There is widespread acknowledgement among anthropologists, archaeologists, ethnobotanists, as well as researchers in related disciplines that specific foods and cuisines are linked very strongly to the formation and maintenance of cultural identity and ethnicity. Strong associations of foodways with culture are particularly characteristic of South American Andean cultures. Food and drink convey complex social and cultural meanings that can provide insights into regional interactions, social complexity, cultural hybridization, and ethnogenesis. This edited volume presents novel and creative anthropological, archaeological, historical, and iconographic research on Andean food and culture from diverse temporal periods and spatial settings.
The breadth and scope of the contributions provides original insights into a diversity of topics, such as the role of food in Andean political economies, the transformation of foodways and cuisines through time, and ancient iconographic representations of plants and animals that were used as food. Thus, this volume is distinguished from most of the published literature in that specific foods, cuisines, and culinary practices are the primary subject matter through which aspects of Andean culture are interpreted.
John E. Staller (Ph.D. SMU, 1994) is Research Associate with The Botanical Research Institute of Texas and independent researcher. He is an anthropological archaeologist specialized in Latin America and his fieldwork mostly focuses on the Andes and, to a lesser extent, Mesoamerica. He has considerable expertise in the Spanish colonial accounts and ethnohistory. Next to his research on the origins of agriculture, plant domestication and cultivation in Latin America, he has taught as professor at several universities.
As a research associate with The Field Museum in Chicago (IL, USA) for ten years, he researched and published on several of the museum’s various collections. John E. Staller has identified the only known endemic variety of maize in the world specifically and exclusively adapted to the Copacabana Peninsula in the Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia. He authored and edited numerous publications on maize (Zea mays L.) and the biogeography of cultivated plantsin Latin America. This includes the volume “Pre-Columbian Landscapes of Creation and Origin” (978-0-387-76909-7) which he edited in 2008, the authored volume “Maize Cobs and Cultures: History of Zea mays L.” in 2010 and the volume “Pre-Columbian Foodways” which he edited with Michael Carrasco in 2010 (all published by Springer).
