What people eat and how we know
Naturally, all of the objects used for the two prior parts of this unit were used for food preparation and consumption. This part of the unit expands on what people ate. At this point, it will be necessary for the students to choose one culture for their project. Their project will be to research the foods used by one particular indigenous American culture. However, before the students go off into their own directions, they will need some basic knowledge of how this sort of information is obtained. This is the section of the unit where archeological techniques are explained.
How We Know
This section contains background information about the more common methods of obtaining information about any particular culture. It is intended as a guide for teachers who may not normally teach the social sciences and gives the general information that the students ought to know before they start their research into the foods eaten by various cultures. In my class I will probably spend one class period lecturing on this topic. As the unit is being presented at the beginning of the year, it will present a good opportunity for the students to practice taking notes. Alternatively, I may use the information in this section to make up a reading packet and practice some reading comprehension strategies with them.
Carbon pathways
Every living organism contains carbon which it has obtained from its food source. A plant obtains it carbon in the form of carbon dioxide. An herbivore obtains its carbon from the plants that it eats. A carnivore obtains its carbon from the animals that it eats. In essence all of the carbon in a living organism comes from carbon that was fixed by a phototropic organism.
There are three different ways in which carbon can be fixed, and each pathway leaves a trace of its use in the carbon that gets passed up the food chain. The most basic pathway is the C3 pathway, which produces carbon chains based on three carbon units; this is what you may have studied as the Calvin cycle in biology. The C4 and CAM carbon pathways are adaptations of the C3 pathway that are used in plants in hot areas. While all three pathways result in carbon that has been fixed from the surrounding environment, each method of fixation yields a different type of carbon chain. Those carbon chains then can be used diagnostically to determine the primary source of carbon in a particular organism's diet.
Any reasonably advanced recent biology text book will have a detailed explanation of the three pathways. Additionally, there are many good websites that have explanations of the pathways at various levels. Elizabeth Little wrote an interesting paper that goes into this a bit more. ("The Late Woodland Diet on Nantucket Island and the Problem of Maize in Costal New England" 351-352)
Ethnobotany
Ethnobotany is the study of society's use of plants. This type of anthropology has two parts. There is the study of current use of plants, but there is also the study of past use of plants. The study of the current uses of plants is conducted in a fairly straightforward manner. Ethnobotanists will generally interview members of the culture in which they have an interest to find out what type of plants they use, how they are use, why they are used, etc. The ethnobotanist may also go on plant collecting excursions with members of the particular culture they are studying. However, ethnobotanical study of past uses of plants is a bit more complicated.
Ethnobotanical study of past cultures generally requires advanced scientific analysis. There are several techniques that are frequently used. One of the more common strategies is pollen analysis. In this technique a stratum of soil or sometimes an artifact like a grave shroud is studied through a microscope or analyzed chemically for traces of pollen. Every type of pollen, like every type of plant, is unique. As a result, the pollen can indicate the presence of that particular plant near the object being studied. When this type of analysis is used in conjunction with food related items, the types of plants that may have been used as food stuffs can be determined.
Midden heaps are piles of refuse that have been left by a particular culture. For example, someday our landfills will be considered giant midden heaps. Within the midden piles archeologists will sometimes find bits of burned or discarded food items. For example, maize kernels and cobs are sometimes found. An ethnobotanist will be able to use a scanning electron microscope to study the structure of the plant material to identify these remains which especially when burned are generally thought to be kitchen refuse or discarded food scraps.
A sure method of identifying food that has been eaten by a particular culture is the analysis of coprolites. A coprolite is the fossilized remnant of feces, so it will contain the indigestible bits of food that have been eaten. Maize, when eaten off the cob, contains large amounts of indigestible cellulose, which may be found in the coprolites of cultures who ate corn on the cob. An ethnobotanist will be able to identify the food that was eaten which caused the undigested pieces to be excreted.
Ethnography
Ethnography is a term used by anthropologist to describe one method of collecting information about a culture. In this method, an anthropologist finds a living member or preferably lots of living members of the community they wish to study and asks questions. The ethnographer will generally spend time with various members of the community observing what they do, when they do it, how they do it, etc. This information is then published in a journal or a book.
There are a few caveats that I offer about this type of information. When using this sort of information it is important to note how the information was collected. Sometimes ethnographers are recording information obtained from interviews, which has a different sort of validity than information obtained from actual observation. Additionally, although most professional ethnographers today try to leave their own cultural experiences out of their observations, studies of this type are vulnerable to preconceived notions created by the cultural norms of the observer.
