Based on experimental archaeology at the author's world-famous research settlement in Cornwall, this book describes the ingredients of prehistoric cooking and the methods of food preparation.
In this stunningly original book, Richard Wrangham argues that it was cooking that caused the extraordinary transformation of our ancestors from apelike beings to Homo erectus. At the heart of Catching Fire lies an explosive new idea: the habit of eating cooked rather than raw food permitted the digestive tract to shrink and the human brain to grow, helped structure human society, and created the male-female division of labour. As our ancestors adapted to using fire, humans emerged as "the cooking apes". Covering everything from food-labelling and overweight pets to raw-food faddists, Catching Fire offers a startlingly original argument about how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today. "This notion is surprising, fresh and, in the hands of Richard Wrangham, utterly persuasive ... Big, new ideas do not come along often in evolution these days, but this is one." -Matt Ridley, author of Genome
In this intriguing blend of the commonplace and the ancient, Jean Bottéro presents the first extensive look at the delectable secrets of Mesopotamia. Bottéro’s broad perspective takes us inside the religious rites, everyday rituals, attitudes and taboos, and even the detailed preparation techniques involving food and drink in Mesopotamian high culture during the second and third millennia BCE, as the Mesopotamians recorded them. Offering everything from translated recipes for pigeon and gazelle stews, the contents of medicinal teas and broths, and the origins of ingredients native to the region, this book reveals the cuisine of one of history’s most fascinating societies. Links to the modern world, along with incredible recreations of a rich, ancient culture through its cuisine, make Bottéro’s guide an entertaining and mesmerizing read.
Late Bronze Age Aegean cooking vessels illuminate prehistoric cultures, foodways, social interactions, and communication systems. While many scholars have focused on the utility of painted fineware vessels for chronological purposes, the contributors to this volume maintain that cooking wares have the potential to answer not only chronological but also economic, political, and social questions when analysed and contrasted with assemblages from different sites or chronological periods. The text is dedicated entirely to prehistoric cooking vessels, compiles evidence from a wide range of Greek sites and incorporates new methodologies and evidence. The contributors utilise a wide variety of analytical approaches and demonstrate the impact that cooking vessels can have on the archaeological interpretation of sites and their inhabitants. These sites include major Late Bronze Age citadels and smaller settlements throughout the Aegean and surrounding Mediterranean area, including Greece, the islands, Crete, Italy, and Cyprus. In particular, contributors highlight socio-economic connections by examining the production methods, fabrics and forms of cooking vessels. Recent improvements in excavation techniques, advances in archaeological sciences, and increasing attention to socioeconomic questions make this is an opportune time to renew conversations about and explore new approaches to cooking vessels and what they can teach us.
From spit roasting pig to hanging cream cheese from the rafters, from baking roast pork under the ground in pits to cooking trout on wicker frames over an open fire, cooking techniques in prehistoric Britain are ingenious and revealing. There were no ovens and many vegetables and breeds of animal familiar to us today had not yet arrived. In reconstructing some of these techniques and recipes, the author has discovered a different world, with a completely different approach to food. This is native cuisine, cooked in a manner that persisted through the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages. This book first tells the story of prehistoric settlement, and moves on to explore the hunting and foraging techniques of the Mesolithic. After discussing the way in which the Britons farmed, and what they grew, the book moves into the roundhouse and the tools and utensils available. The final half of the book examines the varied techniques used, from covering fish in clay, to baking meat underground, spit roasting, brewing mead, boiling water with hot stones and so on. All the techniques have been carried out by the author.
