Feasting (Other Keyword)
1-25 (35 Records)
Porridges and beer make up a majority of the household diet throughout much of rural Africa and could possibly be some of the earliest foods produced. In Africa, pottery is one of the primary culinary tools used to make both porridges and beer. This ethnoarchaeological and archaeological research explores pottery using use-alteration and morphological analyses from the Gamo of southern Ethiopia to indicate the use of pottery as a culinary tool. Beer and porridges are considered luxury foods...
Big Pots for Big Shots: Feasting and Storage in a Mississippian Community (1993)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Big Trash, Little Trash: A Comparison of a Late Classic Maya Feasting Deposit and a Household Midden (2016)
Feasting is often identified in the archaeological record based on the discovery of high ceramic frequencies and the presence of faunal remains in a concentrated area. While these characteristics can prove useful an initial identification of feasting behavior, further examination of the potential feasting assemblage and comparison with other types of archaeological deposits is necessary to fully support a feasting interpretation. This paper compares two deposits from the Classic Maya site of La...
The Company’s Feast: Commensality And Managerial Capitalism (2016)
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries many mining companies in the American West provided their employees with housing and boarding arrangements, even recreational green spaces and company-sponsored festivities on holidays. Daily meals offered by some mining companies were a part of larger managerial capitalist policies common during this period. These meals placed the necessity of eating under a company roof and at a company table with foods purchased with company funds. The town...
Constituting the Divine: Coastal Cuisine and Public Places in the Formative-period Lower Río Verde Valley (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Oaxacan Cuisine" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Food was central to the constitution of sacred public spaces during the Formative period in the lower Río Verde valley on Oaxaca’s Pacific coast. Public facilities at small sites and at the region’s largest precolumbian architectural complex, the Río Viejo acropolis, were the location not only of collective food consumption but also of food...
Defining the Red Background Style: The Production of Object and Identity in an Ancient Maya Court (2015)
While many collections today exhibit Red Background vessels for their vibrant colors, supernatural content, and elegant hieroglyphic texts, recent scholarship has embedded these works in the greater social culture of the Late Classic Period. As highly mobile art objects, the vases appeared alongside works with other distinct painting styles in feasts throughout the Guatemalan Lowlands, where the vases would display the prestigious affiliations of the owners. The diverse narrative content on...
Den store fest (2016)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us using the...
Dining and Feasting with the Lords and Gods: A Reevaluation of the Nature of the Activities at the Inca Site of Hatun Xauxa in the Mantaro Valley, Peru. (2016)
Recent studies have shown the importance of commensal politics in the consolidation of Inca power and ideology, highlighting the leading role played by the pots as political tools. Following this perspective, this paper proposes a reassessment of the nature of the activities carried out at the Inca site of Hatun Xauxa in the central highlands of Peru, based on functional and distributional analysis of the state and local pottery recovered during excavations made in 2014 by the Proyecto Qhapaq...
Early Seventeenth Century French Feasting in Acadia and its Relation to Pre-Contact Mi’kmaq Practices (2018)
The early French settlers at the Port Royal Habitation relied heavily on the local Mi’kmaq to survive the cold Nova Scotia winters. In the winter of 1606-07 Samuel de Champlain initiated a social club, commonly referred to as "The Order of Good Cheer", primarily to battle against scurvy, but also to create camaraderie among the colonists and to strengthen their relationship with the local Mi’kmaq. The French developed elaborate rituals for the feasts, partly based on those of their homeland....
Evaluating Mobility, Monumentality, and Feasting at the Sapelo Island Shell Ring Complex (2011)
Two of the most salient anthropological questions regarding southeastern shell ring sites are related to the season(s) that they were occupied and whether or not the deposits represent monumental constructions and/or feasting remains. This paper addresses these questions through the analysis of growth band of clams (Mercenaria spp.) (N = 620) and stable oxygen isotope ratios of clam and oyster shells (Crassostrea virginica) (N = 58) at the Sapelo Island Shell Ring complex located on the Georgia...
Evolution of Feasting among Jomon Societies based upon Wooden Artifacts (2017)
Cross-culturally, wooden items such as bowls, ladles and spoons play an important role as ritual offerings to deities and ancestors. Thus, they are keys to understanding feasting and ritual activities, and can provide archaeological signatures of these activities. This paper explores evolution of feasting among Jomon societies focused on the analysis of wooden artifacts. The analysis is based on three sources of information: 1) temporal and spatial distribution; 2) stylistic analysis; and 3)...
The Expression of Ideology in Levantine Submission Scenes: The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III as Feasting in a Neo-Assyrian Context (2015)
Cultural appropriation of Levantine feasting forms by Neo-Assyria was an expression of agency that effectively subsumed, subverted and captured the dynamic of traditional Levantine polities. For those, the feast had represented an act of royal legitimation depicted iconographically by the figure of a king drinking from a cup. The rise of the Neo-Assyrian empire and the prominent appearance of this image, particularly in the 9th century BCE, deserves consideration as a probable co-opting of this...
Faunal Evidence for a Big Feast Event within a Bronze Age City Site in China (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Zhenghan Gucheng (郑韩故城) site is a well-preserved ancient capital city of Zheng and Han states during Eastern Zhou. It is located at the joining of River Shuangji (Ancient river Wei) and the Yellow River (Ancient river Qin), lying beneath modern Xinzheng city, Henan province, China. Within this city site, well-developed area division and function...
Feasting and Ritual Reuse: Analysis of the Faunal Assemblage from Huaca Soto, Chincha, Peru (2016)
Huaca Soto, a monumental Paracas platform mound in the Chincha Valley, experienced centuries of post-Formative reuse that continued well into the Inca Period. Two seasons of extensive excavation have yielded a massive assemblage of feasting debris within the mound’s uppermost sunken court dating to the mid-first millennium CE. Communal feasting in the ancient Andes is widely acknowledged to have been both a ritually and politically charged practice, and ongoing research examining the ritual...
