Feasting

The institution of feasting in the Bronze Age Aegean, as in much of the world, has been the subject of considerable recent scholarship, with a broad consensus that feasts provided a locus for the negotiation and performance of sociopolitical and religious hierarchies. Despite the publication of numerous edited volumes, monographs, and journal articles on the subject, the relationship between feasting and gender has been explored only minimally. In the very few cases where gender has been discussed in the context of feasting, the assumption or argument has been that women were excluded from public feasting activities, with the implication that women were excluded from a critical venue for the creation and reinforcement of social and political status. While iconographic evidence for Mycenaean women feasting is almost nonexistent (and indeed, iconographic evidence for anyone at all feasting may also be, insofar as we have no images of anyone in the Bronze Age Aegean eating), there are a few hints that at least elite women and probably most or all women were present at some prehistoric feasts. Comparable public feasts in both the contemporaneous Near Eastern world and in later Greek contexts often included women, including in feasts honoring some of the same divinities whom Linear B tablets tell us were worshipped in the Late Bronze Age. The Ta tablets from Pylos, representing the paraphernalia for a feast, include footstools, which are iconographically and archaeologically associated with women; this suggests that women did indeed participate. The presence of lower status women who attended feasts is more difficult to identify, but the vast quantities of food and wine known to have been provided suggest that access must have been broadly inclusive.

On the south coast of British Columbia in shíshálh traditional territory, an ancient burial ground (DjRw-14) contains the remains of richly decorated individuals dated to the Charles culture (4000-3500 B.P.). In addition to other grave offerings, the burials contain stone and shell beads ranging in numbers from hundreds to hundreds of thousands. Associated with these highly decorated burials is a faunal assemblage characterized by a low frequency of marine fauna and a high proportion of land mammal, particularly black-tailed deer. These proportions of animals are considered a-typical of Northwest Coast shell midden deposits and may represent specific mortuary or ritual activities associated with honoring the deceased. With an emphasis on deer remains, a zooarchaeological analysis assesses the possible role of animal remains in mortuary activities. In order to establish if the faunal assemblage from DjRw-14 is indeed unique, with its high frequency of deer remains and low numbers of marine fauna, the site assemblage is considered in comparison to other sites in the Gulf of Georgia with similar cultural components. Ethnographic and archaeological evidence of Coast Salish mortuary practices and beliefs are examined to better understand the ritual acts that took place at DjRw-14. The site ceases to be used as a burial ground with the termination of the Charles Culture, but patterns in fauna remain stable, attesting to the persistence of mortuary traditions. The social and political implications of continuing these traditions are considered in terms of creating and maintaining a social memory and an attachment to an ancestral landscape. The results of this study are critical to better understanding foodways and ritual expression in shíshálh funerary practice. The context in which we find animal remains offers the opportunity to explore expressions of mortuary customs and beliefs within the Salish landscape.

Prvi maj praznujemo v spomin na krvave proteste leta 1886 v Chicagu, ko so delavci protestirali za osemurni delavnik in ostale delavske pravice. Prvi maj je tekom desetletij postal praznik dela v večini držav, med državami, ki ga ne obeležujejo, pa še vedno ostajajo Združene države Amerike.

The book introduces the reader to the time, place and participants of the tsar’s feasts, talks about ware, table setting, food and drink, reveals the subtleties of ceremonial and etiquette, indicates the changes that have occurred in this area during the XVII century. Simultaneously the book exposes complex mechanism of the feast, hidden from the eyes of its members and affiliated with the preparing king's feast and decorated banquet chamber. Special value of edition has publication of historical documents, describing the tsar’s feasts of the XVII century, and images of unique items from the collections of the Moscow State Integrated Museum-Reserve.
Книга знакомит читателя со временем, местом и участниками царских пиров, рассказывает о предметах посуды, сервировке стола, кушаньях и напитках, раскрывает тонкости церемониала и этикета, указывает на изменения, произошедшие в этой сфере на протяжении XVII века. Одновременно обнажается сложный «механизм» застолья, скрытый от глаз его участников и связанный с организацией царского пира, заготовкой продуктов и оформлением пиршественной палаты. Особую ценность изданию придают публикуемые в нем фрагменты исторических документов, характеризующие царские пиры XVII века, и изображения уникальных предметов из фондов Московского государственного объединенного музея-заповедника.

