Is sharing food such an everyday, unremarkable occurrence? In fact, the human tendency to sit together peacefully over food is actually rather an extraordinary phenomenon, and one which many species find impossible. It is also a pheonomenon with far-reaching consequences for the global environment and human social evolution. So how did this strange and powerful behaviour come about? In Feast, Martin Jones uses the latest archaeological methods to illuminate how humans came to share food in the first place and how the human meal has developed since then. From the earliest evidence of human consumption around half a million years ago to the era of the TV dinner and the drive-through diner, this fascinating account unfolds the history of the human meal and its huge impact both on human society and the ecology of the planet.

馬丁•瓊斯（Martin Jones），英國生物考古學領軍人物，英國劍橋大學考古學係、喬治•皮特-裏弗斯實驗室(George Pitt-Rivers Laboratory)、格林•丹尼爾實驗室（Glyn Daniel Laboratory）教授，曾擔任劍橋大學考古係主任、英國古分子生物學研究會主席及科學考古戰略委員會主席等職；“古代生物分子研究首創計劃”主持人，開創瞭將多種科技方法應用於古代食物遺存研究的先例。主要研究領域為史前時期的農業交流、人類分享食物的起源、早期作物分子生物考古、生態學理論與考古學方法、歐洲史前時代晚期至曆史時期前段的農業等。著有《末日前的英格蘭》（England Before Domesday，1986），《分子的搜尋：考古學與古代DNA的探索》（The Molecule Hunt: Archaeology and the Search for Ancient DNA，2001）等。