Partaking in Culinary Heritage at Yaxunah, Yucatán during the 2017 Noma Mexico Pop-Up

摘要

In spring of 2017, celebrity chef Ren Redzepi opened a pop-up of his famed restaurant, Noma, on the coast of the Yucatn Peninsula. During its run, Noma Mexico worked closely with the town of Yaxunah, a Yucatec-Mayan speaking community in the peninsulas interior, hiring women to make tortillas and acquiring local ingredients for the restaurant. For ustwo archaeologists interested in past and present Maya food and agriculture who have worked in the Yaxunah community for yearsthis made the 2017 field season a compelling time to engage in culinary heritage. We share on-the-ground perspectives from our work with Yaxunah community members during a decisive spring for rural Yucatns globalizing food system. These perspectives offer a candid contribution to this special issues archive of community-based and heritage-engaged archaeological work in the Maya area.