It is generally accepted that the earliest livestock and pottery were brought to the southern tip of Africa by Khoi-speaking herders from northern Botswana around 2000 years ago. The archaeological remains of that age, however, show no sign of such a migration. Rather, some evidence points to the arrival of the Khoi in the southwestern Cape toward the end of the first millennium AD. The earliest livestock and pottery, it is argued, probably reached the Cape of Good Hope some 2000 years ago by a process of diffusion. The implications of this model for the
current debates on the transition from hunting to herding in southern Africa are discussed.

My recent article offered a model by which to better classify feasts by distinguishing between archaeological correlates of group size and sociopolitical competition. Applying this model to remains from a precontact mound site, I highlighted feasting's role in promoting group solidarity in the American South. Hayden's comment argues that my scheme does not accommodate certain types of events, and it questions my noncompetitive interpretation. I address both critiques here by citing further data from the Southeast, emphasizing the importance of interpreting feasts within their cultural and historical contexts, and highlighting Hayden's continued reliance on long-standing assumptions about feasting and monumental architecture.

This two-part essay treats a wide range of texts and images related to commensality. My overarching interest is how feasting functions within the political calculus of ancient Western Asian rulers as one of the most popular means to promote internal social cohesion and forge external alliances – either as a way of avoiding military conflict or as a prelude to warring against a third party. In keeping with this interest, I devote an extensive portion of the discussion to the manner in which feasting works: By making a deep impression on his or her guests, the host creates memories of the feast that contribute to the maintenance of the social bonds formed in the act of feasting.

This paper reviews, in the light of recent archaeological discoveries made since the early 2000s, the notion of Gallic symposion and the nature of commensal practices in communities from the Late Iron Age. It leads to a halftone statement, indicating different relations of certain social categories with regard to imported wine and it reveals the complexity of a process of acculturation too often reduced to economic or colonial patterns. The detailed analysis of this process within a precise site, the oppidum of Corent, underlines the usefulness of planned archaeological excavations as an experimental field.

Cet article réexamine, à la lumière des découvertes archéologiques récentes réalisées depuis le début des années 2000, la notion de symposion gaulois et la nature des pratiques de commensalité en vigueur dans les sociétés de la fin de l’âge du Fer. Il débouche sur un constat en demi-teintes qui témoigne d’un rapport différencié de certaines catégories sociales à l’égard du vin importé et révèle la complexité d’un processus d’acculturation trop souvent réduit à des schémas économistes ou colonialistes. L’analyse fine de ce processus à l’échelle d’un site, l’oppidum de Corent, souligne toute l’utilité des fouilles archéologiques programmées en tant que terrain expérimental.

Did Greeks and non-Greeks banquet together in the first half of the first millennium BCE, and if so, how does this mode of cultural contact explain the evidence of cultural exchange between Greece and the Near East? Following suggestions in scholarship that Greeks shared a banqueting culture with West Semitic peoples, and that Greeks sometimes banqueted with non-Greeks, this dissertation presents evidence that Greeks banqueted with non-Greeks, explains why they should have done so in terms of earlier practices and anthropological theory, and argues that multicultural banquets were the primary mode of peaceful cultural contact in the thought-world of Greeks in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. Chapter 1 addresses the evidence for multicultural banqueting before the first millennium, and finds that it was a feature of diplomacy in the Late Bronze Age (1700-1100). Objects and texts are examined and used as evidence that members of various populations learned foreign banqueting customs. I argue that the multicultural banqueting in the Iron Age (1100-750) and Archaic period (750-490) is a revival of Late Bronze Age diplomatic practices. Chapter 2 addresses evidence for reclined banqueting in the Iron Age, arguing that it is a result of multicultural banqueting among various groups. It is interpreted as a feature of diplomacy and as an instantiation of the anthropological theory of Mary Helms (1988) that elites seek out external symbols of status in order to be recognized as elite by foreigners and to differentiate themselves at home. Chapter 3 focuses on the Iliad and finds that multicultural banquets are philologically distinguished from banquets among Greeks, and that the banquet is essential in cultural contact where hostility is possible. Chapter 4 focuses on the Odyssey and demonstrates that banqueting mediates contact between Greeks and non-Greeks in the Archaic imagination. I hope hereby to construct a stable mode of contact that explains the evidence of cultural exchange between Greek and West Semitic populations, such as the alphabet, the burning of incense in ritual, and adaptations of gods and cults. The multicultural banquet becomes an interpretive model for developments in Archaic Greek literature, culture, and society.

