Describe a meal, what would survive in the archaeological record, and how archaeologists would interpret the meal.

Topic: Describe a meal, what would survive in the archaeological record, and how archaeologists would interpret the meal. You can pick any meal to describe including an ordinary every day meal that you eat alone or with your family, or a special meal like Thanksgiving dinner.

Essential Components:
Meal components: What are the foods eaten? What utensils are used?

What would survive: For this, you may think about how the different material aspects of your meal would survive in our current system of disposing of trash in landfills. Or you can consider a hypothetical environment (think of the different types of environments discussed in lecture 1).

Analysis: What analytical methods would archaeologists use to investigate the materials that survive in the archaeological method from your meal?

Interpretation: From the materials that survive in the archaeological record from your meal, how would archaeologists interpret this meal and the culture it came from? Make sure to include some of the bigger concepts discussed in this course like identity and politics.

Does this interpretation fit the meal?: Do you think that the archaeological interpretation would give an accurate picture of the meal and the culture it came from? What aspects of the meal would the archaeologist not be able to see in the archaeological record? Does this impact the interpretation?

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