The most important recent development in early American food history is perfectly disgusting if also somewhat reassuring. In the spring of 2013, archeologists of the Jamestown Fort in Virginia, site ...of the first permanent Anglo-American settlement, introduced the world to “Jane.” The female remains that went by this name are interesting for food historians because they had been cannibalized after death, with telltale signs of flesh having been removed from bone. Flesh and brains, that is, and the latter was the (faintly) reassuring aspect of the grisly case: the cannibals had twice attempted to open Jane’s skull to extract her
