Abstract
Food and feasting are increasingly recognized as having played a prominent role in the emergence of social hierarchies and the negotiation of power and identity (Clark and Blake 1994; Dietler 1996; Dietler and Hayden 2001; Gero 1992; Goody 1982; Gummerman 1997; Nielsen and Nielsen 1998; Wiessner and Shieffenhovel 1996). The notion of ‘feasting,’ as used here, refers to a communal food consumption event that differs in some way from everyday practice (after Dietler 1996). Given the culinary nature of feasts, the use of containers for both food preparation and consumption is generally involved, a fact that increases the archaeological visibility of such events. The papers in this volume utilize culinary equipment as a window into the commensal politics of early states and empires, focusing on the question of whether and how food and feasting figured in the political calculus of archaic states. Using both New and Old World examples, the assembled papers offer particular case studies that serve as the basis for a comparative assessment of the role of feasting in the emergence and expansion of early states.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Reference
Adams, Carol J., 1990, The Sexual Politics of Meat. Continuum Press, New York.
Blitz, John, 1993, Big Pots for Big Shots: Feasting and Storage in a Mississipian Community. American Antiquity 58:80–96.
Bourdieu, Pierre, 1984, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Routledge, London. [orig. published 1979]
Braithwaite, Mary, 1982, Decoration as Ritual Symbol: A Theoretical Proposal and an Ethnographic Study in Southern Sudan. In Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, edited by I. Hodder, pp. 80–88. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Braun, David, 1983, Pots as Tools. In Archaeological Hammers and Theories, edited by J. Moore and A. Keene, pp. 107–133. Academic Press, New York.
Brumfiel, Elizabeth, 1991, Weaving and Cooking: Women’s Production in Aztec Mexico. In Engendering Archaeology, edited by J. Gero and M. Conkey, pp. 224–251. Blackwell Press, Oxford.
Butler, Judith, 1993, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. Routledge, New York.
Clark, John and Michael Blake, 1994, The Power of Prestige: Competitive Generosity and the Emergence of Rank Societies in Lowland Mesoamerica. In Factional Competition and Political Development in the New World, edited by E. Brumfiel and J. Fox, pp. 17–30. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Collon, Dominique, 1987, First Impressions: Cylinder Seals in the Ancient Near East. British Museum Press, London.
Conkey, Margaret and Joan Gero, 1991, Tensions, Pluralities, and Engendering Archaeology: An Introduction to Women and Prehistory. In Engendering Archaeology, edited by J. Gero and M. Conkey, pp. 3–30. Blackwell Press, Oxford.
Conkey, Margaret and Joan Gero, 1997, Programme to Practice: Gender and Feminism in Archaeology. Annual Review of Anthropology 26:411–437.
Conkey, Margaret, Olga Soffer, Deborah Stratmann, and Nina Jablonski, 1997, Beyond Art: Pleistocene Image and Symbol. Allen Press and University of California Press, San Francisco.
Corley, K.E., 1993, Private Women, Public Meals: Social Conflict in the Synoptic Tradition. Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody,MA.
Counihan, Carole, 1999, The Anthropology of Food and Body. Routledge, New York.
Counihan, Carole and Steven Kaplan, 1998, Food and Gender: Identity and Power. In Food and Gender: Identity and Power, edited by C. Counihan and S. Kaplan, pp. 1–10. Harwood Academic Publishers, New York.
Crane, C. and H. Carr, 1994, The Integration and Quantification of Economic Data from a Late Preclassic Maya Community in Belize. In Paleonutrition: The Diet and Health of Prehistoric Americans, edited by K. Sobolik, pp. 66–79. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Occasional Paper, No. 22, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale.
Dietler, Michael, 1990, Driven by Drink: The Role of Drinking in the Political Economy and the Case of Iron Age France. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 9:352–406.
Dietler, Michael, 1996, Feasts and Commensal Politics in the Political Economy. In Food and the Status Quest, edited by P. Wiessner and W. Shieffenhovel, pp. 87–125. Berghahn Books, Providence, Rhode Island.
