This compelling collection of essays reveals the key role that food played in all dimensions of Maya society, including economics, politics, and religion. Through analysis of the kitchen, feasts, banquets, rituals, and “memory work,” the collection emphasizes food's importance as a social fact and its role in cultural reproduction and identity construction. From a wide range of disciplines, the contributors skillfully connect historical, archaeological, chemical, biological, anthropological, ethnohistoric, epigraphic, and iconographic evidence.
Though the volume focuses on the Classic period, Traci Ardren wisely includes a chapter by M. Kathryn Brown and Carolyn Freiwald that analyzes the potluck festival during Middle and Late Preclassic periods as a key element in the following period's social complexity. The book's core—chapters 3 to 9—submerges the reader in an in-depth exploration of the role of food and foodways in the social construction of identities in Classic Maya society.
In chapter 3, Jon Spenard, Adam King,...
