Search results for ""Author Helen Leach""

In the past two decades, cuisine and culinary history have attracted increasing attention, with both popular and academic books reflecting the growth of interest. Recipes are both sensitive markers of the socioeconomic conditions of their times and written representations of a culture's culinary repertoire yet, despite the vast number of cookbooks that survive, they have not been the primary focus of research projects. Acknowledgement of their potential contribution to our understanding of culinary history has been slow. This book is a first in its field.

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This engrossing history of the domestic kitchen in New Zealand covers 10 decades that saw culinary traditions accommodate extraordinary changes in technology and the irresistible process of globalization. Each chapter surveys the external influences on households and their kitchens, samples the dishes prepared during the decade, and discusses the structure of meals. A study of kitchen equipment and design then closes each chapter, cumulatively revealing more innovation in these aspects than in what people ate. Kitchens is the culmination of a 10-year research and writing project by anthropologist Helen Leach, supported by the Marsden Fund of the Royal Society of New Zealand, focusing on the material culture of cooking by New Zealanders.

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Prehistoric Man in Palliser Bay presents, in 14 papers by 9 authors, the results of a pioneering, multifaceted, archaeological research programme carried out between 1969 and 1972 in the south-eastern coastal part of the North Island of New Zealand. The volume reviews archaeological evidence from the time of first settlement from Polynesia through to the 19th century. More than 25 excavations were carried out, focussing on midden sites, house areas, kumara storage pits and prehistoric gardens. Laboratory analysis of middens revealed details of the history of fishing, birding and sea mammal hunting. Artefacts of stone, bone and shell are described in the volume, and analysis of land snails provides evidence for environmental change during the period of occupation. Analysis of human bone samples provided detailed medical histories of the people who lived in the region. Two concluding chapters consider the significance of the evidence for early horticulture in Palliser Bay and the nature of prehistoric communities in the area.

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