Anthropology a la Carte

Download or read book Anthropology a la Carte written by Lynne A. Schepartz and published by Cognella Academic Publishing. This book was released on 2012-11-29 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Anthropology a la Carte: The Evolution and Diversity of Human Diet" examines the ways that anthropologists write and think about food in the past, the present, and across cultures. Starting with the archaeological record for early foraging diets, the readings address the changes that food production has contributed to modern human cultural and biological diversity. Selected topics include the unique nature of the human diet and food systems, issues in the collection of dietary and nutritional information, dietary change in traditional and industrialized societies, adaptations to food scarcity and overabundance, diet and health, symbolic approaches to food systems, food and power, the role of food in the construction of individual, class and societal identities, and the future of food. Lynne A. Schepartz is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Florida State University. She received her BA in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania, where she took a senior seminar on the anthropology of food that fueled her interest in the ways that humans are shaped by their diet and foodways. She then completed MA and PhD studies in Biological Anthropology at the University of Michigan. Her research on prehistoric health and diet includes a study of the comparative effects of hunter-gatherer and pastoral subsistence on human health in eastern Africa, and most recently, the relationship between health, diet, social status and ritual feasting in Bronze Age Greek Mycenaeans and Shang Dynasty populations in China.