Paper short abstract:

The paper will present a gastronomic sciences-centred approach to the mapping and documentation of endangered corpora of food heritage. In so doing, it will explore the limits and prospects of the foodscouting methodology developed in the framework of the Ark of Taste project.

Paper long abstract:

In the last decades, scholars and practitioners have devoted attention to the research and documentation of endangered foods and associated heritage, given their potentially crucial role in addressing challenges connected to the contemporary food system.

Acknowledging the strong link between food and place, they have often crossed the analysis of food heritage with the study of foodscape, highlighting the role of places in shaping the food cultures of local communities.

However, few studies so far have discussed methodological tools to map and locate traditional food products and explore the variability in their roles and values according to the places where they are produced, distributed and consumed.

The paper will present a gastronomic sciences-centred approach to identify and document endangered traditional food resources. Specifically, it will outline the foodscouting methodology developed in the framework of the Ark of Taste project. This includes ethnographic-based research tools to address the people-food- territory nexus within a given foodscape, starting from the documentation of tangible and intangible elements tied to local and traditional food and gastronomic cultures.

Drawing from the foodsocuting research carried out in Latin America, East Africa and Ukraine, it will present the approaches used to identify relevant places of food production, distribution, and consumption and the methods to elicit information on endangered food resources therein. In so doing, it will discuss the limits and prospects of these methodologies in mapping and locating endangered food products, as well as in exploring their embeddedness in the local foodscape.