ABSTRACT
The study of food is one of the growth areas within academia at present. Food is good for thought, as well as eating, because it spans all areas of human life. It is obvious that food is necessary for physical survival, but it has become equally apparent that food is vital in constructing culture. Anthropologists have analysed the political and sensual uses of food in constructing cultural categories, but archaeologists have also come to realize that cultures are constructed over long periods of time and in the process of this construction the interaction between people and plants has been vital. Discussions of plants take us into the realm of biology where the genetic and biochemical properties of plants come to the fore, plus also the long-term interaction of people and plants. It is this interaction of people and plants that marries and blurs our dichotomous notions of nature versus culture. Although it is true that people have shaped plants over many millennia, it is equally so that plants have altered human patterns of life; we are therefore dealing with a mutual dependence of people and plants in intertwined histories.
