Far from the Hearth (Above) Martin Jones at West Stow, 1972 (with thanks to Ian Alister, Lucy Walker, Leonie Walker, and West Stow Environmental Archaeology Group); (Below) Martin Jones in a millet field, Inner Mongolia, 2010. (Photograph: X. Liu.) McDONALD INSTITUTE CONVERSATIONS Far from the Hearth Essays in Honour of Martin K. Jones Edited by Emma Lightfoot, Xinyi Liu & Dorian Q Fuller Published by: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research University of Cambridge Downing Street Cambridge CB2 3ER UK (0)(1223) 339327 info@mcdonald.cam.ac.uk www.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2018 © 2018 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research Far from the Hearth is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (International) Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ISBN: 978-1-902937-87-8 Cover image: Foxtail millet field near Xinglonggou, Chifeng, China, photographed by Xinyi Liu, September 2014. Edited for the Institute by James Barrett (Series Editor) and Anne Chippindale. Contents Contributors Figures Tables Acknowledgements vii viii xvi xx Foreword xxi James H. Barrett Part I Introduction 1 Introduction: Far from the Hearth Xinyi Liu, Emma Lightfoot & Dorian Q Fuller Part II Chapter 1 A Botanical Battleground The Making of the Botanical Battle Ground: Domestication and the Origins of the Worlds’ Weed Floras Dorian Q Fuller & Chris J. Stevens Chapter 2 3 7 9 The Fighting Flora: An Examination of the Origins and Changing Composition of the Weed Flora of the British Isles 23 Chapter 3 A System for Determining Plant Macro Archaeological Remains 37 Chapter 4 Phytoliths and the Human Past: Archaeology, Ethnoarchaeology and Paleoenvironmental Studies 51 Chapter 5 Genetics and the Origins of European Agriculture 65 Chapter 6 Martin Jones’ Role in the Development of Biomolecular Archaeology 71 Part III The Stomach and the Soul 75 Chris J. Stevens & Dorian Q Fuller Victor Paz Carla Lancelotti & Marco Madella Chapter 7 Terry Brown Terry Brown, Richard P. Evershed & Matthew Collins ‘Rice Needs People to Grow it’: Foraging/farming Transitions and Food Conceptualization in the Highlands of Borneo Graeme Barker, Christopher O. Hunt, Evan Hill, Samantha Jones & Shawn O’Donnell 77 Chapter 8 How did Foraging and the Sharing of Foraged Food Become Gendered? 95 Chapter 9 Agriculture is a State of Mind: The Andean Potato’s Social Domestication 109 Chapter 10 Archaeobotanical and Geographical Perspectives on Subsistence and Sedentism: The Case of Hallan Çemi (Turkey) 117 Rice and the Formation of Complex Society in East Asia: Reconstruction of Cooking Through Pot Soot- and Carbon-deposit Pattern Analysis 127 Food as Heritage 145 Cynthia Larbey Christine A. Hastorf Manon Savard Chapter 11 Leo Aoi Hosoya, Masashi Kobayashi, Shinji Kubota & Guoping Sun Chapter 12 Gilly Carr, Marie Louise Stig Sørensen & Dacia Viejo Rose v Contents Part IV Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Between Fertile Crescents From a Fertile Idea to a Fertile Arc: The Origins of Broomcorn Millet 15 Years On Xinyi Liu, Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute & Harriet V. Hunt 165 The Geography of Crop Origins and Domestication: Changing Paradigms from Evolutionary Genetics 177 The Adoption of Wheat and Barley as Major Staples in Northwest China During the Early Bronze Age 189 When and How Did Wheat Come Into China? 199 Harriet V. Hunt, Hugo R. Oliveira, Diane L. Lister, Andrew C. Clarke & Natalia A.S. Przelomska Chapter 16 Haiming Li & Guanghui Dong Chapter 17 155 A World of C4 Pathways: On the Use of δ13C Values to Identify the Consumption of C4 Plants in the Archaeological Record Emma Lightfoot, Xinyi Liu & Penelope J. Jones Chapter 15 153 Zhijun Zhao vi Contributors Graeme Barker Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3DZ, UK. Email: gb314@cam.ac.uk Christine A. Hastorf Department of Anthropology, University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. Email: hastorf@berkeley.edu James H. Barrett McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, UK. Email: jhb41@cam.ac.uk Evan Hill School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK. Email: ehill08@qub.ac.uk Terry Brown Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester M1 7DN, UK. Email: Terry.Brown@manchester.ac.uk Leo Aoi Hosoya Institute for Global Leadership, Ochanomizu University, Tokyo 112-8610, Japan. Email: hosoya.aoi@ocha.ac.jp Christopher O. Hunt School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L3 5UX, UK. Email: c.o.hunt@ljmu.ac.uk Gilly Carr Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB23 8AQ, UK. Email: gcc20@hermes.cam.ac.uk Harriet V. Hunt McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 3ER, UK. Email: hvh22@cam.ac.uk Andrew C. Clarke McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, UK. Email: acc68@cam.ac.uk Penelope J. Jones Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay, TAS 7050, Australia. Email: Penelope.Jones@utas.edu.au Matthew J. Collins Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen DK-1123, Denmark. & Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3DZ, UK. Email: matthew.collins@snm.ku.dk Samantha Jones School of Geosciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3FX, UK. Email: samantha.jones@abdn.ac.uk Guanghui Dong MOE Key Laboratory of West China’s Environmental System, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China. Email: ghdong@lzu.edu.cn Masashi Kobayashi Hokuriku Gakuin University, I-11, Mitsukoji-machi, Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture 920-1396, Japan. Email: masashi@hokurikugakuin.ac.jp Richard P. Evershed School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TS, UK. Email: R.P.Evershed@bristol.ac.uk Shinji Kubota Kanazawa University, Kakuma-cho, Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture 920-1192, Japan. Email: shinjikubota@hotmail.com Dorian Q Fuller Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London WC1H 