Pork
is meat from the pig. While it is one of the most common
meats consumed by the Chinese and Europeans, and to some extent
North
Americans, it is not considered kosher under Islamic and Orthodox Jewish law.
Varieties
of pork
Pork
from the haunch of the pig is called ham. Bacon is taken from the sides, back,
or belly, and is extremely popular in the US as breakfast food. Pork intestines
are called chitterlings or chitlings. Other eaten parts include pork shoulder,
pork chops, pork neckbones,
and pigs' feet. Pork is very high in thiamin.
Pork
is particularly common as an ingredient of sausage. Chorizo, fuet, and salami are sausages typically made
with pork. Scrapple is another aggregate
meat-food derived from pigs.
In
the United States, some pork
products figured prominently in the traditional diets of poor southerners, such
as pigs' feet, hog jowls, and other parts not wanted by wealthy southerners, because
they were both available to them and affordable for the very poor. (See soul
food).
Pork
products are often cured by salt (pickling) and smoking. The portion most
often given this treatment is the ham, or [rear] haunch of the pig; pork shoulder,
or front haunch, is also sometimes cured in this manner.
The
pork taboo
Both
Muslim dietary laws
and Orthodox Jewish (Kashrut) dietary laws forbid pork,
making it a taboo meat. There are several
explanations for this.
Maimonides was the first to
point that these dietary restrictions may have been created to prevent trichinosis, which can be
caught from undercooked pork.
Others
point to pigs being unclean, but pigs like to bathe frequently to keep cool. It's
when they don't find water that they have to use mud or their own feces. Other meat beasts
are as dirty as pigs.
For
others, the restriction is arbitrary, a way to test the faith.
The
cultural materialistic
anthropologist Marvin Harris thinks that
the main reason was ecological-economical. Pigs require water and shade woods
with seeds, but those conditions are scarce in Israel and Arabia. They cannot
forage grass like ruminants. They compete then
with humans for expensive grain.
Hence
a Middle Eastern society keeping
large stocks of pigs would destroy their ecosystem. Harris points out how, while
the sedentary Hebrews are also forbidden to eat camels and fish without scales,
Arab nomads couldn't afford to starve
in the desert while having camels around.
He
also points to Albania where a cycle is established:
Christians keep pigs and live in the oak woods. Muslims keep goats and live in denuded
places. The goats maintain this status by eating saplings.
Archaeological
significance
The
relevance of the pork taboo for archaeologists is that the teeth of cooked pigs
are highly resilient to biodegradation. This facilitates the pinpointing of the
moment at which Islam took hold, for example, at points along the Indonesian archipelago.
Plentiful pig's teeth are found in digs of pre-Islamic settlements. Pig's teeth
disappear from the traces as soon as Islam is adopted. See Maluku for a case in point.
External
links