Dietler, Michael and Brian Hayden, 2001, Feasts. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
Dobres, Marcia Anne, 1995, Gender and Prehistoric Technology: On the Social Agency of Technical Strategies. World Archaeology 27(1):25–49.
Douglas, Mary, 1966, Purity and Danger Routledge, London.
Douglas, Mary, 1975, Deciphering a meal. In Implicit Meanings, edited by M. Douglas, pp. 249–275. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
Douglas, Mary, 1984, Food in the Social Order. Russell Sage, New York.
Dunbabin, Katherine, 1998, Ut Graeco More Biberteur: Greeks and Romans on the Dining Couch. In Meals in a Social Context, edited by I. Nielsen and H. Nielsen, pp. 81–101. Aarhus Studies in Mediterranean Antiquity, No. 1. Aarhus University Press, Denmark. Fortes, Meyer and S.L. Fortes, 1936, Food in the Domestic Economy of the Tallensi. London.
Friedman, Jonathan, 1994, Consumption and Identity Harwood Academic Publishers, New York.
Gero, Joan, 1990, Pottery, Power and Parties! at Queyash, Peru. Archaeology Magazine, March: 52–55.
Gero, Joan, 1992, Feasts and Females: Gender Ideology and Political Meals in the Andes. Norwegian Archaeological Review 25:1–16.
Gero, Joan and Margaret Conkey (eds.), 1991, Engendering Archaeology. Blackwell Press, Oxford.
Gibbs, Liv, 1987, Identifying Gender Representation in the Archaeological Record: A Contextual Study. In The Archaeology of Contextual Meanings, edited by I. Hodder, pp. 79–89. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Gilchrist, Roberta, 1994, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women. Routledge, London.
Gilchrist, Roberta, 1999, Gender and Archaeology: Contesting the Past. Routledge, London.
Goody, Jack, 1982, Cooking, Class and Cuisine: A Study in Comparative Sociology Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Gummerman, George, IV, 1997, Food and Complex Societies. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 4:105–139.
Gummerman, George, IV, 2001, Southwestern Foodways: Beyond Nutrition. In Examining the Course of Southwest Archaeology: The Durango Conference, edited by D. Phillips, Jr. and Lynne Sebastian, pp. 79–93. Special Publications, No. 3, New Mexico Archaeological Council, Albuquerque.
Gummerman, George, IV, 2002, Llama Power and Empowered Fishermen: Food and Power at Pacatnammu, Peru. In The Dynamics of Power, edited by J. O’Donovan, pp. 238–256. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Occasional Paper, No. 30, Suothern Illinois University Press, Carbondale.
Hastorf, Christine, 1991, Gender, Space, and Food in Prehistory. In Engendering Archaeology, edited by J. Gero and M. Conkey, pp. 132–159. Blackwell Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Hastorf, Christine and Michael DeNiro, 1985, Reconstruction of Prehistoric Plant Production and Cooking Practices by a New Isotopic Method. Nature 315:489–491.
Hayden, Brian, 1990, Nimrods, Piscators, Pluckers, and Planters: The Emergence of Food Production. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 9:31–69.
Hayden, Brian, 1996, Feasting in Prehistoric and Traditional Societies. In Food and the Status Quest, edited by P. Wiessner and W. Shieffenhovel, pp. 87–125. Berghahn Books, Providence, Rhode Island.
Hendon, Julia, 1997, Women’s Work, Women’s Space, and Women’s Status among the Classic Period Maya Elite of the Copan valley. In Women in Prehistory: North America and Mesoamerica, edited by C. Classen and R. Joyce, pp. 33–46. University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia.
