CHAPTER 14 Experimental Archaeology, Ethnoarchaeology, and the Application of Archaeological Data to the Study of Subsistence, Diet, and Nutrition Karen Bescherer Metheny  Introduction Subsistence has been a subject of archaeological inquiry since archaeology was first formalized as an academic discipline. he physical remains associated with food procurement, processing, consumption, and waste disposal constitute one of the largest categories of archaeological data available for study and include ar- tifacts as diverse as hunting weapons, cooking utensils, and serving vessels, as well as the remnants of the plants and animals that were collected, hunted, grown, processed, and consumed as meals. A key concern of archaeologists is how to link these physical remains to past human behavior. To what extent do objects found in an archaeological context encode past human behavior, and how do we best interpret such activity from the inanimate and mute remains of the past? Fur- ther, though subsistence is a central economic activity, it is heavily intertwined with social systems and cultural practice that imbue particular foods, materials, behaviors, and spaces with significance. How do we work outward from material remains to questions of meaning? Two areas of inquiry have emerged since the 1960s to address these questions: experimental archaeology and ethnoarchaeology. Ethnoarchaeological or actual- istic studies involve the observation of human behavior in the present in order to formulate analogies that are used to understand behavior in the past, with par- ticular emphasis on the material signatures of human actions. Experimental ap- Chrzan, Janet, and Brett, John A., eds. 2016. Food Research : Nutritional Anthropology and Archaeological Methods. New York, NY: Berghahn Books, Incorporated. Accessed October 31, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central. Created from bu on 2017-10-31 14:00:58. Copyright © 2016. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.