Today, when we ask “what's for dinner?” we're likely to have take-out in mind. And while that might seem like a modern idea, archaeology reveals that it's actually a very old strategy. A million years ago all of our food was eaten on the run. Our ancestors migrated around the world collecting fruits and nuts and animal protein, nibbling their way through the countryside as they went.
When cities first came into existence about 6,000 years ago, our ancestral hankering for mobile food accelerated into a real art form. In ancient Pompeii, there were hundreds of shops that sold food ready-made for passersby, their open cooking pots displayed on counters right next to the sidewalk. Angkor's magnificent 13th century Bayon Temple is covered with sculptural depictions that take into account the daily realities of eating and drinking, with bas-relief images of people preparing cauldrons of food and grilling skewers of meat over an open fire. And the ancient Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had vast markets with a diversity of takeaway foods that included meat tamales, plain tamales, barbecued tamales, fish tamales, fruit tamales, turkey egg tamales, rabbit tamales … and for the more delicate palate, tamales made with beeswax, honey and maize flowers.
Today, more than half of the world's population lives in cities that have much in common with these ancient urban centers. They were places to which migrants came seeking work, whether they were educated “white-collar” workers seeking professional jobs or those who sought to make a living through the work of their hands. The division of labor made them dependent on each other: some people made food, and some people depended on the meals made by others.
Often, food preparation was an occupation taken up by women. One image from Bangkok's Grand Palace tells the story of women vendors everywhere: sitting on a mat with two large pots of food, a water jar and an array of bananas, and with a tidy stack of bowls to hand, the vendor engages with a female customer and a child who points excitedly at the tasty opportunity. A ubiquitous urban scene, the vignette is reminiscent of the cumulative economic capacity encompassed in the modern tea stalls of India, the pupusa stands of San Salvador and the food kiosks of Ghana, where 90% of the street vendors are women.
Even the things that we might find worrying about take-out have a long history, like the quantity of trash generated by outsourcing our meals. As an archaeologist, I can tell you that every ancient urban center that I've ever excavated, visited or read about has a stupefying quantity of discarded artifacts, many of which are connected with take-out food. I've worked with piles of broken pottery amphorae at the ancient Roman city of Leptiminus in Tunisia and heaps of discarded food bowls at the site of Sisupalgarh in India. I've commiserated with my colleagues whose publication plans for their excavations are stalled, sometimes for years, until they can finish counting and classifying the tons of materials that they have unearthed.