0PY, UK. Email: d.fuller@ucl.ac.uk Carla Lancelotti CaSEs Research Group (Culture and SocioEcological Dynamics), Department of Humanities, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona 08005, Spain. Email: carla.lancelotti@upf.edu vii Cynthia Larbey Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3DZ, UK. Email: cdal3@cam.ac.uk Hugo R. Oliveira Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester M1 7DN, UK. Email: hugo.oliveira@manchester.ac.uk Haiming Li MOE Key Laboratory of West China’s Environmental System, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China. Email: lihaimingboy@126.com Victor Paz Archaeological Studies Program, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City 1101, Philippines. Email: vjpaz@up.edu.ph Emma Lightfoot McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, UK. Email: elfl2@cam.ac.uk Natalia A.S. Przelomska Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560, USA. & Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute, National Zoological Park, Washington, DC 20008, USA. Email: PrzelomskaN@si.edu Diane L. Lister McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, UK. Email: dll1000@cam.ac.uk Xinyi Liu Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA. Email: liuxinyi@wustl.edu Manon Savard Laboratoire d’archéologie et de patrimoine, département de biologie, chimie et géographie, Université du Québec à Rimouski, Québec G5L 3A1, Canada. Email: Manon_Savard@uqar.ca Marco Madella CaSEs Research Group (Culture and SocioEcological Dynamics), Department of Humanities, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona 08005, Spain. & ICREA (Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats), Barcelona 08010, Spain. & School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, The University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2000, South Africa. Email: marco.madella@upf.edu Marie Louise Stig Sørensen Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, UK. Email: mlss@cam.ac.uk Chris J. Stevens Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London WC1H 0PY, UK. Email: c.stevens@ucl.ac.uk Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute Department of City Research, Lithuanian Institute of History, Vilnius 01108, Lithuania. Email: giedre.motuzaite@gmail.com Guoping Sun Zhejiang Provincial Research Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Hangzhou 310014, China. Email: zjkgoffice@163.com Dacia Viejo Rose Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3DZ, UK. Email: dv230@cam.ac.uk Zhijun Zhao Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 100710, China. Email: zjzhao@cass.org.cn Shawn O’Donnell School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK. Email: S.ODonnell@qub.ac.uk viii Figures and Tables Figures Chapter 1 1.1 Wild barley spikelets (Hordeum spontaneum). 1.2 Seed size increase over time standardized to percentage change, comparing Southwest Asia and China. 1.3 Charts showing founder weed taxa over time and proportion of cereals in the plant assemblage. 1.4 A field of wheat in which weedy oats and wild barley appear to be rather better than the crop. 11 12 16 17 Chapter 2 2.1 Diagrammatic representation of seed-bank types—autumn sowing-tillage cycle. 2.2 Diagrammatic representation of seed-bank types—spring sowing-tillage cycle. 2.3 Relative presence and persistence of seed-banks types I–IV in the field after ard cultivation. 2.4 Relative presence and persistence of seed-banks types I-IV in the field after mouldboard plough cultivation. 2.5 Timeline of agricultural changes and number of introduced/reintroduced weed flora. 25 25 26 26 30 Chapter 3 3.1 Identification and determination of plant macro remains. 3.2 Diagram of determination process. 42 45 Chapter 4 4.1 Increase in phytolith studies in the last 15 years. 52 Chapter 5 5.1 The first ancient DNA sequences obtained from charred grain. 66 Chapter 7 7.1 Borneo, showing the location of the Kelabit Highlands and other locations. 7.2 Penan encampment in the Baram valley. 7.3 Kelabit longhouse at Pa’Daleh, southern Kelabit Highlands. 7.4 Map showing key sites and locations in the Kelabit Highlands. 7.5 Oxcal plots of summed probabilities from archaeological and landscape sites. 7.6 Stratigraphic summaries of the cores and geoarchaeological sites. 77 78 79 79 82 83 Chapter 11 11.1. Burn mark above the waterline after experimental cooking of liquid-rich food. 11.2. The style of Jomon and Yayoi major cooking pots. 11.3. Removing excess water after boiling rice (Central Thailand). 11.4. Steaming stage of the yutori boil-and-steam rice-cooking method reconstructed with Yayoi pots. 11.5. Cooking pot styles of the Tianluoshan site. 11.6. Shift of proportions of cooking-pot styles in Hemudu culture. 11.7. TLS round-body pots characteristic soot and burn mark. 11.8. Layered burn deposits formed after experimental porridge cooking. 130 131 134 134 136 137 137 138 Chapter 12 12.1 Photographs taken at the Refugee Camp in Idomeni, Greece, March/April 2016. 12.2 An example of a ‘Mediterranean Diet’ meal. 12.3 A Guernsey occupation-era kitchen, complete with food-related objects. 146 147 149 Chapter 13 13.1 Locations of key millet sites across Eurasia. 13.2 Harriet Hunt visiting the Vavilov Herbarium, St Petersburg. 13.3 Martin Jones at a broomcorn millet field near Lanzhou, Gansu Province, western China. 13.4 Visiting millet sites in Gansu Province, western China. 156 158 159 159 ix Figures and Tables Chapter 15 15.1 Martin Jones visiting the N.I. Vavilov Research Institute for Plant Industry, St Petersburg. 15.2 Barley exemplifies the complexity of inheritance of different segments of a domesticated crop’s genome. 178 183 Chapter 16 16.1. Distribution of prehistoric sites in the NETP and Hexi Corridor. 16.2. The actual yield percentage of the sites in the NETP and Hexi Corridor. 16.3. Sum of the actual yield percentage of the sites in the NETP and Hexi Corridor. 