The Memory Landscapes of Food: The Sense of Nostalgia and the Traces of the Past in the Arbëreshë Microcosm of Food and Feast

Referring to an ethnographic study of the arbëreshë community of Molise, this article explores the interplays between food, senses, and nostalgia to explain how food activates the involuntary memory of the eater and resists corrosion over time. On one hand, the evocative power of food allows the community to reproduce and pass on the culinary “landscape of memory” (Turri, 1998, 156). On the other side, bringing abundance industrialization has profoundly changed the value of food, generating a shift in sociability and ways of being together. So, the memory of past eating practices of commensality and conviviality cause a feeling of nostalgia in older generations. Moreover, the passage from cyclical time and agricultural propitiatory rituals to working time and holiday schedules has stripped many feasts of their value, which survives only in the memory of some elderly people. But, considering that food conveys memories, the anthropological study of eating practices can be shared with the community to reconnect past experiences with the historical consciousness of the youngest generation. The memory power of food can thereby become a permanent bridge between past and present.