This title is an indispensable four volume reference collection which focuses on the widest possible span of food in human history, to provide a comprehensive survey of problems and methods in the field of food history. Bringing together over 80 high-quality essays drawn from journal articles, book chapters, excerpts and historical documents and supported by introductory essays and a wealth of contextual material, this important new reference work combines contemporary scholarship with selected primary sources allowing scholars to use this as a starting point for their own historical research. The volumes are divided chronologically, moving from human evolution and the origins of complex societies to the agrarian and pastoral societies of the classical and postclassical eras, to the age of global contact and early industrialization, to the transition to industrial diets in the contemporary era.