Feasting equipment, copper‐alloy cauldrons and flesh‐hooks, are a distinctive feature of the later Atlantic Bronze Age suggesting elements of a shared ideology whose ultimate origin may lie in the eastern Mediterranean. The easterly distribution of the earliest British cauldrons previously identified is further confirmed by the recent discovery of a Type Colchester example at Salle, Norfolk, which brings to three the number of cauldrons of this type found in the region. Similarities between them suggest their origin lies in a single workshop, if not individual craftsman. The appearance of the cauldrons found at Feltwell, Norfolk, and Salle is so close as to suggest a new ‘Feltwell’ Variant. Analysis of the contents of the Feltwell cauldron hint at the function of these intriguing objects as high status cooking vessels, most likely reserved for the chiefly class and deployed in the hosting of feasts which, along with flesh‐hooks, served to build and cement political alliances.

KEYWORDS
CAULDRON, FLESH‐HOOK, FEASTING, LATER BRONZE AGE, IDEOLOGY, BRONZE AGE CHRONOLOGY, METAL DETECTING

The present article draws upon archaeological data in order to elucidate aspects of Neopalatial social banqueting practices. The use of communal feasts, part of the Pre and Protopalatial tradition, is investigated as a marked political dimension from manipulating the banquet ideology through a common and codified language. The paper will focus on the implication of food and drink preparation within a wide topographical and cultural framework which comprises the role of Neopalatial banquet inside and outside the palaces and settlements, as well as in funerary and cultic places. Changes in the structure of communal feasts during the LM IB will be also discussed.

This study focuses on the paniyiria held on the Greek island of Ikaria, in a historical depth that was defined by the archival material, brought to the forefront in the course of a long-term field research; the 17th century. Its historical limit was posed by the epistemological and theoretical choices of the researcher; the 20th century. It aims at an anthropological understanding of Ikarian society, with its vehicle being a particular cultural practice, as it has been reproduced and has changed in the course of time. The theoretical and methodological scheme through which I approach this cultural practice draws heavily from theoretical discussions relative to the gift and the commons. These concepts, which have emerged from fieldwork, are used for their analytic strength/potentiality and, on their basis, the research material has been organized. A basic position this study holds -and at the same time an object of documentation- is that Ikarian paniyiria are the epitome of a gift economy, which, in turn, is inextricably intertwined with a long tradition of the commons or a “culture of common-fields”. Continuities, discontinuities and breaks, inscribed on the ephemeral chronotopes of paniyiria of different historical eras, bring to the fore historical procedures of enclosures of the commons as well as of their opposite move, procedures of creation and regeneration of commons (or dis-enclosures). Offering, the moral coin that has diachronically circulated in the local gift economy, is materialized in “common-good purposes”. These, in turn reproduce and renew/ regenerate the village commons or create new commons within and outside the geographical limits of each village. At the same time, every time a paniyiri is held, collective identities, emerging from participation in chronotopes of “we”, are reproduced. However, the achievement of an “all together” is never a given; on the “Janus face” of the paniyiria are revealed the multiple and controversial potentialities opened each time, in the chronotope of a paniyiri.

La presentazione riassume il pensiero pedagogico di don Bosco circa i seguenti temi: l'allegria in quanto mezzo diagnostico e pedagogico; gioia e le sue espressioni pedagogiche nelle feste, nel teatro, nella musica, e nelle escursioni; cultura contemporanea del divertimento e i suoi limiti.
Letture di riferimento:
PIETRO BRAIDO, Prevenire non reprimere. Il sistema educativo di don Bosco, LAS, Roma 2006, pp. 324-337;
G. MORANTE, Per una catechesi sulla «festa», in C. SEMERARO (Ed.), La festa nell’esperienza giovanile del mondo salesiano, LDC, Leumann (TO) 1988, pp. 211-223.
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Presentazione in prezi: https://prezi.com/2tq1_yf79zei/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Although the largest Classic Maya political capitals are frequently assumed to have served as key nodes in long-distance trade networks, empirical data supporting this contention are surprisingly limited.  This study was designed to assess the role of a Late Classic Maya political capital, Motul de San José, in long-distance trade through the examination of its principal secondary center, Trinidad de Nosotros.  Located on the north shore of Guatemala's Lake Petén Itzá, 2.6 km south of Motul, and at the natural gateway to the area, Trinidad was well-positioned to serve as a port and intermediary between the inland capital and long-distance trade routes.
Research at Trinidad included survey; household, midden, and stratigraphic excavations; and ceramic and obsidian analyses.  These investigations defined Trinidad as a moderate-sized center with an occupation extending from the Middle Preclassic to the Historical period.  A complex harbor was identified, as was public plaza space more extensive than required by Trinidad's inhabitants.  Midden excavations documented spectacular deposits behind Trinidad's ballcourt, indicating that it was a major locus for feasting and ritual throughout the Late Classic period.  Cumulatively, these and other data support the proposition that Trinidad was a port.
This study also highlights continuities at Trinidad during the latter half of the Late Classic period when Motul emerged as a political power and its sustaining area underwent demographic expansion.  These developments enhanced Trinidad's port role, as indicated by additions to the harbor and greater access to obsidian.  Comparison of obsidian assemblages from Trinidad and other nearby sites also indicates that Trinidad maintained its function as a distribution center for obsidian.  Elements of Trinidad's ritual economy also demonstrate continuity; lavish ballgame-related feasting, initiated prior to Motul's local ascendancy, continued under its auspices.
The high level of continuity in Trinidad's port role suggests that Motul's emergent elites may have had, at most, only indirect control over long-distance trade in the Motul area.  This may have resulted from the new Motul dynasts choosing to co-opt existing economic structures, rather than establish new ones.  Alternatively, it may simply indicate that long-distance trade in the Maya lowlands was less centralized than previously thought.

