Feasting (Other Keyword)
26-35 (35 Records)
Ritual feasting as a practice by which sponsors create uneven social relations with other participants has been suggested to play an important role in establishing social hierarchies in many ancient societies including the ancient Maya. Feasting activities may have also been an important part of Preclassic communal building projects in the Maya lowlands. In this paper, we present data from Middle Preclassic special deposits associated with a series of early public platforms at the site of...
Reconsidering Mississippian Communal Food Consumption: A Case for Feasting at Moundville (2017)
Consuming food as a large group in a ritual context generates and reaffirms the social obligations of the participants and the sponsors of the ceremony. This paper evaluates models for feasting from the Mississippian center of Moundville, located in west-central Alabama. Feasting has not been documented in midden assemblages from the site because a wide range of ceramic vessel sizes and a diverse range of faunal species have been recovered. This indicated that the consumption of symbolic species...
Ritual feasting and its social implications: Analysis of the ritual pits at Dana-Bunar 2- Lyubimets, Bulgaria during the Late Neolithic (5400-5000 BC). (2017)
Ritual feasting and its social implications: Analysis of the ritual pits at Dana-Bunar 2- Lyubimets, Bulgaria during the Late Neolithic (5400-5000 BC).
The Role of Intercommunity Feasting in the Development of Social and Economic Complexity at Early Bronze Age Mochlos (2016)
Feasting is a ritualistic social activity that also serves to strengthen the solidarity of a group or reinforce its hierarchical structure. Most frequently found as an intragroup activity, it also occurs at the intergroup level. In this paper, I discuss intercommunity feasting as a social, political, and economic motivator that generated interactions that flourished during the Protopalatial period. Several deposits from the Minoan site of Mochlos in Eastern Crete bridge the entire Prepalatial...
Scrambles, Potlatches, and Feasts: the Archaeology of Public Rituals amongst the St’át’imc People of Interior British Columbia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Public sharing of food and gifts remains important to St’át’imc communities of interior British Columbia today despite decades of prohibition by Canadian authorities. The archaeological record offers evidence that public events involving large scale food preparation and sharing were commonly practiced at least since ca. 1300...
Toyah Mitotes: Feasting in the Terminal Late Pre-Hispanic Southern Plains (2018)
The proto-historic period within North America provides a framework for assessing the transformations brought on by contact and conflict between indigenous peoples and European colonizers. In central and south Texas, a distinct archaeological culture, Toyah, spans some 400 years, 1250-1650 CE. The hallmark projectile point and first systemic, locally-produced ceramic tradition in the area have intrigued archaeologists for over a hundred years; interpretations of the phenomena have been...
Trans-egalitarian Society in the Transitional Archaic (2016)
Transitional Period settlement ecology and material culture in eastern Pennsylvania indicates the emergence of a cultural complex expressive of trans-egalitarian society. This includes centralized riverine settlements characterized by large thermally altered features, concentrations of soapstone vessels, and proximity to seasonally predictable food resources, such as migratory fish and drought tolerant herbaceous plants, that could be intensively managed or cultivated. This presentation...
Unusual Elements, Special Contexts: Bear Ceremonialism in Context at Feltus, Jefferson County, Mississippi (2017)
During the Coles Creek period (AD 700–1200), people constructed three earthen mounds at the Feltus site in Jefferson County, Mississippi. Before, during, and after the construction of these earthworks, Feltus was a location for ritual gatherings characterized by communal feasts and ritual post activities. Archaeological investigations at Feltus produced not only a large amount of bear bone, but a range of skeletal elements that are unusual at prehistoric sites. The nature of these remains and...
What's It Alder About? Paleobotanical and Zooarchaeological Analysis of Feasting Remains from the DgRv-006 Village, Galiano Island, SW British Columbia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of feasting activity in precontact societies can illuminate hierarchical social structures that existed within a community, because of the labor and wealth investments required to produce a successful feast. It can also highlight the integrative aspects of feasts, since they often involved widespread participation. We present results of...
Where's the Party? An Investigation of Communal Feasting among the Fremont (2016)
The Fremont people were socially complex and lived within various sized communities. As with any community there are mechanisms used to either differentiate among members of the community or to integrate members of the community and beyond. One of these mechanisms is feasting. In this paper we present evidence from several large village sites across the Fremont region that suggests that the practice of feasting was utilized. In many cases, evidence for feasting is associated with structures that...