The University of Alabama Press is thrilled to announce that Plant Foods of Greece: A Culinary Journey to the Neolithic and Bronze Ages by Soultana Maria Valamoti has been named the winner of the 2024 Inaugural Mary Beaudry Book Award for the Archaeology of Food.
Based on more than 30 years of path-breaking research, Plant Foods of Greece discusses archaeobotanical remains recovered from some 200 sites to illuminate ancient foodways and cuisine.
Boston University’s Karen Bescherer Metheny, an Archaeology of Food cofounding series editor, explained why Plant Foods of Greece was chosen: “Tania’s volume is chockful of plant data that she has collected but also synthesized from archaeological studies in the Mediterranean. This is an important regional synthesis. It is a beautiful book, very accessible, and her writing style and focus help her to connect to the general reader as well as archaeologists. The last point we considered comes from my sense of what Mary herself would look for, and that is a work that takes the next step toward a gastronomical archaeology. Tania’s book transforms the raw plant data (and other source material) into the culinary—into food and food practices. It is not just the recipes and photos, but her creation of a culinary lens. Tania’s work exemplifies the direction we’d like to see in an archaeology of food. She makes a substantive contribution to the field by showing us what an archaeology of food can be, and we have selected her volume for the first Mary Beaudry Book Award.”
About the Mary Beaudry Book Award for the Archaeology of Food
The Mary Beaudry Book Award for the Archaeology of Food will be awarded every three years for the best book in the Archaeology of Food series. Judges are series editors Karen Bescherer Metheny, Tanya Peres (University of Florida), and Christine Hastorf (University of California, Berkeley). The criteria for the book award by an author/s in the series are as follows:
- contributes new/significant data or syntheses of existing data re archaeology of food
- contributes to a rethinking of theory or previous models re food
- contributes to an understanding of contemporary issues (e.g., sustainability, biodiversity)
- contributes to the field of archaeology (method or theory)
- contributes to the development of a gastronomical or culinary archaeology (transforming ingredients/rawdata into the culinary).
About the Archaeology of Food Series
The Archaeology of Food book series offers new contributions and critical findings in food archaeology, chiefly through case studies that explore issues such as past diets, origins of agriculture, plant and animal domestication and exploitation, global networks of food exchange in the past, colonialism and food, food and gender in ancient and early modern times, food and identity in the past, human-environmental interactions around food, archaeology of food technologies, and archaeological approaches to everyday meals and feasts. Contributions to the series also consider the relevance of food archaeology to contemporary issues, from sustainable agricultural practice and preserving biodiversity to documenting the effects of globalization and cultural encounters.
Excerpt: The Flat Woman by Vanessa Saunders