McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research annual report 2018-19

Publications
Conversations Series: Far from the Hearth: Essays in honour of Martin K. Jones edited by Emma Lightfoot,
Xinyi Lui & Dorian Q Fuller
eBook | ISBN- 978-1-902937-87-8 | xii + 210 pp. | 41 figs | 16 tables | 2019 |
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/291123
The essays in this volume honour a man whose research
over the last four decades has exemplified the potential
of archaeology, archaeological science and their cognate
disciplines to address central questions about food and
human nature. The volume comprises 17 thematic papers,
all focused on the archaeology of food and arranged into
three sections reflecting Martin Jones’ wide-ranging career.
The first section, ‘A Botanical Battleground’, honours his
central role in the development of archaeobotany and
biomolecular archaeology. The second, ‘The Stomach
and the Soul’, discusses the archaeology of food from
evolutionary perspectives; while the final section, ‘Between
Fertile Crescents’, connects to his recent research on
food globalization in prehistory. The assembled chapters
emphasize not only the food itself, but also the communities
who produced and consumed it, as Martin Jones has
repeatedly demonstrated that it is the interconnection
between social and biological discourses that sheds most
light on the human past. Far from the time when the first
hearth was ever built, the research of archaeologists connects
the meals of the present to past communities and their
interconnections to each other and to plants.
Archaeology at Cambridge 2018–2019 47