Feasting and the Ritual Mode of Production in the Mesa Verde Region of the American Southwest (2017)
In the Southwest, feasting is understood as one of the primary mechanisms whereby small-scale agriculturalists of the past increased the social, demographic, and political scale of their societies. This study examines both artifact assemblages and communal architecture from a number of prehistoric sites in the Mesa Verde area. Consistent increases in the number and elaborateness of decorated serving bowls and the size of communal spaces suggest an increase in the frequency, intensity, and scale...
Feasting, shared drinking, and social complexity in Early Bronze Age Anatolia (2015)
The Early Bronze Age II-III in Anatolia (2700-2000 BC) is a period of intensifying personal distinction. New tin-bronze metallurgy yields exquisitely crafted jewelry, ceremonial weapons, and drinking vessels, sumptuary activities appropriate to an emerging elite class. Yet it is difficult to characterize the structure of EBA settlements; a lack of writing and sealing practices suggest that there was no central administration. This contrasts with contemporaneous sites in southeastern Turkey and...
Gathered for the Feast: Community and Polity Ceremony in the Lower Río Verde Valley (2016)
Among Payson Sheets’ many contributions to archaeological method and theory is a long-term commitment to examining the actions and relationships of commoners. Taking inspiration from his work at Cerén on community ceremony, in this paper we examine collective ceremonial practices at two Terminal Formative period (C.E. 100 – 250) sites in the lower Río Verde valley of Pacific coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. The site of Yugüe, like Cerén, was a small site that was located only four kilometers away from a...
Inside Ancient Kitchens: New Directions in the Study of Daily Meals and Feasts (2010)
The anthropology of food is an area of research in which economic, social, and political dynamics interact in incredibly complex ways. Using archaeological case studies from around the globe, Inside Ancient Kitchens presents new perspectives on the comparative study of prehistoric meals from Peru to the Philippines. Inside Ancient Kitchens builds upon the last decade of feasting studies and presents two unique goals for broadening the understanding of prehistoric meals. First, the volume focuses...
ʻIolani Palace Revisited: Preliminary Zooarchaeological Reanalysis of a Legacy Collection (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Boxed but not Forgotten Redux or: How I Learned to Stop Digging and Love Old Collections" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. From the 1840s to the 1890s, the ʻIolani Palace, in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, was the political center of the Hawaiian Kingdom. In the 1960s and 1970s, archaeologists excavated rich midden deposits and other features from the palace grounds for the purposes of cultural resource management. Just...
A Lithic Analysis of Food Preparation and Resource Distribution in Recuay Ritual Feasting Contexts at Hualcayán (Ancash, Peru) (2015)
The preparation and consumption of food during feasting rituals is an ancient tradition in the Andes, occurring both on a small scale (participation of one family or kin group) and on a large scale (community-wide involvement). This poster presents a recent analysis of lithic tools from Hualcayán, an ancient Recuay community (1-600 AD) in highland Ancash, Peru. Excavations at Hualcayán yielded a variety of ground stone and expedient chipped stone tools and debris from a range of different...
Not Incised, but Well-Burnished: A typology of undecorated Early Horizon feasting wares from Hualcayán, highland Ancash, Peru (2015)
Feasting has long been recognized as one of the most widespread and significant political and ritual activities in the prehispanic Andes. In spite of this deep significance, the undecorated ceramics that undoubtedly played important roles in these ritual events are often overlooked for analysis in favor of their more elaborate, decorated counterparts. Here, we present a quantitatively constructed typology for undecorated ceramic vessels recovered from an Early Horizon ceremonial mound at the...
Nuancing the Maya Feast: A Reexamination of the Function of Ceramic Feasting Assemblages (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Feasting is a commonly cited interpretation across the Maya area for middens which include large quantities of ceramics and animal bones. This poster takes a closer look at previously published Maya feasting contexts by further examining the functional make up of their ceramic assemblages. By moving beyond the standard open/closed or serving/storage functional...
Of kings and artisans: Comparing household and palace-temple rituals at Yanshi Shangcheng (2015)
Elite ritual has been a primary focus in Chinese archaeology. Well known studies of the oracle bones from Anyang and bronze ritual vessels have shed light on elite ritual practices but have also generated a bias linking ritual with elites. Indeed there is strong evidence of elite ritual activity in palace temples of the early Bronze Age site of Yanshi Shangcheng (the Shang city at Yanshi), located in the Central Plain area of northern China. However, there is also evidence of similar rituals in...
Parties at the Big House: Feasting, Alcohol, and Political Strategy at James Madison's Montpelier (2013)
Archaeological investigations at James Madison’s Montpelier have shed light on activities associated with James Madison Jr., 4th president of the United States. Madison’s political career and contributions to the founding of the nation made his name last throughout history. Perhaps just as crucial to securing his legacy were the parties hosted by his wife Dolley Madison both in Washington and at the family home. Of particular interest is the fact that the couple entertained extensively after...
Performing the Moche Feast: Plants, Ritual Practice, and Spectacle in the North Coast of Peru (2017)
The site of San José de Moro in the Jequetepeque Valley of the North Coast of Peru is renowned for the discovery of several "Priestess" burials containing women interred with the material accoutrements of the goddess figure from the Moche pantheon. As a burial ground for the Moche elite, San José de Moro presents an excellent case study for ritual performance with burial-related ceremonies taking place concurrently with feasting. In this paper, we discuss the plant evidence for large-scale feast...