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Mycenaean feasting on Tsoungiza at Ancient Nemea

Hesperia, Spring, 2004 by Mary K. Dabney, Paul Halstead, Patrick Thomas

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The ceramics from feasting activities should thus exhibit most of the following criteria:

1. Deviation from the norm in the amount and kind of decoration. If provision of food and drink was the primary purpose served, and the vessels themselves were not valued souvenirs of the feast, elaborate decoration would be unnecessary. A higher-than-usual percentage of unpainted pottery might be found, or painted pots might exhibit a lower-than-usual percentage of patterned examples. The same features could also be observed if the sponsor of the feast wanted to deemphasize social differences and create an atmosphere of equality among the guests.

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2. A higher-than-usual percentage of open shapes used to serve food and drink. The kylix should be especially abundant. Based on later practice at Pylos, we might also expect to find substantial numbers of SABs among the open shapes; shallow cups may be present as well, since over 1,000 of them were present in room 21. Dippers and kraters for serving wine are also likely finds.

3. The presence of closed shapes in the form of jugs. Cooking pots of various sorts should be prevalent, especially if meat was prepared in stews.

4. The presence of vessels peculiarly associated with ritual feasting. In the case of Mycenaean Greece, a possible candidate is the miniature kylix with high-swung handles, as argued by Stocker and Davis elsewhere in this volume.

5. A restricted range of vessels. If a deposit is formed primarily from feasting activity, it is likely to exhibit fewer types of vessels than a deposit representing everyday activity, especially in terms of utilitarian vessels employed for processing food or other products.

6. The possible presence of oversized pots for dignitaries or for shared consumption among participants.18 Both kylikes and unusually large SABs were encountered in the pantries at Pylos. The very few large kylikes present in comparison to kylikes of average size might indicate that sharing occurred only within a select group. (19)

We should now reflect briefly on the process of deposition, beginning with a theoretically ideal situation and then working toward the messier reality likely to confront an excavator. Ideally, a fresh pit would be dug to hold all of the debris from a feast and closed immediately thereafter with a layer of sterile soil. The participants would carefully gather all of the discarded bones and uneaten food and deposit them into the pit; all pots, vessels of other materials, and utensils used, whether broken or unbroken, would be cast in as well. Ceramics from such a deposit would be recognizable archaeologically by very high "mendability" into whole pots, a prevalence of shapes associated with feasting, a lack of shapes associated with other activities, complete chronological homogeneity of shape and decoration, and minimal wear from weathering processes.

We have no reason, however, to believe that refuse dumps such as those found at Tsoungiza were used exclusively for refuse from large-scale feasts. A realistic model designed to characterize feasting activity needs to take into account the likelihood that two streams of waste might well be flowing into a dump, one derived from feasting and the other from daily use. One can anticipate that the stream of waste from daily activities will in general be more fragmentary, exhibit greater differences in wear, and contain a broader range of the types of vessels in use at the site, not only those associated with eating and drinking. Even if we can develop criteria to distinguish between ceramics from feasting and daily meals, the latter stream of waste may "dilute" the distinctiveness of the waste resulting from feasts. If the feasts are small and infrequent, one can anticipate that their remains in a dump will probably be archaeologically indistinguishable from those of daily meals. In addition, the possibility of a third stream of fill used to cover decaying bones and meat is discussed below.

Mycenaean feasting on Tsoungiza at Ancient Nemea

Hesperia, Spring, 2004 by Mary K. Dabney, Paul Halstead, Patrick Thomas

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