Five Linear A tablets, which were found in the so-called “Villa Reale” at Haghia Triada and dated to the LM IB period, are analyzed and compared to Linear B records of equipment and agricultural commodities intended for feasting, in order to recognize similarities and differences. The first (HT 31) is a list of large and regular amounts of different types of vessels. It is analyzed in detail in an attempt to recognize the vessel shapes by means of comparing ideograms and archaeological evidence, and of understanding the aim of such a list. The other four tablets (HT 27a, 89, 94a and 100) are lists divided in two sections, the first recording personnel (ideogram *100/102 and variants) and the second recording three or four agricultural commodities in the same order. Besides the detailed analysis, a new reading, based on a personal examination of the tablet, is suggested for HT 94a.5. Moreover, we try to distinguish between tablets recording food given regularly as substantial rations and tablets recording food offered on a specific occasion, by examining the quantity and quality of the products and comparing them with meaningful Linear B examples. HT 27, 89, 94 and 100 seem linked to specific occasions and record participants and provisions of food, drink and, in one case, perfumed oils. On the other hand, HT 31 seems to be the auditing or collection of the vessels required for feasting. Our general conclusion is that these five tablets reflect the preparation of large Minoan feasts, which served also to reward the workforce and might be given in the context of religious ceremonies.

Drinking and feasting are well known practices in Crete from the Early Bronze Age, but they become more intensive in the Protopalatial period, reaching their peak in the Neopalatial era. In the paper archaeological data are reviewed in order to elucidate aspects of feasting practices during the first stage of Neopalatial period (i.e. MM III). MM III is the transitional period that led the First Palaces of Crete, after a general destruction, to a new era. Although its ‘transitional’ nature, remarkable changes in feasting practices from MM IIIA onwards are investigated. The use of communal feasts, that was already part of the Pre and Protopalatial tradition, is analyzed as a marked political dimension from manipulating the banquet ideology through a common and codified language and a structured system of ceremonies, that involve both the palatial elites and the large community.
The paper will focus on the implication of food and drink preparation within a wide topographical and cultural framework which comprises the role of MM III feastings inside and outside the palaces and settlements, as well as in funerary and cultic places.
Particularly, the break of political institutions is assumed as the thread of the present analysis: the variety of feasting practices among different regions of the island, as well as those noticed also in single cultural areas, are the main clue of the transitional stage of this period that saw regional shifts after the destruction of the first Palaces and before the reconstruction of new centres of power. The archaeological evidence suggests that from MM III onwards a communal system of feasting etiquettes was promoted by palatial elites in order to strengthen the cohesion and solidarity between the community and the centres of power. Nevertheless, as it will be clarified, the analysis of single contexts displays a variety of feasting occasions.

The 12th century BCE Mediterranean was characterized by the collapse of palace-based societies. The material culture of post-palatial Crete was composed by local and non-local elements. Crete and its Mediterranean neighbors can be regarded as an entangled mixture of the foreign and the local, with populations showing resilience in the face of new realities caused by changes in social organization and technological change. Some features of LM IIIC can be anticipated in the preceding LM IIIA and LMIIIB periods on Crete, as architecture and urban spaces underwent changes on multiple scales. These scales included construction techniques, use of topography (e.g., open spaces used as gathering areas, a new preference for defensible sites), and architectural forms such as rectangular halls with two column bases as the core of important elite complexes. These changes are considered within the broader context of similar changes taking place in Cyprus and in the southern Levant.