16.4. Carbonized plant seeds collected from Lijiaping Site. 190 192 192 194 Chapter 17 17.1. The potential routes for the spread of wheat into China. 205 Tables Chapter 1 1.1 Presence/absence of a select roster of founder weeds. Chapter 2 2.1 Common weeds within British archaeobotanical assemblages. 14–15 28–9 Chapter 3 3.1 Classifications of seeds based on preservation conditions. 3.2 Variables relevant in establishing the level of confidence of determination. 40 40 Chapter 4 4.1 Phytolith production and taxonomic specificity for the world’s major crops. 54 Chapter 6 6.1 Projects and workshops funded by the NERC Ancient Biomolecules Initiative (1993–1998). 73 Chapter 7 7.1 Radiocarbon dates from archaeological and palynological sites in the Kelabit Highlands. Chapter 8 8.1 Published studies on remains of starchy plants during prehistoric hunter-gatherer periods. 84–5 100–101 Chapter 10 10.1 Archaeobotanical results from Hallan Çemi. 118–19 Chapter 14 14.1 List of edible plants found in Haryana and their photosynthetic pathways. 170–72 Chapter 16 16.1. Calibrated radiocarbon data in the Hehuang Basin and Hexi Corridor. 16.2. Charred seeds from the Lijiaping site, Linxia county, Gansu Province, China. 191 193 Chapter 17 17.1. Early wheat remains in last-century archaeological discoveries. 17.2. Early wheat remains with only relative ages. 17.3. Directly dated early wheat remains. 17.4. List of archaeological cultures in the Central Asian Steppe. 201 202 203 207 x Acknowledgements organizing the gatherings to mark Martin’s retirement and the publication of this volume. With respect to the volume’s production, we would like to thank the McDonald Institute for Archaeology Research for financial support. The McDonald Monograph Series Editor James Barrett oversaw and encouraged all aspects of this project, and we offer him sincere thanks. We would also like to acknowledge the support of Cyprian Broodbank, not least for allowing us to host the workshop at the institute, but also for his encouragement throughout all phases of the volume’s implementation. Particular thanks must go to several key individuals: Anne Chippindale, Ben Plumridge, Emma Jarman, Simon Stoddart and Samantha Leggett. Finally, we are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers who recommended changes that have greatly enhanced the final version of this volume. The initial idea of editing this volume grew out of a conversation between Xinyi Liu and Graeme Barker at St John’s College, Cambridge in June 2016. The editors subsequently discussed the provisional layout of the volume. By April of the following year, our list of agreed contributors was complete. Abstracts followed, and the chapters themselves soon after. First of all, the editors would like to pay tribute to our 36 authors, whose excellent work and timely contributions made it all possible. For the last two-and-a-half years, the volume has been known as ‘Fantastic Beasts’ in order to keep it a secret from Martin. As we enter the final stage, we wish to extend our thanks to all who have ensured Martin remains blissfully unaware, including Lucy Walker, and we offer her our sincere thanks. We are extremely grateful to Harriet Hunt, Diane Lister, Cynthia Larbey and Tamsin O’Connell, who are kindly Xinyi Liu, Emma Lightfoot and Dorian Fuller August 2018 xi Foreword The 28-year term of Martin Jones as the first George Pitt-Rivers Professor of Archaeological Science witnessed, and in part created, a transformation in the fields of environmental and biomolecular archaeology. In this volume, Martin’s colleagues and students explore the intellectual rewards of this transformation, in terms of methodological developments in archaeobotany, the efflorescence of biomolecular archaeology, the integration of biological and social perspectives, and the exploration of archaeobotanical themes on a global scale. These advances are worldwide, and Martin’s contributions can be traced through citation trails, the scholarly diaspora of the Pitt-Rivers Laboratory and (not least) the foundations laid by the Ancient Biomolecules Initiative of the Natural Environment Research Council (1989–1993), which he chaired and helped create. As outlined in Chapter 6, Martin’s subsequent role in the bioarchaeology programme of the Wellcome Trust (1996–2006) further consolidated what is now a central and increasingly rewarding component of archaeological inquiry. Subsequently, he has engaged with the European Research Council, as Principal Investigator of the Food Globalisation in Prehistory project and a Panel Chair for the Advanced Grant programme. As both practitioner and indefatigable campaigner, he has promoted the field in immeasurable ways, at critical junctures in the past and in on-going capacities as a research leader. The accolades for Martin’s achievements are many, most recently Fellowship of the British Academy. Yet it is as a congenial, supportive—and demanding—force within the Pitt-Rivers Laboratory that the foundations of his intellectual influence were laid. Here, each Friday morning, the archaeological science community would draw sticks to decide who would deliver an impromptu research report or explore a topical theme. Martin is among the most laid-back colleagues I have worked with, yet simultaneously the most incisive in his constructive criticism. As a provider of internal peer-review he was fearless without being unkind. The themed PittRivers Christmas parties were equally impactful—on one occasion Alice Cooper appeared, looking ever so slightly like our professor of archaeological science. Martin’s roles as a research leader extended to several stints as head of the Department of Archaeology, chairing the Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology and serving as a long-term member of the Managing Committee of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Having started his professional career as an excavation-unit archaeobotanist in Oxford, he was a long-standing proponent of the highly successful Cambridge Archaeological Unit. In the wider