Ethnohistory
Ethnohistory is similar to ethnography in that it is the record of the activities of people in a particular culture. However, instead of the anthropologist going and talking to living members of a community, the anthropologist finds historical records of the culture. This means that a culture can be studied even if it is extinct or has evolved into a new form. However, this type of information comes with its caveats as well. As in ethnography, the particular cultural bias of the observer must be noted. This cultural bias is frequently larger in historical documents than it is in modern documents because it is more commonly recognized as a problem today than it has been in the past. Furthermore, many ethnohistorical documents were created for a particular purpose such as propaganda or sales rather than for the purpose of greater scientific information.
What People Eat
At this point, the students should have some idea of how cultural information about food is collected. This discussion leads into the topic of information discrimination. Clearly, not all sources are equally reliable. The students will need to have some strategies for evaluating the information that they will encounter while doing the research in this section of the curriculum unit. If you have advanced students, they may not need more than a reminder to choose their sources carefully. Many of my students will need a crash course. So, I will probably take another day or two to go through the process of evaluating sources. In my classes, I generally encourage the students to try to figure out the point of view of the informant. I ask the students to try to figure out what the informant is "trying to sell them". My students will end up with some general tips on the reliability of various types of sources. Throughout the year, I work hard to engender skepticism in my students, so this project at the beginning of the year is a fine time to start this process. Finally, evaluating information is an important part of our science curriculum. The particular standards may be found in the appendix at the end of this unit.
This project will require the students to research several aspects of foods that their chosen people eat. The students will begin by choosing a culture to research. They will research the types of foods the people of their chosen culture eat and how these foods were prepared. The students will be required to come up with a "typical" week of meals for their indigenous population. After the students come up with their week of meals, they will record nutrient information about the foods they encountered. The USDA has a very complete listing of nutrient information in their online National Nutritional Database. For more information on what some indigenous populations actually ate, see the section below, "What People Ate".
At the end of this unit, in the resources section, there is a worksheet that the students will be able to use to organize their findings. More advanced students probably will not need this sheet, but it will be very useful for lower level students. Regardless of whether the students use the sheet there are certain pieces of information that they should gather about the food and the cultures which they will study. The students need to record the type of food, the serving size for the food, the nutrients found in the food, the source of their information that the food was being eaten in the culture that they are studying, and they also need to record the food preparation technique that is being used. In many cases the method of preparation changes the nutrient content of the food. Refer to the worksheet at the end of this curriculum unit for more detailed information.
What People Ate
This section is an overview of the eating habits of several indigenous cultures. It is intended for teachers who may not have much experience in this area. The topic is broken down by culture; however, there are several elements of cuisine that are shared by many or all cultures. If you wish to do your own research, I strongly recommend Sophie Coe's book American's First Cuisines and Betty Fussell's book The Story of Corn. The book Chilies to Chocolate is also a good book, but it contains some dated information and is more specific to certain types of foods rather than the whole diet. The information in this section on Central and South America comes largely from these books. The information on North American cuisine was a bit more scattered. One important resource was Jason Mancini, an ethnobotanist at the Mashantucket Pequot museum. Other sources included several contemporary Euroamerican accounts and a few archeological reports.
The cultures included in this overview are the Maya, a sophisticated society of city-states in the tropical rainforest of Mesoamerica, the Aztec, a later empire in Mesoamerica, the Inca, a South American empire, and the peoples of southern coastal New England, a collection of territorial tribes. I have chosen these cultures for several reasons. First, there is quite a bit of information available about them. Second, while there is information also available about other cultures, these cultures tend to be representative of the heritage of many of my students. This unit could certainly be taught with different cultural groups if they are more representative of your student base or local area.
Almost all cultures in the Americas ate or still eat maize (aka corn). Maize appears to have originated in Mesoamerica a very long time ago. Maize then spread to all but the most climatically extreme areas of North and South America. As the technology to cultivate maize spread, the technology to cook maize nutritiously spread with it. To obtain the most protein from maize a process known in Mesoamerica known as nixtamalization must take place. In this process the maize kernels are soaked in a bath of lime (calcium carbonate) and water. Where lime is not available, lye (from wood ash soaked in water) is used in place of lime. After soaking, the maize is cooked. Then, the maize is ground and used for whatever preparation is desired. Most cultures have some form of a flattened disk or oval cake that is made from a dough of this ground maize. In Mesoamerica these cakes are tortillas and tamales. Further north they are the pika bread and posole of the Zuni. In the Northeastern US, they become nocake, hoe cake or jonny cake (Fussell 193-198, 200-209).
Most Mesoamerican and South American cultures ate and still eat chilies. Chilies seem to have been a generic basis for sauces, soups, and stews and, in cultures where they were eaten, were eaten at almost every meal. In cultures where the chili pepper was consumed, not eating chilies was considered a fast (Coe, America's First Cuisines 39, 60-65).
Finally, almost all American cultures ate and eat beans, particularly black beans, kidney beans, and tepary beans. Beans, when eaten in combination with alkali processed corn, provide all the essential amino acids that the human body needs (Fussell 203). Furthermore, both corn and beans can be dried and stored for long periods of time. This allows them to be used as dietary staples throughout the year, which is what most American cultures did.
