Conclusion

The quote above, by the late great chef and writer Anthony Bourdain, summarises something that most of us intrinsically understand about food. Whether it is connection to a traditional dish underpinning a wider communal identity, or simply something you loved (or loathed) in your lunchbox each day at school, most of us will appreciate that food forms part of who we are. This is the cultural and anthropological dimension to cuisine, but the concept that “we are what we eat” is also true in physiological terms. Indeed, as we have seen in this volume, archaeology shows us that our individual food story is written in our very bones.

This volume has presented just eight food stories from Australia’s past. These have covered stories looking at change over many millennia, from deep time to the relatively recent past. They have also included distinct places, distant from one another in time and space, from over 47,000 years of plant use in the Kimberley to the nineteenth-century Victorian goldfields. Chapters have also addressed diverse cultural and ethnic identities, from a range of Aboriginal nations represented within the chapters, to convicts and Chinese diaspora. They have also covered a range of foodstuffs, from plant foods, to fish, mutton, roast pork and bottled preserves. Collectively, these chapters have highlighted the potential for Australian archaeologies of food, both in terms of the sheer diversity of stories to tell here and the depth of scholarship being undertaken across a range of disciplinary approaches. It is this depth and breadth of both history and geography, as well as the scholarship being undertaken here, that means that this volume really needs to be seen as just a starting point for the archaeology of food in Australia.

To begin with the first of these issues, the sheer scale of Australia as a continent and the almost inconceivable length of human occupation here means that there is really no limit to the food stories that archaeology can contribute to. While First Nations peoples have long understood their Ancestors’ deep connection to this place, for many other people it is hard to properly comprehend the timescales we operate within in Australian archaeology. Within this timescale there were also multiple phases of climactic and environmental shifts, in which Country would have changed many times over. Of course, for First Nations people this depth of connection to Country is highlighted through oral traditions – preserving knowledge of changing sea levels and now extinct species. It is critical, then, that we recognise that this sheer time and geographic depth, not to mention the cultural and linguistic diversity, would be matched by change and diversity of food and foodways. This means that there is almost limitless potential for food stories connected to these many millennia, and these are stories which archaeologists working in collaboration with Traditional Owners are uniquely well placed to tell. The chapters by Owen (Chapter 1), Dilkes-Hall, Davis and Malo (Chapter 2) and Disspain, Manne and Lambrides (Chapter 3) grapple with this vast time period and diversity of foodstuffs, but they are just the beginning of the contribution that the discipline can make.

Of course, adaptation continued in the colonial and postcolonial periods for First Nations peoples. We know from both community knowledge and historical records that, post-1788, Aboriginal peoples’ food and foodways display both change and continuity as they survived and adapted to the impact of colonisation. Traditional food gathering and hunting practices were disrupted, as access to resources were increasingly restricted. New foodstuffs, such as flour, sugar and tea, replaced or substituted traditional foods, some of which had a detrimental impact on health, and some of which were also weaponised by colonists in our most painful chapters of history. New tools, materials and weapons also became part of Aboriginal food procurement in this next phase – all of which changed food cultures and left material markers. Importantly, we also know the role that Aboriginal peoples played in nineteenth- and twentieth-century food industries – as stockmen, cooks and dock workers, among other professions. This volume has not addressed contact archaeology and Aboriginal food stories in the colonial period substantially, but this should be a critical area for future research; an area which has not substantially progressed since earlier studies in the discipline (Birmingham and Wilson 2010). Contact period stories addressing food directly could contribute to better understandings of change, continuity and adaptation. They could explore the maintenance of traditional food staples, as well as the development of shared cross-cultural dishes important to Aboriginal communities (such as damper). Much has been written about the use of new materials such as glass in the production of tools, and it is important to integrate this into archaeologies of food consistently. Of course, the contribution of Aboriginal peoples to farming, trade and industry could also be a key theme for future archaeologies of food, drawing on the work of scholars already pursuing these subjects.

Of course, colonisation also led to new people, cultures and cuisines coming to Australian shores. From 1788 on, waves of colonists, convicts and migrants from every corner of the globe have brought new foodstuffs, dishes, festivals and traditions with them. This volume has just scratched the surface of these stories. It has looked at colonial relationships with meat and the Australian love of sheep (Nussbaumer and Filios, Chapter 4), colonial fishing practices (Disspain, Manne and Lambrides, Chapter 3), experiences of institutionalisation (Connor, Chapter 5), the development of kitchens and cookery (Newling, Chapter 7) and the importance of bottling in the nineteenth century (Harris, Woff and O’Donohue, Chapter 8). The majority of these chapters focus on the food cultures and experiences of predominantly British and Irish migrants, but Grimwade’s chapter on the Chinese diaspora’s food traditions (Chapter 6) is a critical contribution highlighting the diversity of food experience in nineteenth-century Australia. Recognition of the diversity of culture and cuisine should be a key focus for future archaeologies of food. Research on this issue is currently limited as historical archaeologists have not pursued ethnicity and identity as consistently as the discipline has elsewhere. A key reason for this is Australian historical archaeologists’ fixation with artefact assemblages and quantitative analysis, a general lack of engagement with cultural landscapes, a reluctance to focus on synthesis of varied datasets and a general disdain for qualitative analysis. Grimwade’s chapter demonstrates the progress that can be made by engaging with landscape and comparative site analysis for the study of ethnicity when situated within a broader contextual understanding of cuisine and culture. The search for a securely stratified artefact assemblage has, to date, limited studies of ethnicity in our recent past, but there is no reason that historical archaeologists cannot engage with cultural landscapes including restaurants, market gardens, docklands, pubs, retailers, bakeries, wineries and homes to understand the material experiences of food here. To reflect the diversity of Australia’s many food cultures, archaeologists will also need to be prepared to engage more consistently with the post-war period.

While we have touched on temporal, geographic and cultural diversity, the other key opportunity for the archaeology of food in Australia stems from the demonstrable disciplinary diversity across academia and consulting. This volume demonstrates just a selection of the range of techniques and methodologies and has included archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, archaeomalacology, stable isotope analysis, artefact analysis and studies of buildings, domestic space and landscapes. Within each of these subfields, and among the range of expertise not represented as outlined in the Introduction, there is unlimited potential for further collaborative research on the archaeology of food here. As this volume has demonstrated, it is within this diversity that the true value of archaeology to contribute to thematic discussions of our many pasts is found.

And so, this series of eight food stories from Australia’s past should be seen as opening the door to a new thematic line of inquiry for Australian archaeology rather than an end point. This is a thematic line of discussion that rests on collaboration within the discipline – crossing the lines of industry and the academy – and draws together a vast range of datasets, sources and perspectives on the past. Importantly, the wider Australian community has demonstrated a deep interest in both food heritage and the archaeological discipline. Australian archaeology, both within universities and consulting, is an expensive endeavour, and it is also one that has an impact on a non-renewable resource. It is therefore critical that we engage with the wider community’s desire to understand Australian culinary pasts in all their glorious complexity.