3 - Foodstuff Provisioning, Processing and Cooking

Summary

The following chapters, 3, 4 and 5, turn to an examination of the objects listed in the Thame inventories. We examine their properties and the extent to which production technologies were simple or complex, local or distanced, and assess through contextualisation and reference to other contemporary sources their role in the life of the household.

The Provisioning of the Household

This section commences with those objects and actions pertaining to the important aspects of provisioning the household with foodstuffs, their processing and cooking. In terms of material culture, food can very much be seen as the ‘stuff’ of life. Food and drink are some of the principal forms of affordance for the household, using the local environment or obtaining by trade and exchange the raw ingredients, processing and preserving them, and transforming them through cooking into palatable nutrition to sustain the members of the household and to enhance its standing through hospitality. Foodstuffs therefore mark the very fundamental interdependence of the Thame household with its immediate environment. As already mentioned in relation to archetypal domestic life, the manner of the preparation and consumption of food is inextricably entwined with the social structure and expression of the collective values of the household. Foodstuff and its management also have an impact on the configuration of the dwelling through the existence and location of food processing and storage, the hearth and cooking and commensality. Unsurprisingly, food occupies a significant place in sociological and anthropological literature, seen as a method of control and an expression of power. Functionalist approaches place an emphasis on the relationship of foodstuffs to social relationships and the structure of groups; food is vital not only for survival but for the construction of culture, with ‘foodways’ symbolising social relationships, part of ‘pattern-making rules’ encoding social events, and maintaining social relations both within and beyond the household. Seeing all tasks as culturally controlled and shaped, structuralist analysis focusses on the conceptual associations of food, as text in the social dialogue, and as part of the structure of human thought. Particular emphasis is placed on the changing states of food through its acquisition, processing and consumption, and food also occupies an important place in Bourdieu's concept of habitus.