collegiate community, he is a Fellow (and was Vice-Master) of Darwin College and was the staff treasurer of the Student Labour Club. In all roles he fought valiantly and often successfully for the interests of his constituency. His capacity to fight for deeply held priorities while recognizing the value of diverse perspectives was of utmost importance. His nostalgic enthusiasm for the debate with archaeological science that was engendered by the post-processual critique is one signal of an underlying appreciation of plurality. His active support for the recent merger of the Divisions of Archaeology and Biological Anthropology, within our new Department of Archaeology, is another. As a scientist (Martin’s first degree, at Cambridge, was in Natural Sciences) he values the peerreviewed journal article above all scholarly outputs, yet has authored as many highly regarded books as a scholar in the humanities. His Feast: Why humans share food has been translated into several languages and won Food Book of the Year from the Guild of Food Writers. He views academia and society as a continuum, campaigning for archaeobotanical contributions to global food security (e.g. by promoting millet as a drought-resistant crop) and working with world players such as Unilever to encourage archaeologically informed decisions regarding food products. That Martin’s achievements and influence merit celebration is clear. That his colleagues and students wish to honour him is equally so. Yet does the McDonald Conversations series publish Festschriften? This is a semantic question. As series editor I am delighted to introduce a collection of important papers regarding the past, present and future of archaeobotany, representing its methodological diversity and maturity. That this collection concurrently pays respect to a treasured colleague is a very pleasant serendipity. Dr James H. Barrett xii Food as Heritage Chapter 12 Food as Heritage Gilly Carr, Marie Louise Stig Sørensen & Dacia Viejo Rose Introductory reflections on food, culture and heritage In turn, this reflexivity about tradition means that food is often integral to the formation, as well as the performance, of personal and group identities, and in particular to notions of inherited practices. Moreover, food is also a strongly mnemonic device: the taste or smell of food may recall, for example, a memory or a scene from childhood or a special event, and through such memory recall food is used to confirm identity and social belonging. Marcel Proust’s famous description in À la Recherche du Temps Perdu of how tasting a madeleine dipped in tea ignites a journey of memory has been widely cited to capture this capacity of food, resulting in the idea of ‘the Proustian moment’ or ‘the Proust Effect’.1 Food as ‘home’ is further linked to the tangible site of food making, the hearth. Tastes and smells, often remembrances of childhood as in the Proustian case, become a sensorial home to which the mind returns, motivating efforts to recreate it. This dimension becomes especially salient in the context of the movement of people, forced or otherwise. People on the move take with them recipes, know-how and their memories related to food. When their displacement is forced or motivated by economic necessity, then the acts of cooking, sharing and, of course, eating the dishes of the lost home can become an important gesture of resisting loss and attempting to recover that space of belonging. In the refugee camps in Greece, for instance, up-rooted Yazidi and Syrian families fleeing violence have tried against extraordinary odds to recreate some of the flavours of home and maintain daily routines revolving around food (see Figure 12.1a–d). Food is, therefore, part of heritage at different scales—from the microhistories of individual lives, the personal variations on recipes and the predilections of palates to a diachronic perspective on a regional and even global scale reflecting the transformation of social systems and mobility of populations with their food know-how and taste preferences. These dimensions of food have increasingly become recognized within heritage policies and practices of different kinds. Food is culture; supremely so. It not only makes and nourishes our bodies, but it also partakes in the building of sociability and in the performance of identities. Through food we make ourselves, and exercise and experience social qualities such as communality and exclusions. Commensality, the process of eating together, may be seen as both a central social glue and a stage-setting of social relations, including differences within and between groups. It is also common for the making and processing of food to reference earlier events and traditions, whether the meal is a feast or an everyday activity. Food is also materiality, and its various elements have been, and are, objects of manipulation ranging from the long-term genetic story of modifications and mutations to the short-term daily processes of food making. The recognition of the cultural dimension of food is not new. Studies of food as part of social settings have long pedigrees, but from a socio-cultural point of view the second half of the twentieth century saw a particularly novel and more socially orientated manner of appreciating the significance of food. Anthropology and sociology provided core arguments, with scholars such as Mary Douglas (1966) and Jack Goody (1982) developing structuralist-inspired arguments about the patterns and regularities that are expressed within and through food. They, and others, argued convincingly for the strongly symbolic dimensions of food. On this background, wider aspects and impacts of food have been increasingly recognized. Within this, the importance of food as part of our heritage has also become a distinct area of appreciation. This focus emerged ‘naturally’, as food making in itself is strongly conscious of its history (in the form of recipes dictating the special way of selecting and treating ingredients)—in other words there exists a value linked to culturally prescribed ways of doing things, and food is regularly performed within a strong sense of ‘past tense’ (this is how it has always been done). 