Ancient Pottery, Cuisine, and Society at the Northern Great Lakes - (Midwest Archaeological Perspectives) by Susan M Kooiman (Paperback)

About the Book

"This book explores changing settlement and subsistence in the Northern Great Lakes from the perspective of food-processing technology and cooking. Susan Kooiman examines precontact Indigenous pottery from the Cloudman site on Drummond Island on the far eastern end of Michigan's Upper Peninsula to investigate both how pottery technology, pottery use, diet, and cooking habits change over time and how these changes relate to hypothesized transitions in subsistence, settlement, and social patterns among Indigenous pottery-making groups in this area"--from publisher's website.

Book Synopsis

This innovative archaeological study of diet and cooking technology sheds light on ancient cuisine.

Ancient cuisine is one of the hot topics in today's archaeology. This book explores changing settlement and subsistence in the Northern Great Lakes from the perspective of food-processing technology and cooking. Susan Kooiman examines precontact Indigenous pottery from the Cloudman site on Drummond Island on the far eastern end of Michigan's Upper Peninsula to investigate both how pottery technology, pottery use, diet, and cooking habits change over time and how these changes relate to hypothesized transitions in subsistence, settlement, and social patterns among Indigenous pottery-making groups in this area.

Kooiman demonstrates that ceramic technology and cooking techniques evolved to facilitate new subsistence and processing needs. Her interpretations of past cuisine and culinary identities are further supported and enhanced through comparisons with ethnographic and ethnohistoric accounts of local Indigenous cooking and diet. The complementary nature of these diverse methods demonstrates a complex interplay of technology, environment, and social relationships, and underscores the potential applications of such an analytic suite to long-standing questions in the Northern Great Lakes and other archaeological contexts worldwide. This clearly written book will interest students and scholars of archaeology and anthropology, as well as armchair archaeologists who want to learn more about Indigenous/Native American studies, food studies and cuisine, pottery, cooking, and food history.

Review Quotes

"Kooiman provides a well-articulated multidimensional approach to studying pottery in the northern Great Lakes." --Indiana Magazine of History

"The northern Great Lakes and the region north of it clearly experienced a long history of occupation by various groups of Indigenous peoples over several millennia. Kooiman debates the possibility that the selection of food was connected to the identity of a specific group of occupants. Her tactic of taking 'an integrated theoretical framework' structuring specific methodological and analytical techniques in a specific sequence is to be applauded." --H-Environment

"The issue of subsistence practices and how they change through time has dominated the literature of the Northern Great Lakes region for generations. Kooiman's book sheds new light on these age-old questions. By focusing on pottery function and use-alteration analysis she provides a great deal of clarification on ancient cuisine as it changed through time." --James Skibo, author of Understanding Pottery Function

About the Author

Susan M. Kooiman is assistant professor of anthropology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.