Between Feasts and Daily Meals

Abstract

Commensality - Eating and drinking together in a common physical and social setting – is a central element in people’s everyday lives. This makes commensality a particularly important theme within which to explore social relations, social reproduction and the working of politics whether in the present or the past. Archaeological attention has been focused primarily on feasting and other special commensal occasions to the neglect of daily commensality. This volume seeks to redress this imbalance by emphasizing the dynamic relation between feasts and quotidian meals and devoting explicit attention to the micro- politics of Alltag (“the everyday”) rather than solely to special occasions. Case studies drawing on archaeological ( material) as well as written sources range from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in Western Asia and Greece, Formative to late pre-Columbian com munities in Andean South America, and modern Europe.