Colonial period, we can develop a picture, albeit an incomplete one, of the types and popularity of foods produced and harvested, some information on how they were prepared, and when they may have been eaten, or not. Indigenous groups relied heavily on their staple crops of maize, beans, and squash, acorns and hickory nuts, and the native fruits available in their own orchards. The presence of cattle, pigs, and chickens is certain; many of these animals were raised by Indigenous farmers, if not necessarily to be consumed by them. The friars, and other Spaniards, trying to maintain their traditional diet were likely the biggest consumers of European livestock, and the extent to which the Indigenous residents of the urban and rural communities (of any sociopolitical status) dined on beef, pork, or chicken is unclear. Interestingly, devout Catholics following the prescribed dietary restrictions would have dined on more derivative non-meat animal products, which would leave a different archaeological signature than straight cuts of meat. These types of dishes (soups, eggs, etc.) were important in the traditional Spanish diet, and some were an integral part of the Indigenous diet prior to missionization. That they were maintained during the Mission period shows in some ways the persistence of cuisine preferences but also the adoption of, or shift in, cuisine from the Spanish recipe book into the La Florida culinary repertoire, in part because the mouthfeel of the dishes were similar to traditional dishes.

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Tesar, L. D. (2015). Lost and found: The cultural material Heritage of Mission San Luis (8LE4), Leon County, Florida: An illustrated compendium of example artifacts and list of accessioned artifacts with scanned images. Ms on file, Bureau of Archaeological Research, Division of Historical Resources, Department of State, Tallahassee, Florida. Thoms, A. V., Short, L. M., Kamiya, M., & Laurence, A. R. (2018). Ethnographies and actualistic cooking experiments: Ethnoarchaeological pathways toward understanding earth-oven variability in archaeological records. Ethnoarchaeology, 10(2), 76–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 19442890.2018.1510125 UWF. (2019). Luna artifacts. Electronic document. https://uwfphotos.smugmug.com/Academics/ CASSH/Anthropology-Archaeology/Luna-Artifacts-/i-nF64mL6. Accessed 13 May 2021. VanDerwarker, A. M., Alvarado, J., & Webb, P. (2014). Analysis and interpretation of intrasite variability in paleoethnobotanical remains: A consideration and application of methods at the Ravensford site, North Carolina. In J. Marston, J. D’Alpoim Guedes, & C. Warinner (Eds.), Method and theory in paleoethnobotany (pp. 205–235). University of Colorado Press. Walls, L. A., & Keith, S. (2018). Cooking connects them: Earth ovens as persistent places during the woodland period. In T. M. Peres & A. Deter-Wolf (Eds.), Baking, bourbon, and black drink: Foodways archaeology in the American southeast (pp. 119–139). University of Alabama Press. Weisman, B. R. (1992). Excavations on the Franciscan frontier: Archaeology at the Fig Springs Mission. University of Florida Press. Wilson, G. D., & VanDerwarker, A. M. (2015). The functional dimensions of earth oven cooking: An analysis of an accidently burned maize roast at the C. W. Cooper site in west-Central Illinois. Journal of Field Archaeology, 40(2), 166–175. https://doi.org/10.1179/0093469015Z. 000000000118 Worth, J. E. (2017a). Inventory and valuation of the Asile Hacienda, 1651. Extracted and translated from Luis de Salazar Vallecilla, Nicolás Ponce de León, and Salvador de Cigarroa, September 6, 1651, Legajo 155B, Escribanía de Cámara, ff. 397r-402v, Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain. Worth, J. E. (2017b). The royal warehouse at the Luna Settlement. Blog post on Luna Settlement Project. Electronic document. http://lunasettlement.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-royal-ware house-at-luna-settlement.html. Accessed 13 May 2021. Worth, J. E. (2017c). Feeding the Luna expedition: What did mid-16th-century Spaniards normally eat? Blog post on Luna Settlement Project. Electronic document. http:// lunasettlement.blogspot.com/2017/05/feeding-luna-expedition-what-did-mid.html. 13 May 2021. Worth, J. E. (2019). Pottery vessels in sixteenth century Spain. Blog post on Luna Settlement Project. Electronic document. http://lunasettlement.blogspot.com/2019/08/pottery-vessels-insixteenth-century.html. Accessed 13 May 2021. Zohar, I., & Cooke, R. G. (1997). The impact of salting and drying on fish bones: Preliminary observations on four marine species from Parita Bay, Panama. Archaeofauna, 6, 59–66.