Feasting Practices and Changes in Greek Society from the Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age

Rachel Sarah Fox

City: Oxford

Year: 2012

Publisher: Archaeopress

Series: BAR International Series 2345

Description: Paperback, vi &155 p., 21 figures, 27 plates, 29,7x21 cm

From the introduction

A feast is a sensory, sacralised and social occasion. Its multiple resonances and experiences extend far beyond the nutritive consumption of food and drink by a group of people. To reduce the act of feasting to functional terms overlooks the vivid tastes and smells, the bonds created and broken between fellow-participants, the awe induced by dining in the presence of the dead, the gods or a powerful leader, and the embedding of bodily memories in the diners to be recalled long after the event. Real, individual people consume feasts, and as archaeologists dealing with a remote era it is easy to disregard this fact and concentrate solely upon the tangible debris of vessels and food remains. To understand a feasting event more comprehensively, it is necessary to analyse the whole series of experiences that the original participant would have undergone during the course of a feast, and to trace the footsteps of the diner through each stage of what was presumably a major event in his/her calendar.

Contents

List of Figures [iii]
List of Tables [v]
Acknowledgements [vi]  

Chapter 1: Introduction [1]

Chapter 2: Methodology [4]

Chapter 3: Feasting in the Early Mycenaean Period [10]

3.1. Tombs and Feasting – Funerary Dining [10]  
3.2. Vessels and Feasting – The Eloquence of Grave-Goods [15]  
3.3. Halls and Feasting – Consumption in the Sociopolitical Sphere [24]  
3.4. Gods and Feasting – Where are the Sanctuaries? [31]

Chapter 4: Feasting in the Palatial Period [36] 

4.1. Arrival at the Feast – Constructing Host-Guest Relationships [36]  
4.2. Consuming the Feast – Constructing Guest-Guest Relationships [40]
4.3. Consequences of the Feast – Constructing and Fulfilling Obligations [44] 
4.4. Expanding the Feast – Constructing Palace-Polity Relationships [47]  
4.5. The Feast in the Sanctuary – Juxtaposing Official and Popular Cults [49]  
4.6. The Feast in the Cemetery – Blending the Public and the Personal [54]

Chapter 5: Feasting in the Early Iron Age [59]

5.1. The Old and the New Feast – Commensality in LHIIIC [60] 
5.2. The All-Encompassing Feast – Commensality in the 10th to 8th Centuries [67]  
5.3. The Elite Feast – The Ideology of Commensality in the EIA [75]  
5.4. The Continuing Feast – Funerary Commensality during the EIA [79]  
5.5. The Mnemonic Feast – Tomb and Ancestor Cult in the 8th Century [83]  
5.6. The Transformed Feast – Sanctuary Commensality during the EIA [90]  

Chapter 6: Feasting in Homer and Hesiod [99]

6.1. Good Feast/Bad Feast – Paradigms of Dining in the Odyssey [101]
6.2. Basileus’ Feast – Dining as a Sociopolitical Device in Homer [104]
6.3. Hero’s Feast – Dining as an Elite Activity in Homer [106]
6.4. Peasant’s Feast – Dining in Hesiod’s Works and Days [109]  

Chapter 7: Conclusion [112]

Appendix I: Comparison of Ceramic and Metal Vessel Forms in the Mycenae Grave Circles [119]

Appendix II: Minimum Number of Diners at a Feast at Pylos [126]

Appendix III: Thoughts on Mycenaean Cooking Methods [128]

Appendix IV: Animals Consumed at Sanctuary Feasts during the Palatial Period [131]

Appendix V: The Decline of the Kylix [133]

Bibliography [138]