Feasting in Homeric Epic

Sherratt, Susan

doi:10.2972/hesp.2004.73.2.301

Cited by 34 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…Hayden and Villeneuve (2011) review the development of historic, ethnographic, and archaeological interest in feasting, and I draw heavily on their summary in formulating this overview. The earliest accounts of feasts in the classical literature focus on the motivations and actions of elite hosts (see Sherratt 2004); likewise, early ethnographic work emphasized examples of lavish feasting stimulated by competition (e.g., Boas's interpretation of potlatching [Codere 1950]). During the mid-twentieth century, some ethnographers (e.g., Firth 1951) began to favor interpreting feasts as mechanisms for building social solidarity, whereas others (e.g., Sahlins 1972) emphasized their redistributive role, and many (e.g., Codere 1950; Young 1971) maintained a focus on competitive behavior.…”

Section: Anthropological and Archaeological Approaches To Feastingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Method for Conceptualizing and Classifying Feasting: Interpreting Communal Consumption in the Archaeological Record

Kassabaum

2019

Am. Antiq.

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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.

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Section: Anthropological and Archaeological Approaches To Feastingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Method for Conceptualizing and Classifying Feasting: Interpreting Communal Consumption in the Archaeological Record

Kassabaum

2019

Am. Antiq.

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“…120-122]. At the same time, parallels can also be found with the roughly contemporary Greek "Homeric" culture and burial rites -both in literary sources [31] and tombs in various areas of the Eastern Mediterranean region, e.g. Cyprus [24].…”

Section: Phrygiamentioning

confidence: 84%

“Orientalizing” Art in Anatolia (8th–6th Centuries B.C.)

Kisbali¹

2019

PTHA

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The topic of this paper was inspired by an exchange I had with my colleague, Nadezhda Nalimova. We were discussing some problems connected with the artistic traditions of ancient Lydia. When I used the expression "Anatolian orientalizing art, " she remarked that this wording sounded slightly strange: after all, "isn't Anatolia the Orient?" This remark of hers prompted me to reexamine both the very term and its relevance to Anatolian materials. Thus, this topic is necessarily concerned not only with art history but also with historiography. The formation of scholarship on the topic of "orientalization" cannot be reviewed here, but it has been sufficiently described elsewhere [19, pp. 33-35; 34, pp. 102-133; 21, pp. 66-67; 28]. Let us just note the main stages and tendencies for the evolution of this area. "Orientalizing" began as a term describing the peculiar style and the use of Eastern motifs and prototypes in Greek vase painting. Strong reinforcement for this area came from scholarship centered on the birth of Greek art, the problem of ex Oriente lux, East vs. West, Orient and Occident [26; 1]. The 1970-80s brought another shift: "orientalizing" became to signify not just certain styles but an entire period and the whole complex of transitions in society. The works of Walter Burkert, first in German and later translated into English as The Orientalizing Revolution, finalized the use of "orientalization" as an umbrella term for a wide array of social, economic, cultural and artistic tendencies [6; 7]. During the last decades, the term has been often discussed and reviewed [12; 28; 2; 3; 19]. The scope of analysis was extended to the entire Mediterranean region throughout the 8 th-7 th centuries B.C., focusing on long-range elite interactions-a horizon of "orientalizing" material culture stretching from "Assyria to Iberia." There are also voices in this scholarship that call for a further widening of the geographical boundaries. Nicholas Purcell rightfully points out: "Understanding the increasingly intense connectivity of this period, and its historical consequences, <...> is inconceivable without including in the analytical frame Anatolia, the west Asian coastlands, and Egypt, and their various relations with the Mesopotamian heartland to the east" [27, p. 21]. Still, the current wave of theoretical literature on the topic is mostly concerned with the Iron Age Mediterranean horizon. Inland Anatolia, together with the distinctive cultures of the kingdoms of Phrygia and Lydia and their "orientalizing" tendencies need to be defined in more detail 1. 1 These problems were recently discussed in Kurtis T. Tanaka's 2018 dissertation [33]. Tanaka

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“…Scholars have located the beginnings of homeric feasting in the Iron age because of the frequent mention of roasting spitted meat (Sherratt 2004). Scholars have located the beginnings of homeric feasting in the Iron age because of the frequent mention of roasting spitted meat (Sherratt 2004).…”

Section: Archaic and Classical Periods (Circa 700-323 Bce)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cooking and Baking Technology

Paulas¹

2016

A Companion to Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Greece and Rome

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Animal Husbandry 541 were bred for specific traits. those that raced carrying single riders or drawing chariots were undoubtedly bred for speed, turning ability, and endurance. the same traits were sought in horses utilized to convey the roman post (cursus publicus) or military messages. those used in war or the hunt required even temperaments and a sturdier frame. the most famous ancient breeding grounds lay in Sparta, argos, thessaly, Macedonia, Sicily, and North africa.Unlike cows, sheep, and goats, the horse was not kept for multiple products or purposes. Oxen did most heavy hauling, since efficient harnesses had not yet been invented for draft horses (LaND traNSPOrt aND VEhICLES). Moreover, from Mycenaean times onward, ancient horses were on the small side. the Scythians may have milked them (herodotus 4.2), and aristotle mentions their milk and cheese making in Phrygia (HA 521b33, 522a28-29), but the horse's importance for the Greeks and romans lay almost exclusively as a conveyor of humans, either as single mounts or in chariots, most commonly in war or for racing. Since horses require more care and more expensive food than mules and donkeys, they were a symbol of wealth. Classes of society (hippeis, equites) were created to indicate people with enough money to own horses for cavalry use. Even the owner of a single mount needed stables, handlers and grooms, pasturage, and a steady supply of grain. Breeders who produced horses for sale must have incurred heavier costs, including the importation of breeding stock from abroad, but the profits could be correspondingly high (anderson 1961, 128-137).

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Feasting in Homeric Epic

Cited by 34 publications

References 10 publications

A Method for Conceptualizing and Classifying Feasting: Interpreting Communal Consumption in the Archaeological Record

A Method for Conceptualizing and Classifying Feasting: Interpreting Communal Consumption in the Archaeological Record

“Orientalizing” Art in Anatolia (8th–6th Centuries B.C.)

Cooking and Baking Technology

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