Indian corn and Dutch pots: Seventeenth-century foodways in New Amsterdam/New York City.
Item
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Title
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Indian corn and Dutch pots: Seventeenth-century foodways in New Amsterdam/New York City.
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Identifier
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AAI9405523
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identifier
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9405523
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Creator
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Fayden, Meta Patricia.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Thomas H. McGovern
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Date
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1993
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Anthropology, Archaeology | American Studies
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Abstract
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The foodways of every colonizing European group changed in the New World, but, before the changes can be assessed, it is necessary to know what foods and food-related artifacts were common and available in the mother countries. New York City began as a Dutch colony, and its foodways in the seventeenth century reflected this origin. This study is approached as a historic ethnography with two main centers of interest: first, the comparison of Dutch-American to Dutch foodways and, second, the exploration of how foodways changed after the British assumption of political power in 1664.;The study begins by describing Dutch seventeenth-century foodways using data from documents and genre paintings. New Amsterdam/New York City foodways are next reconstructed using documents and excavated artifacts; they are then compared to those of the Netherlands and to those of surrounding British colonies. Ceramics, because they are ubiquitous on archaeological sites and because the great majority of vessels functioned as food-preparation, food-service, or food-storage forms, are the artifact class that is emphasized. Excavated faunal material is also examined. The ceramics and bones are from three sites excavated in Lower Manhattan in the late 1970s and early 1980s.;The conclusion is that Dutch-American foodways, particularly in the forms and functions of food-related ceramics, are distinctive and different from British-American foodways, and that they remained recognizably Dutch well after the British annexation of the colony in 1664.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
