Baking, Bourbon, and Black Drink

"This eight-chapter volume focuses on the archaeological, ethnographic, and historic records to interpret the use of foods and beverages in the Southeast within the context of the economic, social, political, and religious realms of society. Five chapters focus on the Mississippian (800–1600 CE) period of the Southeast. Examples of topics covered include analysis of bone marrow extraction and bone grease, which reveal energy-rich food sources in various Mississippian sites in Tennessee; the archaeological evidence and ethnohistory of the ceremonial "black drink"; an analysis of hominy, which was distributed widely throughout the Southeast during the Mississippian and historic periods and is popularly known today as grits. Also covered is the archaeology and history of bourbon distilleries in Kentucky; research focuses on a three-tiered system of production, from moonshine and farm production to industrial distilleries. The evolution of cooking methods is also explored: in Tennessee and Georgia, earth ovens began appearing in settlements 200–600 CE, while new methods for analyzing pottery form, function, and use-wear are yielding insights to researchers on changing cooking methods. Overall, these articles provide new data and methods of analysis on the role of food in Southeastern societies, and is an important addition to the corpus of studies on foodways in eastern North America." Recommended.
—CHOICE

“Baking, Bourbon, and Black Drink is a thematic volume organized around concepts related to understanding the articulation between food, its manipulation by humans, the social contexts where manipulation occurs, and the human purposes behind that manipulation: in other words, ‘foodways.’ While the level of engagement with this concept varies by chapter, most authors do engage with it, approaching it from different perspectives, datasets, geographical regions, and periods of time. Given the topic of the volume and the diversity of the content within the chapters, it is clear this volume will have a lasting impact on archaeological foodways research in the Eastern Woodlands of the United States.”
—Anthropos


“This volume is an excellent resource on the foodways of the Southeast and provides fascinating new data, as well as revisiting previously studied sites and analyses of foodways.”
—Renee B. Walker, coeditor of Foragers of the Terminal Pleistocene in North America

“Baking, Bourbon, and Black Drink is a collection of works elucidating—and in some instances integrating—many diverse aspects of diet and cuisines, written by authors who bring a broad range of expertise to the field of archaeology. It is a major contribution.”
—Gayle J. Fritz, professor of archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis