What ancient Indigenous cuisine can teach us about culture and community
November 4, 2025 - Louise Henderson
A new collection of original essays, “Ancient Indigenous Cuisines: Archaeological Explorations of the Midcontinent,” is the first to examine trends in ancient Indigenous foodways across the region. This volume, a collaborative effort by Dr. Jodie O’Gorman, former chair and associate professor in Michigan State University’s Department of Anthropology, and Ph.D. alumni Dr. Susan Kooiman and Dr. Autumn Painter, explores the concept of cuisine and its connections to social experience—how what people ate shaped and reflected their lives.
Recognizing overlapping research interests, O’Gorman, Kooiman, and Painter brought together scholars studying an array of related topics in a variety of cultural contexts. Their goal was to pool insights, expand available data and share findings through a comprehensive collection of essays on midcontinental archaeological foodways.
As Kooiman, O’Gorman, and Painter explain in the Introduction, “This volume features archaeological explorations of the cuisines of ancient Indigenous peoples of the Midcontinent of North America, examined through a range of cutting-edge methods and perspectives and exemplifying a wide range of questions and outcomes that demonstrate the versatility and strength of culinary studies.”
The editors stress that food can be used to gain insight into many different aspects of any culture. Beyond the basic questions of what people from a particular place and time ate, food can be used to address questions of economics, socio-politics, identity, health, religion, environment, and more.
To investigate dietary practices from thousands of years ago, researchers used a range of methods that build on fundamental identifications of plant and animal remains. These included detailed contextual analysis, identifying microscopic residues and use-wear found on pottery and other tools, and use of experimental studies. Contributors focused not only on what resources people used, but also choices about that food and the dynamic relationships of food with society.
Each chapter in “Ancient Indigenous Cuisines” uniquely approaches social issues through the lens of food. For example, in her own research collaboration with MSU Ph.D. alum Dr. Jeffrey Painter on Morton Village collections, O’Gorman was surprised by the “powerful role” cuisine played in social negotiations among groups within the village. In Kooiman’s chapter with MSU undergraduate alum Rebecca Albert, she reveals how the importance of maize and wild rice in local cuisine shifted over time in northern Michigan.
The MSU scholars hope readers come to understand that our lives are in many ways centered around food and that food not only represents who we are in a certain time and place, but plays an important role in how we shape and transform social identities.