{"id":2825,"date":"2026-02-09T15:41:05","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T13:41:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/archemy\/?page_id=2825"},"modified":"2026-03-30T11:09:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T08:09:33","slug":"food-id","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/archemy\/food-id\/","title":{"rendered":"Food ID"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Food Identities: biomolecular archaeology reveals multiple and dynamic social identities.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PI Ester Oras<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Period:<\/strong>\u00a01 September 2025 \u2013 31 August 2030<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>From Pilot Analysis<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The major challenge of archaeological identity studies stems from the dynamic, multidimensional,\u00a0performative, and contextual nature of identities, which are hard to grasp through the material\u00a0remains\u00a0alone. Food and ancient dietary practices\u00a0allow\u00a0us to investigate identity-related social phenomena that bridge both daily and\u00a0special events, apply to all members of a community, cover different social categories, and are not limited to material culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Building on the concept of social foodways,\u00a0FoodID\u00a0sets out to reveal how ancient dietary practices reflect individual and group identities through combining\u00a0cutting-edge\u00a0biomolecular dietary analysis with an in-depth socio-archaeological\u00a0contextualisation. Through the advanced analysis of isotopes, proteins, aDNA, microfossils, and pottery residues, the project reconstructs lifetime dietary profiles and final ritual meals for over 150 individuals. The aim is to develop a synergetic conceptual framework that reveals multiple, intersectional, and context-specific identity manifestations, transforming how social dietary archaeology approaches identity in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>FoodID integrates biological, social, and biomolecular data using advanced statistics and modelling to uncover shared and diverging dietary practices across individuals and groups. High-resolution methods allow tracing both major and minor food components, temporal dietary shifts, and differences between lived diets and funerary ritual meals. Multivariate and mixed modelling approaches reveal rigid and fluid identity categories, intersectional identity groups, and biographical dietary shifts. These insights feed into an open-access analytical platform, establishing a new framework for social dietary archaeology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.etis.ee\/Portal\/Projects\/Display\/f33aa7be-c5d6-4f97-9838-b4355fa84ad8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">View project in ETIS<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The\u00a0FoodID\u00a0project is funded by the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 framework programme, Starting Grant agreement No. 101162819.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-9d6595d7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"416\" src=\"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/965\/food-ID-sinine-punane-1024x416.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2828\" style=\"aspect-ratio:2.4601571268237934;width:293px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/965\/food-ID-sinine-punane-1024x416.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/965\/food-ID-sinine-punane-300x122.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/965\/food-ID-sinine-punane-768x312.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/965\/food-ID-sinine-punane.jpg 1859w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\"><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"724\" src=\"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/965\/LOGO_ERC-FLAG_EU_-1024x724.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2845\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1.414389929909884;width:543px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/965\/LOGO_ERC-FLAG_EU_-1024x724.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/965\/LOGO_ERC-FLAG_EU_-300x212.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/965\/LOGO_ERC-FLAG_EU_-768x543.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/965\/LOGO_ERC-FLAG_EU_.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\"><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Food Identities: biomolecular archaeology reveals multiple and dynamic social identities. PI Ester Oras Period:\u00a01 September 2025 \u2013 31 August 2030 From Pilot Analysis The major challenge of archaeological identity studies stems from the dynamic, multidimensional,\u00a0performative, and contextual nature of identities, &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":953,"featured_media":3038,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2825","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/archemy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/archemy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/archemy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/archemy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/953"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/archemy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2825"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/archemy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3116,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/archemy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2825\/revisions\/3116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/archemy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/archemy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}