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An example of diversity in one genus of viandas, Xanthosoma (the yautías), in the Puerto Rican markets. a) X. atrovirens (yautía amarilla), b) X. caracu (yautía blanca), c) X. violaceum (yautía lila)
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We propose Culinary Cultural Conservation (CCC) and Cultural Keystone Food Groups (CKFG) as ethnobotanical concepts. Our two-decade study of fresh food markets showed impressive crop-consistency across space (Puerto Rico to Connecticut, Vietnam to Australia and to the USA) and time (1993–2015). Notably, fresh, mostly tropical and imported, starchy...
Citations
... Initiatives aimed at documenting, safeguarding and promoting endangered and marginalized traditional foods have been sporadically designed by scholars-for instance, Nabhan, Walker, and Moreno (2010) engaged several USA actors in identifying and valorizing disappearing wild foods; Taylor and Anderson (2020) identified cultural keystone food groups across migrants; Jacob et al. (2021) developed a method for gathering ethnonutritional data in dietary surveys on food biodiversity-food movements (Slow Food 2021), international organizations Padulosi et al. 2014), as well as governmental and scientific institutes committed to the promotion of national and regional material culture (e.g., The Polish Ethnographic Atlas created by the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences [Łuczaj 2014] Ethnobiologists and ethnobotanists have extensively studied food customs and folk use of cultivated and wild edible plants in the local cuisines. While until the1990s food ethnobotany was centered on documenting wild food plants uses or local cultivated landraces, in the most recent decades the researches focused more also on the processing/preparations of food plants (gastronomy) and on the sociocultural meaning of the possible temporal and spatial changes of their uses (e.g., di Tizio et al. 2012;Garibay-Orijel et al. 2007;Kalle, Sõukand, and Pieroni 2020). ...
In the past two decades, ethnobiologists have increasingly paid attention to the scouting and documentation of endangered corpora of local food elements and associated traditional knowledge. In this endeavor, food scouting encompasses the methodological tools used for mapping, inventorying, and documenting food and food-related resources. The growing body of research in this field is shedding light on the potentialities of these practices in obtaining baseline data regarding food heritage, which can, in turn, empower local communities in their dynamic understanding and safeguarding of this resource. While food scouting have been gaining an important role in current food and gastronomic ethnobiological research, as well as in other fields of study (e.g., geography and anthropology), little attention has been paid thus far to the methods and approaches underpinning these activities. To partially fill this gap, this contribution aims to tackle some methodological issues connected to the documentation of food and gastronomic elements embedded in local knowledge. Acknowledging the plethora of methods applicable in food scouting research, we describe three specific applications of food scouting to elicit data on local food diversity, highlighting their prospects and limitations. The first case addresses market surveys to obtain baseline data on the local food systems and their associated diversity, the second focuses on context-based freelisting methods for eliciting wild food plant uses, and the third discusses methods for scouting and inventorying artisanal food products. Acknowledging the contributions of Justin Nolan to the advancement of methods in the field of ethnobiology, we suggest that the methodological toolkit of food scouting should include ad hoc transdisciplinary platforms codesigned together with local food actors.
... Modifications of the original concept have included combining it with the concept of biocultural diversity, arguing that Biocultural Keystone Species better captures the diverse range of ecological and cultural significance such species often hold (Shackleton et al. 2018). It has also been expanded to things beyond the level of "species" such as Cultural Keystone Places (Cuerrier et al. 2015) and Cultural Keystone Food Groups (Taylor and Anderson 2020). Recent critiques of the concept have pointed out that, until now, it has been applied in a largely qualitative fashion and little has been done to further revise the metrics originally proposed in Garibaldi and Turner (2004) Gaoue 2020a, 2020b). ...
Among the 18 species included in the Ceiba genus in the Malvaceae (Bombacoideae) family, Ceiba pentandra (L.) Gaertn. is not only the tallest and most widespread but also occupies the most prominent place in Neotropical cosmovisions. In this ethnobotanical review, we compare perceptions and uses of Ceiba and related species across Indigenous and Afro-descendant cultures ranging from the Caribbean to the Argentinian Chaco. Ceiba’s widely shared role as axis mundi (particularly in Amazonia), psychopomp, and as a shelter of major forest spirits makes it a perfect example of a Spiritual Keystone Species, a new concept inspired from the concept of Cultural Keystone Species and defined here for the first time.
