Feast: Why Humans Share Food

  • Martin Jones
Oxford University Press: 2007. 364 pp. $35 £20 0199209014 | ISBN: 0-199-20901-4

Engaging storytelling is not the forte of many technical scholars. So when an intelligent book comes along that is also truly charming, it deserves celebration. Feast by Martin Jones, a bio-archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, will delight most anthropologists and evolutionary biologists, as well as broadly educated laypersons interested in the evolution of diet and the social organization of eating.

The book is a pertinent example of what can be gained by 'consilience' among the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. The term 'consilience' took on an extra layer of meaning when Edward O. Wilson attempted what might be perceived as a hostile take-over of all such disciplines by subsuming them under the unifying principles of evolutionary biology. In contrast, Jones takes a more balanced approach, setting up a productive tension between the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and Marvin Harris on the one hand, and the social and metaphorical insights of Mary Douglas and Claude Lévi-Strauss on the other. Include the biomolecular toolkit that Jones has used to look at remnant foodstuffs found on ancient grinding stones, clay pots and teeth, and you have an entirely fresh, integrated view of the social dynamics of food harvesting, food preparation and eating.

Your lab's a tip: garbologist William Rathje finds clues to human behaviour in piles of rubbish. Credit: L. PSIHOYOS/SCIENCE FACTION

One of the most satisfying aspects of this treatise on the evolution of socialized food preparation and consumption is the manner in which Jones demonstrates the utility of new instruments, techniques and methodologies for investigating fragmentary archaeological remains associated with sites of human food procurement. Rather than assuming that these technologies render other, earlier approaches to human dietary evolution obsolete, Jones realizes that they build on the work of earlier investigators. Tool-driven science can go astray if it is not grounded in the well-articulated theories that it not only tests, but also refines. Jones therefore offers a narrative that is simultaneously humble and excited by new opportunities to shed light on why humans eat in the ways they do.

The journey makes stopovers at ancient archaeological sites; at the African field camps where Jane Goodall and other ethologists observed the eating behaviours of different primates; and even at the Fresh Kills landfill site near New York City, where garbologist William Rathje analyses contemporary human behaviour by sifting through masses of kitchen waste. Some of these stopovers have also been visited by other scholars on their quest to understand the social behaviour of human food consumers, and Jones uses each of their parables to illustrate his cogent points.

Jones even records field notes on his own ritualized behaviour and dress at a banquet at the University of Cambridge in the framework of their social acceptability in this formal setting. By juxtaposing this with primate behaviour at Goodall's camp, he offers a compelling answer to the question of whether humans are really that different from other primates in the social structure of our food sharing. The short answer is no, we are not, but the richer answer is that it is a matter of degree, and Jones guides us through these nuances.

By concerning himself with both evolutionary theory and the social constructions that give meaning to human eating behaviour, Jones arrives at a robust, integrative theory of why we share food the way we do. Testing this theory is likely to keep interdisciplinary scholars engaged for several decades to come. In a model of accessible scientific writing, Jones' captivating narrative is based on cutting-edge technology and on his personal indebtedness to early pioneers in this field.