Feasting and Social Integration: Connecting Faunal Use and Consumption from the Nuclear Core of a Mississippian Site (Singer-Moye 9SW2)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Stability and Resilience in Zooarchaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Food is not only a means of nutrition and nourishment but also a way to bring people together, share experiences, and create memories. Some of the ways food is most noted is through special events or circumstances when large meals or atypical foods are used to bring groups of people together. Feasts, however, can serve many purposes. It is not just the food that is important but also everything that goes into the experience such as collection, preparation, serving, time of day, and time of year. Every step has implications tied into why and how the food is being consumed (or not consumed) and to what end. Feasting is one way to aggregate people and to build solidarity, as well as institute or reaffirm group practices, beliefs, and roles. Faunal data from 2013, 2016, and 2017 excavations by the University of Georgia’s SMASH project at Singer-Moye (9SW2) provides a unique opportunity to better understand aggregation and community building at a large multi-mound Mississippian site via feasting. Faunal studies demonstrate an episodic, large-scale consumption event at the site core to aggregate people, create communal solidarity, and reform social structures during a time of population influx and continuation of monumental construction.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Stability and Resilience in Zooarchaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37710.0