145 Chapter 12 a b c d Figure 12.1. Photographs taken at the Refugee Camp in Idomeni, Greece, March/April 2016: (a) A Yazidi woman prepares a sweet breakfast of roasted raisins for her family; (b) A Yazidi family from Iraq gather to eat breakfast; (c) An older Syrian woman makes rice pudding for her grandchildren. Supplies are limited and the food on offer is often unappealing and stale. Small reminders of home can help face the difficult and often depressing living conditions; (d) A group of people queue for chai at the Solidari-Tea tent, in Idomeni. Access to hot sweet chai was a small source of comfort for residents of the camp and the tea tent remained open 24/7 to accommodate needs. (Photographs: Alkisti Alevropoulou-Malli, reproduced with her kind permission.) International recognition—food as Intangible Cultural Heritage In this brief chapter celebrating Martin Jones and his career in plants and food, we provide an outline of two main approaches to food heritage. One is the global valorization through instruments developed by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the tensions that sit therein; the other is the exploration of a particular case in which food has become part of a regional reflection over—and deflection of—a difficult part of twentiethcentury history. Both of these levels at which food as heritage operate exemplify official and public understandings as well as issues about the appropriations of food heritage. Although brief, the examples illustrate something about how food matters and how that mattering can be used, enhanced and possibly manipulated, as well as also what food brings to the social conversation about history, places and ways of doing things. In 2002 UNESCO officially launched the concept of the world’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) through the ‘Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage’ to create a system of official appreciation for a range of cultural practices that are distinct from monuments and sites—‘the oral and intangible treasures of humankind worldwide’—with the aim ‘to raise awareness of intangible heritage and provide recognition to communities’ traditions and know-how that reflect their diversity’.2 The convention took effect from 2003, and in 2008 a derived list had been established. By 2016 there were 429 ICH elements listed. Through this, the contribution of crafts and skilled knowledge has been up-graded in value and recog146 Food as Heritage Figure 12.2. An example of a ‘Mediterranean Diet’ meal. (Photograph: Dacia Viejo Rose.) nition, but also (potentially) reified and consolidated into types potentially resulting in fossilized versions of, for example, food practices. However, our interests here are the motivations and ideas that influence how we conceive of food as intangible3 cultural practice. In the details provided for the different food traditions listed on the ‘Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity’, it is possible to discern a number of preoccupations. First, there are case studies that focus directly on food, in particular specificities of its preparation and consumption; we shall discuss some of these further below. Second, there are cases that focus on particular production practices, where a procedure and traditional knowledge and skills are the concern rather than the food that is produced. Example of this are the Mibu no Hana Taue ritual of transplanting rice in Mibu, Hiroshima, Japan, or the shrimp fishing on horseback in Oostduinkerke, Belgium. Third are those cases in which food plays a central role, but where it is not the main object of the ICH practice being listed, such as the Qiang New Year Festival in China, the Winegrowers’ Festival of Vevey in Switzerland, or the Makishi Masquerade in Zambia. The first group is the one that interests us most here, as it includes cases that are about intangible heritage in the form of the production of food out of various ingredients and using particular practices and tools. Within these cases there is a distinct focus on commensality and communality. The cases presented for the ‘Mediterranean Diet’ (Greece, Italy, Morocco, Spain; see Figure 12.2) and the ‘Oshi palav’ [pilaf] in Tajikistan express this respectively as follows: Hence, the cultural practice transcends the boundaries of food and acts as a cornerstone for cultural practices which involves eating together […] and stresses on hospitality and neighbourliness. These community meals in turn have given rise to a large amount of art being produced—in the form of music, legends and tales. (www.gounesco.com/ intangible-cultural-heritage-food-edition, accessed 16 September 2018) Otherwise known as the ‘King of meals’, it is based on a recipe using vegetables, rice, meat and spices but up to 200 varieties of the dish exist. Considered an inclusive practice that aims to bring people of different backgrounds together, oshi palav is prepared to be enjoyed at regular mealtimes, as well as social gatherings, celebrations and rituals. The importance of the dish to communities in Tajikistan is indicative in sayings such as ‘No Osh, no acquaintance’ or ‘If you have eaten Osh from somebody, you must respect them for 40 years.’ (https://ich.unesco.org/en/ RL/oshi-palav-a-traditional-meal-and-its-social-andcultural-contexts-in-tajikistan-01191#identification, accessed 16 September 2018) Another strong focus is the food being produced as a result of a particular process or celebrated due to its social and cultural significance. These range from specific beverages with traditional forms of production and contexts of consumption, such as ‘Turkish coffee culture and tradition’ and ‘Arabic coffee, a symbol of generosity’, to the community-building and celebratory aspects of the ‘gastronomic meal of the French’ or the ‘beer culture’ in Belgium. In some cases one 147 Chapter 12 include ersatz food; home-made tools and instruments created to turn one type of (relatively) more plentiful food into another which was in short supply; tools for making on a domestic level that which had long since become mechanized and mass produced; and home-made food containers and cookware. Such items include 75-year-old jam-jars containing dried seaweed to use as blancmange; dried and ground parsnips and acorns used as a coffee substitute; and various leaves dried for use as tea. Potato graters (to turn potatoes into bread flour) and sugarbeet presses (to make substitute sugar) are among other items displayed with pride. Small (and illegal) butter churns for creating small amounts of butter for the household are among commonly displayed objects. Finally, the most ubiquitous of all food-related items in occupation museums are the pots and pans made from recycled Red Cross tins. A Red Cross relief ship came to the Islands monthly from December 1944 onwards and saved the population from starvation. The food tins in the parcels, once their contents were consumed, were recycled and used to replace the cookware long since vanished from the local shops. Nowhere are all of these food-related items of heritage displayed more clearly than in a recreated occupationperiod kitchen at the German Occupation Museum in Guernsey—an iconic image of the occupation (Figure 12.3). These objects are exhibited for the public as ‘mnemonic devices’, as Macdonald calls them; objects capable of ‘carrying’ the past into the present and, through younger museum-goers, into the future (Macdonald 2013, 152). Through these items, younger generations learn the occupation narrative. This obsession with food—or rather, with a need to display a historical preoccupation with food at a time when mass hunger and, indeed, starvation was rife—is indicative of how important this time period was for the Islanders, and indeed how important the hunger was, and is, as part of the narrative of the German occupation. In fact, the display of food-asheritage is used as an instrument and, sometimes, a metaphor for narrating the story of the German occupation to museum-going audiences. The narrative presented is a selective one, however, albeit a not untruthful one. While the wartime experience of the Channel Islands was closer to that of continental Europe—comprising resistance, persecution of Jews, deportation of political prisoners and other sectors of society, and the importation of forced labour—the war narrative displayed adheres instead to that of Britain (Carr 2012). This has been termed the ‘Churchillian paradigm’ by Paul Sanders, who has characterized the narrative as one of ‘“blood, toil and tears” of sublime and unwavering can detect a tendency to claim that the ‘essence’ of a culture can be found in its food-ways, or that its symbolic character is explicit and widely recognized. Japanese cooking is, for instance, described as ‘very sincere’, whereas Croatian gingerbread is claimed to be ‘One of the most commonly recognized symbols of Croatian identity’.4 Yet even in these celebrations of communal sharing there are rifts that indicate the ubiquitously political nature of UNESCO and its listing mechanisms. Perhaps this is most evident in the case of kimchi, listed in 2013 as ‘Kimjang, making and sharing kimchi in the Republic of Korea’, and in 2015 as the ‘Tradition of kimchi-making in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’, despite their obvious similarities and the irony that descriptions of both emphasize the fact that the process of kimchi making boosts cooperation and social cohesion. This is without going into the tensions that broke out between Japan and the Republic of Korea over kimchi in 1996, which led to the latter petitioning the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization to establish international standards for kimchi (Lahrichi 2014). Within the explicit focus on food as ICH, we recognize the topics brought out by anthropologists in the late twentieth century—food is about sustenance, but its importance goes far beyond this and it is its role as a social medium that we truly want to celebrate and preserve. This, in turn, is what gives food cultural values, and makes it an important part of many different kinds of heritages. Local usage and significance—food and the narration of war and occupation in the Channel Islands Food-as-heritage can even play an important role in museums dedicated to the subject of war. The display of daily rations, narratives of rationing, of food scarcity for some groups and unequal access to food resources by others can be used to communicate daily life and inflicted suffering, and can provide clear insight into the character of the enemy and their actions. A disproportionately high number of museums dedicated to the German occupation of 1940–45 are found throughout the British Channel Islands. The occupation has been the single most important historical event in living memory and is a crucial element of identity creation today (Carr 2014). These occupation museums started in the Islands in 1946, and are principally private venues used for the display of personal collections of militaria, usually arranged around certain themes (Carr 2016). One feature that unites all of these museums is the display of food and food-related artefacts. These 148 Food as Heritage Figure 12.3. A Guernsey occupation-era kitchen, complete with food-related objects, at the German Occupation Museum, Guernsey. (Photograph: Gilly Carr.) steadfastness in the face of adversity’ (2012, 25). This narrative of endurance until final victory has a focus on victory rather than the darker side of what was stoically endured. The most palatable, least dark and least controversial way of narrating what was endured is to focus on hunger rather than, say, on the persecution of Jews and deportations of political prisoners, which the