Feasting in the Bronze Age and early Iron Age Aegean

• Verfasst von: Lima, Sarah
• Titel: Feasting in the Bronze Age and early Iron Age Aegean
• Titelzusatz: variability and meaning
• Verf.angabe: by Sarah Lima
• Jahr: 2007
• Umfang: X, 135 S.
• Illustrationen: Ill.
• Hochschulschrift: Cincinnati, Ohio, Univ. of Cincinnati, Masterarb., 2007
• Dokumenttyp: Hochschulschrift
• Sprache: eng
• K10plus-PPN: 1427948380

Abstract

This thesis compares and contrasts how feasting operated in communities during the Bronze Age and Iron Age in Greece by examining archaeological data from sites in western Messenia and Euboea. Working under the assumption that feasting represents an expression of the social structure in which it functions, I argue that feasts sponsored by Mycenaean palatial administrators functioned diacritically, and served to legitimize and maintain control over resources, as well as to define a stratified social hierarchy. However, following the collapse of the Mycenaean palace systems in the LH IIIB period, banqueting was more generally oriented toward bringing individuals together and establishing unified group identities. Another observation of this study is that while feasts at LH IIIB palatial centers such as Pylos and Thebes appear similar in their forms and motivations, feasts at post-palatial sites such as Nichoria, Xeropolis, and Toumba show some variation when they are compared with one another. This characteristic of variability is also reflected in the different forms and motivations of feasts depicted in the Homeric epics, which seem to demonstrate that multiple modes of feasting would have been known in Iron Age Greece, serving a number of functions for the communities in which they circulated