Maya Foods1
The Maya diet is largely vegetarian. That is not to say that they don't also eat meat when it is available, but the bulk of their food appears to be and have been vegetarian. Their primary food source is maize. Maize was eaten at various stages of ripeness from the earliest green corn through full ripeness and smoked and dried for later use. Maize stalks were even sometimes eaten like sugar cane. Although maize was sometimes eaten on the cob, maize was mostly eaten in the form of an alkali processed dough that was prepared either by dissolving it in water to make a drink called atole, pinole, or posole, depending on the way the maize was prepared, or by making it into tamales or tortillas. Drinks and breads were seasoned with dozens of varieties of flavoring agents ranging from fruits and vegetables to meats, minerals, and honey.
Maize additions were varied and numerous. When meat was available it would be added to the dough variations mentioned above, but most often the additions were of plant materials. Chilies were the major addition to Mayan cooking. Chilies were added to almost everything and the chili and water combination formed the basis most sauces, stews and soups. Fruit additives to the maize might include papaya, avocado, pineapple, sapote, and more. Beans were also an important part of the Maya diet. They frequently were made into fillings for the maize dishes mentioned above.
Additionally, they ate many different greens ranging from young beans to various leafy greens that were both wild and domesticated. The Maya used not only the bean seeds but also the young leaves and stems. The Maya also used numerous leafy plant materials for cooking. These leaves were used to wrap tamales and other foods while they were roasted, steamed or braised. The leaves frequently contributed flavorings to the enclosed foods. Sometimes the same leaves that were used to wrap foods also were used as fillings in different dished. Greens, fruits and vegetables were also used as components of stewed creations that were eaten with tortillas.
Meat in the Mayan commoner's diet was rare, but it seems to have been more common in the upper classes of society. Wild game was available and eaten, as were fish, frogs, and iguanas. Fowl of all sorts including was also eaten. Mushrooms were classified by the Maya as meat and were eaten as well. Humans were eaten ceremonially. Meat was sometimes roasted, but it seems to have been more commonly eaten in combination with maize in one of the forms mentioned above. Meat was also salted, smoked, and dried to preserve it for later use.
There are several auxiliary foods that the Maya ate with some regularity that ought to be mentioned. Chocolate was used by the Maya, particularly the elite. The Maya seem to have drunk chocolate with seasonings, like vanilla and chili, similar to the Aztecs. Honey was also readily available in parts of the Mayan homeland, so it was used more frequently than in other indigenous American cultures (Coe and Coe, 2000, 51).
Aztec Foods
The Aztec, like most of the peoples of the Americas, used maize as their primary source of food. The Aztec used seven different varieties of maize. The Aztec, as the inheritors of much of the knowledge and experience of Mesoamerica, knew to use the process of nixtamalization, which increases the digestible protein in the corn. In addition to maize, the Aztec ate many other sources of protein. Beans were eaten both as seeds and greens. Wild game were consumed, and apparently were hunted in a sustainable manner. Various water dwelling animals including frogs, snakes, fish and insects contributed to the Aztec protein intake. Of special interest to youngster who like to be disgusted are the wide variety of insects that the Aztec, and apparently their present day descendants, considered delicacies.
Many types of vegetation were included in the diet, ranging from roots like jicama, sweet potato and dahlia bulbs to greens like amaranth and algae, to seeds like chia (yes, the same stuff that grows on chia pets) and squash seeds. Several varieties of fruits were also eaten from tomatoes, cactus, avocado, and a few other plants. The Aztec were some of the few people in the new world to have access to multiple sources of sugary substances. They used both honey and agave syrup. Sophie Coe has wonderful descriptions of Aztec feasts in her book.
Aztec feasts and many other meals ended by drinking chocolate. Chocolate in the Aztec world is not the chocolate drink that most of us drink today. Sophie and Michael Coe wrote a wonderful book describing everything one might want to know about chocolate. I strongly recommend The True History of Chocolate for more information on chocolate.
Inca Foods
The Inca people ate maize, as did most other indigenous American cultures, but it was not as much a staple for them as it was for other cultures like the Maya and the Aztec. Because the Inca inhabited such a wide variety of environmental ecosystems, the Inca had several other choices for major sources of food.
In cold but reasonable well watered places the Inca grew numerous root crops. The most famous of them is the potato. To say the potato, though, is misleading. The Inca and their descendants today grow many, many varieties of potato with individual names for each. Potatoes were eaten cooked fresh or freeze dried as chuño and reconstituted in soups and stews. Several other root crops, oca, añu, ullucu, maka, and others, were eaten in similar ways. Peanuts were first domesticated in this region, too.