Hodder, Ian (ed.), 1982a, Theoretical Archaeology: A Reactionary View. In Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, edited by I. Hodder, pp. 1–16. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Hodder, Ian, 1982b, Symbols in Action Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Hodder, Ian (ed.), 1987, The Archaeology of Contextual Meaning. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
James, Thomas, 1984, Pharoah’s People: Scenes from Life in Imperial Egypt. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Jones, Sian and Paul Graves-Brown, 1996, Introduction: Archaeology and Cultural Identity in Europe. In Cultural Identity and Archaeology, edited by P. Graves-Brown, S. Jones, and C. Gamble, pp. 1–24. Routledge, London.
Joyce, Rosemary, 1998, Performing the Body in Pre-hispanic Central America. RES 33:148–165.
Lentz, D., 1991, Maya Diets of the Rich and Poor: Paleoethnobotanical Evidence from Copan. Latin American Antiquity 60(4):701–721.
Levi-Strauss, Claude, 1966, The culinary triangle. Partisan Review 33:586–595. [orig. published 1965]
Levi-Strauss, Claude, 1969, The Raw and the Cooked University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Levi-Strauss, Claude, 1978, The Origin of Table Manners. Harper and Row Publishers, New York.
Mintz, Sydney, 1986, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History Penguin Books, New York.
Nielsen, Inge and Hanne Nielsen (eds.), 1998, Meals in a Social Context Aarhus Studies in Mediterranean Antiquity, No. 1. Aarhus University Press, Denmark.
Pohl, Mary, 1985, The Privileges of Maya Elites: Prehistoric Vertebrate Fauna from Seibal. In Prehistoric Lowland Maya Environment and Subsistence Economy, edited by M. Pohl, pp. 133–145. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Volume 77, Harvard University.
Purser, M., 1991, “Several Paradise Ladies are Visiting in Town”: Gender Strategies in the Early Industrial West. Historical Archaeology 25(4):6–16.
Richards, Audrey, 1932, Hunger and Work in a Savage Tribe. Routledge, London.
Richards, Audrey, 1939, Land, Labour, and Diet in Northern Rhodesia. Oxford University Press, London.
Romer, John, 1984, Ancient Lives: Daily Life in Egypt of the Pharoahs. Henry Holt and Co., New York.
Samuel, Devlen, 1996, Investigation of Ancient Egyptian Baking and Brewing Methods by Correlative Microscopy. Science 273:488–490.
Schmandt-Besserat, Denise, 2001, Feasting in the Ancient Near East. In Feasts, edited by M. Dietler and B. Hayden, pp. 391–403. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
Shanks, Michael and Chris Tilley, 1987, Re-Constructing Archaeology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Spector, Janet, 1983, Male/Female Task Differentiation among the Hidatsa: Toward the Development of an Archaeological Approach to the Study of Gender. In The Hidden Half, edited by Patricia Albers and Beatrice Medicine, pp. 77–99. University Press of America, Washington, D.C.
Spector, Janet, 1993, What this Awl Means: Feminist Archaeology at a Wahpeton Dakota Village. Minnesota Historical Society Press, St. Paul, Minnesota.
Towle, Margaret, 1961, The Ethnobotany of Pre-columbian Peru. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, No. 30. New York.
Watson, P.J. and M. Kennedy, 1991, The Development of Horticulture in the Eastern Woodlands of North America: Women’s Role. In Engendering Archaeology, edited by J. Gero and M. Conkey, pp. 255–275. Blackwell Press, Oxford.
Whelan, M., 1991, Gender and Historical Archaeology: Eastern Dakota Patterns in the 19th Century. Historical Archaeology 25(4):17–32.
Weismantel, Mary, 1988, Food, Gender, and Poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Wiessner, Polly and Wulf Shieffenhovel (eds.), 1996, Food and the Status Quest Berghahn Books, Providence, Rhode Island.
Yacovleff, E. and F. Herrera, 1934-35, El mundo vegetal de los antiguos peruanos. Revista del Museo Nacional 4:29–102.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2003 Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bray, T.L. (2003). The Commensal Politics of Early States and Empires. In: Bray, T.L. (eds) The Archaeology and Politics of Food and Feasting in Early States and Empires. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-306-48246-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-306-48246-5_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-306-47730-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-306-48246-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive