Experiencing Foodways and Community in Prehistoric Southern Vietnam

Foodways is the chaîne opératoire of what happens to food and associated materials from their acquisition until their discard. It is also a series of cultural formation processes, from every step of which are resulting food and material culture remains. From the past to the present, many foodway activities are done as a community. Present-day cultural diversity and identity revolve around cuisine or culinary practice, which comprises the preparation and consumption of food. However, most of the studies in Southeast Asian archaeology are geared towards addressing food acquisition practices or subsistence strategies associated with other big picture questions (e.g., environments, migrations, and foraging-farming transition). As a result, the study of how food items were prepared and served that would allow for evaluating the importance of food in maintaining identity based on shared foodways has not been highlighted. To address how foodways and being part of a community were possibly experienced by the people in ancient Southeast Asia, this article explores the perspectives of practice theory and community of practice to infer community identities in prehistoric southern Vietnam based on culinary practices. It also advocates for the lens of practice theory and its derivatives to be utilized in evaluating foodways and other aspects of daily life during the past in Southeast Asia.