Text structure of Linear B tablets PY Un 2, 6, 47, 138, 718, and 853 (banqueting lists), and the products and quantities recorded on them are presented and compared with Linear A tablets HT 23, 30, 38, 114, and 121 (miscellaneous records) in order to recognize similarities and differences.
The interpretation of HT 23 is the most doubtful: the presence of wheat, wine and perfumed oil and the amount of wine (ten units) might be suitable for a feast, but the quantity of wheat (less than one unit) seems too small (compare tables 2 and 3 in the paper).  Furthermore, the reading of the ideogram for ox (b side line 2) is very uncertain and unknown commodities are too many to reach a secure conclusion.
As regards the other Linear A tablets (HT 30, 38, 114, and 121), the comparative study presented in this paper suggests that they are lists of banqueting foodstuff, drink and sacrificial animals, with the possible addition of ointments, cloth and vessels, which are products otherwise well documented in feasting contexts.

This thesis presents the results of the zooarchaeological analysis of a mound-flank midden from the Smith Creek site. The inhabitants of this site belonged to the Coles Creek culture (AD 700 to 1200), which existed during the transition from the Late Woodland to the Early Mississippian period. Therefore, this analysis aims to tie faunal remains from the midden both to cultural practices (e.g., food acquisition preferences and technologies) and to incipient sociopolitical change in the region. By doing so, I am also able to discuss mound summit utilization.

The former goal, elucidating cultural practices regarding food acquisition, centers around fish and fishing. Fish was the most abundant taxon in the midden — a pattern which deviates from that found at many other Coles Creek sites. Nonetheless, analyses of the proportions of different fish families (and of their habitat preferences) led to the conclusion that the inhabitants of Smith Creek likely fished nearby oxbow lakes and seasonal pools. Further, analysis of three screen size fractions — 1/2”, 1/4”, and 1/16” — indicated that fish of all sizes were collected and utilized at the site.

Though mammal remains were less numerous than fish remains, studying their remains at the site served my second goal. Feasting and elite provisioning are implicated in sociopolitical change and leave behind archaeological signatures in the form of zooarchaeological, ceramic, and paleobotanical remains. I investigated the evidence for each of these practices on Smith Creek’s Mound A. Though support for feasting was lacking, elite provisioning was potentially supported by relatively high proportions of meaty deer elements and the presence of the remains of symbolically-charged animals. However, more data from a variety of sources will be needed to support this conclusion further.

This paper looks at the classic polychrome vessels associated with the imperial Inca state in terms of their functional significance and considers the role of these objects in the broader context of elite identity and empire building. The focus is on several dimensions of the ceramic assemblage not normally discussed in studies of Inca pottery including their significance from a culinary standpoint and the gendered associations of this category of material culture. Based on an empire-wide analysis of the imperial assemblage, I suggest that viewing Inca pottery as culinary equipment offers a window into the ways in which food, feasting, and gender figured in the negotiation of state power and imperial expansion.

On 8 December 2017, Prof.Dr. Jeroen Stumpel gave his valedictory lecture at Utrecht University. To thank and honour him a Festschrift was prepared. The project in which I am participating under his supervision treats the illusionism, esp. the rendering of material properties, in seventeenth-century still-life painting. As regards the depiction of food, Willem Beurs (author of the treatise 'The big world painted small') argues it should look appetising. For the Festschrift article I turned this around: it is not about painted peaches that look edible (juicy and tasty even), but it discusses statuettes, artistically made from more or less edible materials, that were dished out for dessert or decoration.

