7 An Archaeology of Food Security in Banda, Ghana.

ABSTRACT Food security is an all-inclusive concept, with a lack of access to sufficient food on one end of the spectrum and access to plentiful, desirable foods on the other. Archaeology's long-term perspective allows us to trace contexts in which food insecurity emerged by investigating the pillars of food security outlined by the World Health Organization (WHO): food availability, access, use, and preference. Using these criteria, I evaluate food security in Banda, Ghana from 1000 to 2009 C.E. by combining ethnographic, archaeological, archaeobotanical, and environmental data. These multiple lines of evidence demonstrate that while changing environmental conditions may have impacted the availability of staple crops during two periods of droughts in the past, a decrease in access to preferred foods occurred only recently in the 1890s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]