A fresh approach to the implications of obtaining, preparing, and
consuming food, concentrating on the little-investigated routines of
everyday life.
Food in the Middle Ages usually evokes images of feasting, speeches, and
special occasions, even though most evidence of food culture consists of
fragments of ordinary things such as knives, cooking pots, and grinding
stones, which are rarely mentioned by contemporary writers. This book
puts daily life and its objects at the centre of the food world. It
brings together archaeological and textual evidence to show how words
and implements associated with food contributed to social identity at
all levels of Anglo-Saxon society. It also looks at the networks which
connected fields to kitchens and linked rural centres to trading sites.
Fasting, redesigned field systems, and the place offish in the diet are
examined in a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary inquiry into the power of
food to reveal social complexity.
Allen J. Frantzen is Emeritus Professor of English at Loyola University
Chicago.