History Seminar: CHOCOLATE AS A CASE STUDY: Holistic Approaches to Food Histories of Mesoamerica

Thursday 5 February, 5:00pm
Main Seminar Room, Latin American Centre, 1 Church Walk, Oxford and Zoom

Convener(s): Eduardo Posada-Carbó 

Speaker(s): Kathryn Sampeck, Illinois State University, and University of Reading

To join online, please register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/WWqjr8SgT_WrzTodI65cdg 

florentinecodex

Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 10: The People", fol. 69v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. 


https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/10/folio/69v/images/33c97a68-1597-4711-9b56-182a2ecb740a

Abstract: People make chocolate from the seed of different varieties and species of a tropical tree, cacao (genus Theobroma). Cacao has long been an important part of Indigenous life in Central and South America and today is a major modern industry, amounting to around 5 million tons of annual production, valued at £36.2 billion in 2021 and projected to hit £53.9 billion by 2030.  Historical and archaeological studies in western El Salvador help deconstruct popular stories of chocolate’s origins and subsequent transformation during the Early Modern period into an everyday pleasure for a wide world of consumers. This evidence helps place the birth of chocolate within the complex history of culinary practices in Mesoamerica and cacao’s unusual role in social, political, and economic dynamics. This talk will present the latest results of several complementary studies being conducted in collaboration with British Museum, Kew G

ardens, and Indigenous communities in Central America.

Kathryn Sampeck (BA, MA, University of Chicago; PhD Tulane University) is a Professor of Anthropology at Illinois State University. She is a 2023-2026 British Academy Global Professor of Historical Archaeology at the University of Reading. Sampeck uses multidisciplinary approaches to investigate a variety of topics such as taste, cultural landscapes, literacy, and economic systems in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, Spanish colonialism, the African diaspora in Latin America, and global commerce in the Early Modern world. She has devoted years of archaeological and historical research to understanding the cultural history of chocolate. Forthcoming works include Rich: Cacao Money in Mesoamerica and Afro-Latin American Archaeology: An Introduction.