| Summary: | The question of food is at the centre of many current issues (political, environmental, nutrition and health, religion, etc.). Though food can nowadays be considered as a challenge, it is also a popular topic, not only with the public at large but also with scientists in different disciplines, particularly historians who have adopted a broader view of the theme of food, emphasizing its significance within the study of society, whether it be ancient or current. Indeed, food is not just a matter of simple nutrition, it also plays an essential role in the construction of identity, both individual and collective. The identity issue has also been fashionable throughout the last decades. Though it has become more and more contested, identity can be regarded as a cross-cutting notion of an interdisciplinary approach to food, especially between history, sociology and anthropology. These two last fields can indeed provide conceptual and innovative tools for historians. This introductory article to the subject of this issue of Kentron aims to give a brief historiographic picture of these two questions, not only within the field of historical studies – by emphasing in particular the study of food in Antiquity and the early medieval period – but also in those of sociology and anthropology, while trying to show the interest of a cross-cutting approach, still cautious in France, in studies on Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, between these different disciplines.
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