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This article contributes to an ongoing critical examination of feasting by developing a classification scheme that emphasizes the variable contexts in which feasts have occurred. Many recent archaeological and ethnographic accounts have focused on the political and economic roles feasts play in creating power and status differences among participants, while others have highlighted how they build community and increase solidarity within a group. My scheme reconceptualizes the term by giving two independent variables—group size and level of sociopolitical competition—equal roles in determining whether a given eating event is a feast; in turn, my dual-dimensional model facilitates more sophisticated interpretations of archaeological remains. After outlining its utility for describing and comparing eating events, this article evaluates the evidence for feasting at a precontact Native American mound site in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Botanical, faunal, and ceramic analyses of materials from the Feltus mounds (AD 750–1100) reveal fairly typical food-related assemblages, whereas the sheer amount of material, speed with which it was deposited, and size of individual specimens are exceptional. The resulting interpretation emphasizes feasting's role in creating and maintaining group solidarity at Feltus and advances understanding of noncompetitive outcomes of feasting behavior in the precontact American Southeast.

Geophysical methods that explore depths more than 1 m below the surface were employed at Feltus (22Je500), a Coles Creek period (AD 700-1200) mound-and-plaza group in southwestern Mississippi, USA. It is difficult to assess the internal structure of large platform mounds such as those at Feltus using excavation and traditional geophysical techniques alone. As a result, such investigations often focus only on activities that took place during and after the final stage(s) of construction. Our 2012 research at Feltus utilized electrical resistivity tomography and downhole magnetic susceptibility to examine the internal structure of two platform mounds at depths beyond those commonly targeted by shallow techniques. These methods revealed mound stages, prepared floors, midden and pit features, and construction attributes within the fill episodes. By refocusing our attention on the process of mound building rather than the final use of the mound summits, this research broadened our view of the role of monuments in creating and strengthening community ties.

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