A survey of evidence for feasting in Mycenaean Society

ABSTRACT

The study of feasting on the Greek mainland during the Middle and Late Bronze Age provides insights into the nature of Mycenaean society. Grave goods demonstrate changes in feasting and drinking practices and their importance in the formation of an elite identity. Cooking, serving, and drinking vessels are also recorded in Linear B documents. Feasting scenes appear in the frescoes of Crete and the islands, and the Mycenaeans adapt this tradition for representation in their palaces. Feasting iconography is also found in vase painting, particularly in examples of the Pictorial Style. Mycenaean feasting is an expression of the hierarchical sociopolitical structure of the palaces.

INTRODUCTION

In this paper I survey the artifactual evidence for Mycenaean feasting, including pottery, bronze vessels, frescoes, Linear B ideograms, and painted representations on pottery and other terracotta artifacts. (1) There is no generally accepted definition of feasting: some scholars prefer a definition that encompasses most occasions of the consumption of food and drink; others argue for a more restrictive one. (2) For the purposes of this investigation, I define feasting as the formal ceremony of communal eating and drinking to celebrate significant occasions. I exclude the quotidian partaking of food and drink that is carried out for biological or fundamental social reasons, such as eating with family or casually with acquaintances, friends, and colleagues --activities that do not include any perceived reciprocity. Material evidence for either eating or drinking may indicate feasting, but one must scrutinize the evidence closely to determine whether the remains are the result of formal and ritual activities not involving feasting. For example, people frequently use vessels to make offerings to deities or perform rituals, such as toasting or leaving food remains for the dead, and these vessels are not a priori evidence for feasting, unless the remains are so substantial that they indicate unusual consumption of food or drink. (3) I intend to argue closely on the basis of good evidence for feasting as a common but variably performed ritual, remains from which are recoverable by archaeologists.

It is not my purpose to examine the organic residues and archaeological deposits of feasts, especially since that is the subject of two other articles in this volume. (4) Instead, the information collected for this research is that which to our eyes presents consistent patterns of form and decoration, of assemblage, and of context and deposition, evidence that represents a style peculiar to the practice of feasting and formal drinking during the era we define as Mycenaean. By "Mycenaean" I mean the assemblage of artifacts that constitutes the characteristic archaeological culture that originates on the mainland of Greece in the late Middle Bronze Age, finds its fullest expression in the palaces during Late Helladic (LH) IIIA-B, and can be traced through the postpalatial LH IIIC period. (5) Different scholars will define differently the chronological and geographical range of this culture, but probably will not disagree that it takes recognizable form about 1600-1550 B.C. and ends about 1100-1050 B.C.; is characterized by settlements with palaces and writing in Linear B; and in its broadest extent encompasses coastal Thessaly, central Greece, the Peloponnese, Crete, the Aegean islands, and perhaps some settlements on the western Anatolian coast.

In this article I necessarily consider evidence from Crete and the Aegean islands, since much of what we characterize as Mycenaean is derived from the earlier palace-based societies of Middle and Late Bronze Age Crete and the island cultures of the Aegean. Identifying the formative processes through which these were incorporated into Mycenaean culture, however, has proven difficult and confusing. (6) The essays by Borgna and Steel in this volume treat the subject of the Mycenaean feast on Crete and Cyprus, where previous indigenous traditions of feasting can be documented. The authors confront the problem of the adaptation of distinctive, perhaps essential, elements of the Mycenaean feast during periods of strong Mycenaean influence on these islands. These discussions consider the feasting tradition as an elite one, and that is no less the case for this study. One can argue that the consistency of the elite practice of feasting creates a richer and more patterned material record than that produced by nonelite practice.

Feasting, by virtue of its bringing people together in the biological act of eating, is a social activity that binds a group through sharing. Feasting is also a formal ceremonial practice that differentiates host from guest, and youth from elder, and affirms other status distinctions. As a social practice feasting is dynamic, and archaeologists attempting to reconstruct a feasting tradition must also pay attention to the sociopolitical trajectory of the society under study. I argue here that feasting is an important ceremony instrumental in the forging of cultural identity. Most explanations of the formation of pre- and protohistoric Aegean cultures are based on assumptions of degree of interaction, particularly through modes of production and exchange, including exchanges of information. (7) Hodder, however, argues that in general such interaction models have been used mechanistically and that the concentration on economic transactions has resulted in an inadequate account of cultural formation and change. (8) He maintains that models of social identity and interaction better explain the sources of and processes behind cultural formation and change. Through ethnoarchaeological studies he demonstrates that expressions of group identity as manifest in material culture are highly variable and subject to many different impetuses, particularly social strategies and conceptual frameworks that range across various orders of sociopolitical integration. (9) These identities are manipulated and mutable and result in material expressions that are ephemeral, yet loaded with meaning. Consequently, the degree of consistency and distribution of material assemblages cannot be assessed merely according to mechanical articulations of economic interactions, but instead have to be understood as the material displays of other kinds of social activity, many of which relate to the expression and reaffirmation of individual identity and membership in groups. Feasting is one such activity.