Herodotus attributed much significance to the subjects of food and foodways. With the possible exception of death-related rituals, foodways are the only genre of custom that Herodotus covers in substantial detail for every society which he describes at length, and they are an important component of ethnicity and identity in both his explicitly ethnographical logoi and his narrative generally. The two most well-known sources on food and identity in Herodotus, François Hartog’s Le miroir d’Hérodote (1980, English 1988) and Brent Shaw’s “Eaters of Flesh, Drinkers of Milk” (1982) take Herodotus’ discussion of food as a method of “Othering,” a “mirror” through which Herodotus’ Greek readers could see themselves by comparison to outlandish, often fabricated, descriptions. However, Herodotus’ food passages reflect, at least to some extent, a reality which Herodotus clearly thought it important to relate, so to dismiss them as simply one more act of literary “Othering” is insufficient. Previous studies have tended to focus entirely on one culture, usually Scythian, sometimes Perisan, and rarely Egyptian, whose foodways generally appear only in broader studies of Herodotus’ Egyptian logos. Because of these limitations, and the fact that the scholarly community seemed to consider the problem of food in Herodotus “solved” after Hartog and Shaw (and thus no longer worthy of continuing research), the topic merits renewed investigation. Through a look at all three cultures, I show that Herodotus’ discussion of food is part of a larger scheme of humanizing barbarians, an addition of a biological universal to which any reader/listener could relate. In Herodotus’ discourse on food, the barbarian is not presented exclusively as an “Other” but also made more relatable to the Greek audience, complicating the relationship between “us” and “them.” Ultimately Herodotus shows his audience that barbarians, and especially Persians, share more in common with Greeks in terms of foodways than has previously been accepted, using food as a narrative tool to tie together disparate cultures. This thesis represents an important initial step in bringing the subject of food in Herodotus, after several decades of being overlooked, up to date with scholarship on other aspects of his work.

Feast or rave?
A study of the feast with Josef Pieper

What is a feast? It seems that when asking this question, one encounters the same difficulty as St Augustine when he was asked to define what time was: “If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain to him who asks, I do not know.” A philosophical study would lead us more surely to an understanding of the essence of the feast than a socio-historical study could. A feast, in its essence, is the affirmation of goodness of existence, and the substance of a feast is living out this affirmation. This central affirmation provides us with multiple keys to understand what is festive, and one is not. A feast pre-supposes a sane rapport to work; it is moreover an activity which possesses its end in itself. The fast is also a certain relationship to sacrifice and time, and this is at this level that a feast and a rave are most clearly opposed in our society. The rave falls within the realm of a form of consumption walling itself in the present and inciting one to withdraw into himself, the feast on the contrary encourages participation to a mystery opening the soul on the infinite horizon of time, in communion with others.

Of course, feasts are not typically Christian, and non-Christians can celebrate in festive ways; but the feast par excellence is Easter, and through emanation, the Christian Sunday. Drawing from Josef’s Pieper writings and wisdom on the subject, this article concludes that the feast is radically opposed to the rave, and hopes to encourage the reader to think about his or her own manner to celebrate the diverse events of life – for the capability to celebrate in a truly festive manner is nothing less than the sign of true existential richness.

This article contributes to an ongoing critical examination of feasting by developing a classification scheme that emphasizes the variable contexts in which feasts have occurred. Many recent archaeological and ethnographic accounts have focused on the political and economic roles feasts play in creating power and status differences among participants, while others have highlighted how they build community and increase solidarity within a group. My scheme reconceptualizes the term by giving two independent variables-group size and level of sociopolitical competition-equal roles in determining whether a given eating event is a feast; in turn, my dual-dimensional model facilitates more sophisticated interpretations of archaeological remains. After outlining its utility for describing and comparing eating events, this article evaluates the evidence for feasting at a precontact Native American mound site in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Botanical, faunal, and ceramic analyses of materials from the Feltus mounds (AD 750-1100) reveal fairly typical food-related assemblages, whereas the sheer amount of material, speed with which it was deposited, and size of individual specimens are exceptional. The resulting interpretation emphasizes feasting's role in creating and maintaining group solidarity at Feltus and advances understanding of noncompetitive outcomes of feasting behavior in the precontact American Southeast.

As feasting becomes a popular topic of archaeological investigation, definitions and guidelines for identifying it in the archaeological record proliferate.  This paper presents a classificatory scheme that simplifies these definitions by emphasizing two continua of variation—group size and level of sociopolitical competition.  By allowing more flexibility in the definition of feast, this reconceptualization acknowledges the importance of a large category of feasts that are under-theorized in archaeology—those whose purpose is to build community and increase group solidarity.  This focus brings the kinds of eating events common in Southeastern prehistory to the forefront of theoretical discussions of feasting.

The article deals with pottery from the Bronze Age in the valley of Mälaren. Pottery is here taken as a major source for understanding material culture and its overlying ideology. The so called Lausitzbowls are in this article not seen as just bowls made in a Lausitian manner but as artefacts signifying a new continental way of ritual drinking, as an expression of the idea of the symposion. A case studied in this article is the settlement at Ryssgärdet in Onslunda, Uppland.