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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 ofthe Pictorial Style. Mycenaean feasting is an expression of the hierarchical sociopolitical structure of the palaces. JAMES C. WRIGHT 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 apriori 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 ess...

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A pollen diagram is presented for a sediment core from Kleonai in southern Greece. A set of seven radiocarbon dates suggests that the core spans the time period from the beginning of the Holocene to the Roman period. Pollen preservation in the core is patchy and there are only three zones on the pollen diagram with countable quantities of pollen. These zones correspond with the early Neolithic, Bronze Age and Roman periods. The area around the site was largely open by the Neolithic but the wider landscape was still well wooded. In the Bronze Age and Roman periods, there is evidence for arable agriculture, including olive cultivation. By the Roman period, most of the semi-natural woodlands had disappeared and the landscape was probably not unlike that of the present day.