Approaching past and changing foodways through ground stone

Human diet, food procurement and processing underwent fundamental changes as agriculture slowly emerged in Southwest Asia during the Late Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic c. 15,000 – 8,500 years ago. This thesis examines the role ground stone tools played in the foodways of people during this transformative period. Looking at the “food processing” ground stone tools from two sites located in eastern Jordan, Shubayqa 1 and 6, dated to the Natufian and Early Neolithic (PPNA) 14,800-10,600 cal. BP. It emphasizes the importance of a holistic approach to ground stone tools, one that considers bodies and movements. Food processing ground stone are tools operated by individual bodies using movements, or gestures, to alter material properties of foodstuff. Not only are they shaped by manufacture, but also through continuous use and the repetitive gestures this labour requires are expressed materially as morphology. Importantly technology is also both social and material, so tools and bodies are part of larger sociotechnical systems where ideas, people and tools all interact and influence each other. Tool morphology is thus a place where we may see technological practices of society and individual bodies.
The thesis uses this background to highlight that there also exists interconnected relationships between tool morphology and the macro/microscopic surface wear of the ground stone, both in turn affected by continuous use and wear maintenance (the progression of wear). These tools are thus objectified bodily practices. Conducting microscopic use-wear analysis may therefore not only tells us about what was processed but how. By considering the gestures behind food processing, I underline, that location and type of specific use-wear traces are a result of repetitive ways of use, not just of intermediate contact materials. We see tool and body influence each other dialectically in tool-body relationships. Using this approach, I group the large and diverse food processing ground stone assemblages from Shubayqa 1 and 6 into categories of “processing strategies”, to illuminate how different tools where used within food processing. I then examine how these processing strategies change over time. This is done in conjunction with conventional functional analysis, applying low-power microscopic use-wear, residue analysis and food experiments, to elucidate the past foodways at the sites from a ground stone perspective. Going from muscle to stone: material expression of changing gestures and practises, the traces of changing foodways “cast in stone”.
My research thus both outlines a general approach to ground stone and offers several interpretations of the changes we see the Shubayqa sites. It finds that both processing strategies and contact materials change over time, however the tools appear to change somewhat independently of the contact material. The shift between the Late Natufian and Early PPNA for example, show a change in the tools used: gestures and consequently processing strategies, evidently change from circular to more linear in this period, while the use-wear suggest continuity in the contact materials.
By the Neolithic there seem to be an increase in cereal exploitation, however in all the analysed phases there great variety of raw materials. Tubers processing appears common as well as legume and seed processing, in addition to meat and animal products. It appears; as if the changes we observe at Shubayqa are a combination of intensification is certain food resources and ways of processing them. The thesis ultimately highlights the complexity of past foodways, technological practices and resource exploitation, and the shows the usefulness of the chosen approach. The study contributes to knowledge about these changing foodways around a crucial period in Southwest Asia, the transition from foraging to incipient farming.