The topic ‘Gender and food’ has vast importance. Most of the societies consider women responsible for nurturing. This paper focuses on the transformation that came over in the gender roles, in connection with food and cooking, in colonial Malabar under the project of colonial modernity. It also analyses the various discourses involved in the construction of gender in colonial India. The Victorian ideologies in colonial rule the act of cooking much more gendering than pre-colonial period. The colonial education policies also encouraged the imperial domesticity in the Colonised people.

There is little authentic knowledge about the ancient history of Idukki region. The urn burials in the high ranges that date back to the megalithic period are the sole indication of human presence over the region. The burial vaults called Pandukuzhis, the Menhir and dolmens found in the Anchunad valley in the present Deviculam taluk substantiate this argument. The rock art in the Anchunad Valley has the depictions of the material life and culture of the prehistoric and megalithic periods. These petro graphs, petro glyph and dolmens and other remains of Mesolithic and megalithic cultures of the Valley help us to reconstruct the history of the prehistoric and megalithic people. They give us an insight into the mental world of the prehistoric and megalithic people’s imaginary relations, fantasies and social milieu of ideas and institutions. The Anjunadu Valley is considered as the treasure house of pre-historic and megalithic culture. The Anjunadu Valley is littered with a lot of dolmens and petrographs and petroglyph. This is the only place in Kerala where we can see petrographs and these are linked with the dolmens of the valley. These rock art sites of the valley as well as the megalithic remains of the valley give us an insight into the material milieu of subsistence of prehistoric and megalithic times. The present study is an attempt to situate Anjunad Valley in the pre-history of Kerala.