In addition to maize and numerous root crops, the Inca consumed the grain quinoa, legumes and fruits. Quinoa was eaten in many of the same ways that maize was consumed. The Inca diet was supplemented with several varieties of fruits including, strawberries, passion fruit, pineapples, paqay, and several others. Chiles, as in many other American cultures were eaten by the Inca, and as in many other American cultures, at almost every meal.
The Inca ate more meat than some other cultures; this was primarily because of the cuy. The cuy, also known as a guinea pig, was and is eaten even by the common people. The elites ate fish, deer, llama, vizcacha, and wild fowl as well. Unlike many other cultures in the Americas, the Inca did not eat dogs or humans, not even ritualistically.
Chocolate does not seem to have been a major feature of the Inca diet in the way it was for the Maya and the Aztec. Instead, the Inca drank chicha, a mildly alcoholic beverage brewed from maize which is frequently compared to beer. Other ingredients were included during fermentation and after to vary the flavor and alcohol content of the beverage. The beverage was fermented, not with brewer's yeast, but with the enzymes found in human saliva contributed by women and children chewing on some of the maize that was to be fermented. In some cases, frequently is ritualistic settings, specialized women did the chewing. In other cases ordinary women and children would be employed in this labor. The chicha seems to have been a fairly major contributor to the Inca caloric intake as several sources suggest that they drank it frequently.2
Coastal Communities of Southern New England
The peoples of southern New England tended to speak Algonquin languages and practiced similar cultural values, so in the same way that the Maya were a collection of peoples speaking similar languages with similar values yet were grouped together in this paper as one people, the peoples of southern New England will also be generalized.
The information for this section comes from a number of sources that were written in the early colonial period, so they reflect the lifestyle of the indigenous people at about that time. Furthermore, these authors have attempted to explain strange new wonders to Europeans who have never seen them, so some of the descriptions are a bit convoluted, somewhat inaccurate, and certainly biased. In some cases, I have had to make some educated guesses as to what was being described; however, I have attempted to make a note of this whenever it occurs. In addition to contemporary Euroamerican sources, I have used information from interviews with Jason Mancini and several archeological reports in this section.
The peoples of coastal New England at the time of European contact ate maize as a fairly significant part of their diet. However, maize was a relatively new addition to their diet. The earliest calibrated radiocarbon dates on maize in New England start about 1220 AD, but most date from the late 1200's and the dates further inland from the coast are much later in the 1300's and 1400's (Little, "Kantantouwit's Legacy: Calibrated Dates on Maize in New England"). Unlike many of the peoples further south, the indigenous population of New England does not appear to have brewed carbonated or alcoholic beverages from their maize; although, they do seem to have retained some of the other traditions associated with maize. There are references in several of the European accounts which describe how maize was parched in hot ashes and then ground to make a powdered food source which was a staple on journeys. This powdered maize was eaten with water or snow in a manner similar to atole or posole. At home, this powdered maize was baked into what the Europeans describe as cakes, which is also called nocake (Williams, Wood, Gookin). As Betty Fussell points out, this is also called hoecake and johnnycake. It sounds somewhat like thick tortillas and probably served a similar nutritional purpose. The powdered maize was also eaten in a slightly looser configuration that the Europeans called samp or succotash; it is probably similar to what we eat as grits today except that in colonial times some pieces of maize may have been left whole and sometimes bits of meat, fish or vegetables would have been added. With the additions, it sounds similar to the Mesoamerican tradition of using atole as a base for stews and soups.
Because maize was a relatively new addition to the New England diet, The New England diet was heavily influenced by wild foods such as cattails, tree nuts, game and fish, and ground nuts and other tubers. In addition to using ground, dried maize for soup and stew based, the Algonquin peoples used dried, ground tree nuts. "Walnuts" are frequently mentioned in the European accounts, but Jason Mancini pointed out that most of these references are probably to hickory nuts which looked like walnuts to the Europeans. While one species of walnut, the black walnut, is indigenous to the Northeastern US, hickory nuts are and were far more common in the woods today and are their shells are far more common in the archeological record (J. Mancini, personal communication). Acorns, chestnuts, and hazel nuts would also have been used in a manner similar to the hickory nuts. Cattail roots, and other tubers like water lily roots and Jerusalem Artichokes, were probably also used in soups and stews, although they may have been sliced rather than ground after being dried. Finally, there were also numerous leafy greens that were eaten as a fairly large part of the diet.
New England has a wide array of berries, fruits, and vegetables that were eaten by the indigenous population. Blueberries and huckleberries were and still are common in the woods. Additionally, grapes, strawberries, cranberries, and the American gooseberry are still found wild and eaten in New England today. These berries and corn appear to be the only forms of sweetener that were consumed in southern New England. While maple syrup was certainly used further north, the sugar maple does not grow plentifully in the southern part of the region, and maple sugar is not mentioned as being eaten in southern New England by any of the colonial sources.
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