... Agriculture was also characterized by the husbandry of small animals for food. Among the many plants that were tended and grown, only a few were repeatedly found across crop fields and gardens, which included bastimento foods, coconut and mango-all cultural keystone foods and multifunctional plants for Caribbean communities (Cárdenas-Botero, 2020;Taylor and Anderson, 2020). The repeated presence of these plants reflected the deep ties between Afrodescendant people and the plants they brought and encountered when they arrived in the Americas. ...
Livelihood insecurity emerges from the interaction of factors and pressures affecting people's ability to cope with change. Yet, the effects of interactive stressors on the dynamic nature of livelihoods and their underlying gendered relationships are still unexplored. We evaluated a case study in Maria La Baja, a municipality in the Colombian Caribbean severely affected by the Colombian armed conflict and oil palm expansion. With the pacification of the conflict in the late 2000s, traditional inhabitants aimed to reconstruct their livelihoods amidst a context of reduced access to resources. We assessed how local livelihood strategies have been affected by the interplay of socio-political distress, agrarian change, agrobiodiversity loss, seasonality, and unequal access to resources for men and women. We conducted surveys and interviews to 1) characterize local livelihoods and their transformations; 2) evaluate current livelihood insecurity and pressures; and 3) assess whether disruptions in local livelihoods have equally affected men and women, and influenced their mechanisms to cope with change. Current livelihoods in Maria La Baja have been largely characterized by months with water, crop and income scarcity. These effects have been shaped by the reduced access to resources and social control that resulted from the armed conflict and oil palm expansion. Such pressures also induced the spatial segregation of women. Diversification of livelihood activities was a coping strategy to overcome the effects of resource scarcity. Despite segregation by gender, diversification was greatly conducted by women. Women-led diversification may become more important in contexts of increasing socio-ecological change.
... Fat can be seen as what ethnobiologists and food-and-culture researchers consider a cultural keystone in the Faroese foodways (Taylor and Anderson, 2020). Local food craft is still important. ...
Since ecological and climatic conditions limit the possibilities for cereal production, the old-established Faroese traditional food system is principally based on the utilization of animal protein and fat. The diet of the islanders has thus been adapted to the specific environmental circumstances of the area. Historically, fat has provided a high energy and nutritious food source for the hard-working sheep farmers and fishermen. Fat procured from both land and marine animals has formed a vital part of the local food culture. Apart from the insubstantial amount of butter produced in the Faroe Islands, tallow from sheep, fish fat and liver from codfishes, and the blubber from the long-finned pilot whale, has been widely utilized within the households. During the last century, Faroese diet has changed due to external factors such as closer integration into the world economy, modernization, and improved household economy. Although butter, cheese and other dairy products as well as margarine and vegetable oil are nowadays readily available in the convenience shops and supermarkets, tallow, and whale blubber continue to be part and parcel of many of the islanders' cuisine. Today, however, such products are not primarily consumed for their energy content. Instead, it can be seen as a contemporary and regional expression of appraisal toward Faroese cuisine. Appreciating and consuming local food has become an important part of expressing Faroese cultural identity. The traditional diet therefore links the islanders with their history. However, the preparation of Faroese food products is highly dependent on traditional knowledge of how to extract different types of animal fat and process it into locally made dishes. Thus, the long-term survival of traditional Faroese gastronomy is contingent on the maintenance and continuation of this knowledge.
Heritage encompasses features integral to the culture of a particular society, such as traditional foods that have historical significance and continue to be part of the community’s identity. These culinary traditions must be preserved to sustain cultural identity and community well-being. This study aims to document the role of qarasiña, along with other ancestral foods, in establishing quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) as a cultural keystone species in the Jach’a Puni community. Primary data were gathered through in-depth interviews with local experts and community observations, supplemented by a comprehensive literature review. Findings reveal that in Jach’a Puni, all food is considered sacred. Three main types of qarasiña are identified: jupha qarasiña, ajara qarasiña, and kita qarasiña. The primary ingredients are domesticated quinoa (jupha) flour (Chenopodium quinoa var. quinoa) and wild quinoa (ajara) flour (Chenopodium quinoa var. melanospermum and C. hircinum). Qarasiña is integral to community banquets and social events. Although quinoa is celebrated globally as the “golden grain”, there is a risk that qarasiña may disappear and quinoa could be replaced by wheat or maize, threatening its status as a cornerstone species in the Bolivian Altiplano.