local government—who stayed in power after the occupation—failed even to try to prevent. We can suggest that narrating occupation through the ‘safe’ topic of food has formed a special version of what Laurajane Smith calls the ‘Authorised Heritage Discourse’ in the Channel Islands, whereby food-as-heritage is something that is ‘innately valuable’ and that ‘current generations “must” care for, protect and revere so that they may be passed to nebulous future generations for their “education”, and to forge a sense of common identity based on the past’ (Smith 2006, 29). Thus, a focus on food represents an untroubled representation of the occupation devoid of any of the complexities of the occupation experience. A focus on food avoids the topic of collaboration (although veers dangerously into black-market territory). In truth, narrating the experience of occupation through food is an accurate way of representing a common denominator—something that everybody experienced. It is an uncontested narrative of war. Nobody is to blame for hunger but the occupiers; and the civilians and local authorities were entirely innocent of any blame at all. Food is used as a metaphor to speak of innocent suffering of all at the hands of the enemy and of the blamelessness of the local political leaders, who did their best for the civilian population. By the same token, the display of a number of wooden bread bowls, engraved with mottos and messages by German soldiers, speaks of the perceived ubiquity of food in the possession of the occupiers. They are presented 149 Chapter 12 as greedy, as growing fat while the Islanders starved; indeed, as the very agents of Islander starvation. However, is this the only narrative concerning food in occupation museums? Is there any sign that the Churchillian paradigm is weakening its grip and allowing alternative narratives to come to the fore? Certainly we can see new displays erected since the turn of the millennium which are allowing other voices to tell alternative stories. In the ‘Prisoner Room’ of the German Occupation Museum in Guernsey, for example, a bowl and spoon found at the concentration camp in the Channel Island of Alderney is displayed. In another exhibit erected at the same time, plates, cups and food trays recycled from Red Cross tins, made by deported Channel Islander civilian internees in German camps, make a mute statement about their experience. These internees were kept alive by weekly Red Cross parcels, and recycling the metal food tins were a way of preventing the guards taking them away to give to the German armament industry. These objects thus speak not only of the loyalty of the deportees to the Allied cause, but also of their experience of hunger in camps relieved through aid. The Occupation Tapestry Gallery in Jersey depicts the German occupation in a series of 12 panels inspired not only by the Bayeux Tapestry, but also by the Operation Overlord tapestry at the D-Day Museum in Portsmouth. It was put on display in 1995, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Liberation. The third panel depicts a scene remarkably similar to the wartime kitchen displayed at the German Occupation Museum in Guernsey (Figure 12.3). The penultimate panel shows the arrival of the Red Cross ship that saved the Islands from starvation. And yet the fifth panel, in addition to depicting long queues for food, also shows a woman trading a pearl necklace on the black market for a package of tea. It also includes a vignette of somebody hiding a pig in a bed in order to avoid its confiscation by the occupiers—a clear example of civilian resistance. In short, food is an emotive part of heritage. As an artefact of war, it can be used (and abused) to narrate any number of alternative and competing versions of the same story, but few museums have room for all versions. Through the selective display of different food-related artefacts, similarly selective versions of the past, voices, and discrepant experiences can be chosen to educate an audience about what the experience was like for ‘everybody’. National narratives are built on such displays. And yet narratives can and do change with time. New exhibitions increasingly seek to tell different stories and to bring marginalized narratives centre stage. It is incumbent upon archaeologists and heritage professionals who curate such exhibitions, and who choose food-related artefacts to tell stories of the past, most especially those which are controversial, contested or sensitive, to make sure that these stories are plural and do not privilege the same old ‘safe’ and seemingly uncontroversial narratives. Afterthought Preparing, presenting and consuming food, then, is about much more than providing nutrition. These acts represent a range of human activity replete with social, cultural and symbolic meaning that may be related to every aspect of the food cycle. Above we have seen both the heritagization of food by an international organization and the use of food in displays of difficult pasts as a, deceptively, ‘safe’ heritage narrative. So does this heritage interest in food matter; does it have any repercussions? One obvious impact is that the heritagization process can lead to the reification and commodification of its subject. This in turn can lead to tensions internationally that make food seem a little bit less ‘safe’ and innocent. Combine trade negotiations, geographical indicators (e.g. Champagne and Bordeaux), intellectual property, competition, sprinkle in some nationalism, and the results are conflicts over champagne, feta and hummus, to name but a few. Those seeking to protect the particular food, or drink, emphasize the sense of authenticity, the links to land and community, and make a point of this being linked to a set of traditions tied into a territory and ultimately being about identity: ‘Much like the nation, champagne and its terroir are believed to possess eternal, natural qualities. The wine can be seen as an objective manifestation