An invigorating journey through Britain's prehistoric landscape, and an insight into the lives of its inhabitants. 'Highly compelling' Spectator, Books of the Year 'An evocative foray into the prehistoric past' BBC Countryfile Magazine 'Vividly relating what life was like in pre-Roman Britain' Choice Magazine 'Makes life in Britain BC often sound rather more appealing than the frenetic and anxious 21st century!' Daily Mail In Scenes from Prehistoric Life, the distinguished archaeologist Francis Pryor paints a vivid picture of British and Irish prehistory, from the Old Stone Age (about one million years ago) to the arrival of the Romans in AD 43, in a sequence of fifteen profiles of ancient landscapes. Whether writing about the early human family who trod the estuarine muds of Happisburgh in Norfolk c.900,000 BC, the craftsmen who built a wooden trackway in the Somerset Levels early in the fourth millennium BC, or the Iron Age denizens of Britain's first towns, Pryor uses excavations and surveys to uncover the daily routines of our ancient ancestors. By revealing how our prehistoric forebears coped with both simple practical problems and more existential challenges, Francis Pryor offers remarkable insights into the long and unrecorded centuries of our early history, and a convincing, well-attested and movingly human portrait of prehistoric life as it was really lived.
An archaeologist and chef explains how to follow our ancestors' lead when it comes to dietary choices and cooking techniques for optimum health and vitality. "Read this book!" (Mark Hyman, MD, author of Food) Our relationship with food is filled with confusion and insecurity. Vegan or carnivore? Vegetarian or gluten-free? Keto or Mediterranean? Fasting or Paleo? Every day we hear about a new ingredient that is good or bad, a new diet that promises everything. But the secret to becoming healthier, losing weight, living an energetic life, and healing the planet has nothing to do with counting calories or feeling deprived—the key is re‑learning how to eat like a human. This means finding food that is as nutrient-dense as possible, and preparing that food using methods that release those nutrients and make them bioavailable to our bodies, which is exactly what allowed our ancestors to not only live but thrive. In Eat Like a Human, archaeologist and chef Dr. Bill Schindler draws on cutting-edge science and a lifetime of research to explain how nutrient density and bioavailability are the cornerstones of a healthy diet. He shows readers how to live like modern “hunter-gatherers” by using the same strategies our ancestors used—as well as techniques still practiced by many cultures around the world—to make food as safe, nutritious, bioavailable, and delicious as possible. With each chapter dedicated to a specific food group, in‑depth explanations of different foods and cooking techniques, and concrete takeaways, as well as 75+ recipes, Eat Like a Human will permanently change the way you think about food, and help you live a happier, healthier, and more connected life.
The 23 papers presented here are the product of the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and approaches to the study of kitchen pottery between archaeologists, material scientists, historians and ethnoarchaeologists. They aim to set a vital but long-neglected category of evidence in its wider social, political and economic contexts. Structured around main themes concerning technical aspects of pottery production; cooking as socioeconomic practice; and changing tastes, culinary identities and cross-cultural encounters, a range of social economic and technological models are discussed on the basis of insights gained from the study of kitchen pottery production, use and evolution. Much discussion and work in the last decade has focussed on technical and social aspects of coarse ware and in particular kitchen ware. The chapters in this volume contribute to this debate, moving kitchen pottery beyond the Binfordian ‘technomic’ category and embracing a wider view, linking processualism, ceramic-ecology, behavioral schools, and ethnoarchaeology to research on historical developments and cultural transformations covering a broad geographical area of the Mediterranean region and spanning a long chronological sequence.
The many influences of the past on our diet today make the concept of 'British food' very hard to define. The Celts, Romans, Saxons, Vikings and Normans all brought ingredients to the table, and the country was introduced to all manner of spices after the Crusades. The Georgians enjoyed a new level of excess and then, of course, the world wars forced us into the challenge of making meals from very little. The history of cooking in Britain is as tumultuous as the times its people have lived through. Tasting the Past: Recipes from Antiquity documents the rich history of our food, its fads and its fashions to be combined with a practical cookbook of over 120 recipes from the eras of the Iron Age Celts and the Romans. Jacqui Wood guides us through the nutritious and pragmatic recipes of the Celts, who harvested the ingredients readily available around them; and the far more elaborate tastes of the Romans, who had an empire of imports to supplement and spice up their continentally curated diet.