of the French “soul,” the guardian of supreme spiritual values’ (Guy 2003, 2). This strength of feeling can be evidenced in part by the Champagne Wars that can be traced back to the 1950s between France and Canada and only ended in 2003, but France fought similar battles with the US, Spain and, more recently, Ukraine. In the case of hummus, tensions gradually mounted between Israel and Lebanon, and in 2008 they led the Association of Lebanese Industrialists to launch a lawsuit against Israel for infringement of food copyright laws and sparked one observer to write: ‘Lebanon and Israel are currently engaged in a two-pronged battle over the national identity of hummus’ (Ariel 2012, 34). In reflecting on the dynamics that have led to this conflict, Ariel further remarks: In the age of globalization and international travel, migration foodways have become increasingly hybrid. Dishes travel and are adopted and indigenized by groups of people outside of their ‘original’ 150 Food as Heritage homes. This produces anxiety in those who once considered these foods ‘theirs’. The trademarking of foods is a reaction to this process. (Ariel 2012, 34) Notes 1. The commodification of food heritage is also found in the growing trend of ‘food tourism’, defined by the World Food Travel Association as ‘The pursuit and enjoyment of unique and memorable food and drink experiences, both far and near.’5 Such tourism, together with heritage labelling, tends to follow an expectation of a loyalty to the original and authentic, thus potentially resulting in a reification of ‘traditional food’. This is in contrast to the intention of the intangible heritage convention, which aims at the preservation of live traditions. In the UNESCO convention it is stressed that intangible heritage is alive, transmitted through generations and confirmed, potentially even slightly altered, through its various performances, but also that in some ways it nonetheless stays true to the original. Another international movement, in this case a non-governmental one, that equally works to valorize and protect these authentic dimensions of foodways is the Slow Food organization created in 1986 and the movement around it. This tension within intangible heritage between, on one hand, permanence and authenticity and on the other, the common tendency for shifts and transformations is not distinct to food, but food expresses it very clearly due to its presence in so many contexts and its continuous performance and reimagining. At the same time, however, food cultures also have ways of overcoming such apparent changes, and ability of resistance and reconstitution. Haboucha’s study of how Afghan women refugees in London used food to reconcile the memory of home with their lived experiences in a new place is indicative of the ways in which food can simultaneously resist and absorb change (Haboucha 2015). In this case, through various processes of social conformity the women gradually came to the agreement that leek could replace the Gandana (wild leek) traditionally used for many dishes—and through this appropriation a new version of the authentic Afghan meal was produced. And so we come to the particular strength of food as heritage—its ability at once to reflect and to recreate the most intimate of home environments and personal remembrances, while at the same time slicing through national borders linking regional communities and indeed creating international ones, to be both resilient and malleable. 2. 3. 4. 5. The Proust effect refers to the vivid reliving of events from the past through sensory stimuli (van Campen 2014). http:/www.gounesco.com/intangible-cultural-heritagefood-edition (accessed 15 September 2018). The potential irony of the convention approaching food as intangible when most of us experience it as a physical matter is not lost on the authors, but a critique of the fundamental conceptualization of intangible heritage is not the topic here. http:/www.gounesco.com/intangible-cultural-heritagefood-edition (accessed 15 September 2018). The association, founded in 2001, https://www.worldfoodtravel.org/cpages/what-is-food-tourism (accessed 15 September 2018), aims to support people interested in engaging in food tourism. Searching Google for ‘food tourism’ reveals how big the concept has become within a few years, including a substantial academic involvement with its analysis. References Ariel, A., 2012. The hummus wars. Gastronomica 12(1), 34–42. Carr, G., 2012. Occupation heritage, commemoration and memory in Guernsey and Jersey. History and Memory 24(1), 87–117. Carr, G., 2014. Legacies of Occupation: Archaeology, heritage and memory in the Channel Islands. Cham: Springer. Carr, G., 2016. ‘Illicit antiquities’? The collection of Nazi militaria in the Channel Islands. World Archaeology 48(2), 254–66. Douglas, M., 1966. Purity and Danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. London: Routledge. Goody, J., 1982. Cooking, Cuisine and Class: A study in comparative sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Guy, K., 2003. When Champagne Became French. Wine and the making of a national identity. Baltimore (MD): Johns Hopkins University Press. Haboucha, R., 2015. MPhil dissertation, University of Cambridge. Lahrichi, K., 2014. 7 of the world’s fiercest food feuds, CNN, 1 October 2014. http://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/ food-fights/index.html, accessed 15 September 2018. Macdonald, S., 2013. Memorylands: Heritage and identity in Europe today. London/New York: Routledge. Sanders, P., 2012. Narratives of Britishness: UK war memory and Channel Islands occupation memory, in Islands and Britishness: A global perspective, eds. J. Matthews & D. Travers. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 24–39. Smith, L., 2006. Uses of Heritage. Abingdon/New York: Routledge. van Campen, C., 2014. The Proust Effect: The senses as doorways to lost memories. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 151 Chapter 12 152