Were luxury foods the first domesticates? Ethnoarchaeological perspectives from Southeast Asia

Abstract

There are important reasons for considering the first domesticated plants and animals as luxury foods primarily used in feasting. Using Southeast Asian tribal society as a case study, it is demonstrated that all the domesticated animals and the most important of the domesticated plants constitute forms of wealth that are primarily or exclusively used in feasting contexts. In addition, numerous studies have demonstrated that feasting generates powerful forces that intensify and increase resource production of luxury foods as well as staples. Such forces ultimately can lead to the domestication of wild species and the transformation of luxury foods into staple foods.

The Neolithic Macro-(R)evolution: Macroevolutionary Theory and the Study of Culture Change

“…Even the fig does not fit this description since it is both easily grown and slow to yield realizable profits. While there is some evidence for communal feasting involving consumption of large quantities of meat, the archaeological record from the region clearly does not support Hayden's (2003) blanket declaration that meat was eaten only within controlled ritual contexts. Perhaps even more significantly, all of the various signs of social aggrandizement Hayden reads into the record from the Near East (i.e., exotic trade goods, plastered skulls, etc.)…”

“…Social inequality Hayden's (1992Hayden's ( , 1995Hayden's ( , 2003 competitive feasting model sees the origin of agriculture in the Near East as an early example of social promotion in which greedy accumulators were able to take advantage of the times of relative plenty that followed the end of the last Ice Age to advance their own personal agendas (for a more nuanced, socially oriented model see Byrd 2005). His conception of initial domesticates as limited-access ''delicacies'' cannot be reconciled with the ubiquity and importance of cereals and pulses in the Near East or their long history of exploitation.…”

New Perspectives in Southeast Asian and Pacific Prehistory

“…The comparative cultivation experiments using green foxtail and perennial wild rice illustrate that the return on cultivating the latter is extremely low, even negative, thus highlighting the question of whether the cultivation of wild rice originated for the purpose of increasing food supplies or for other purposes. Hayden (2003) has argued that wild rice might have been a luxury food in prehistory, used for ritual purposes. Further archaeological studies are required to address this issue.…”

La implantación neolítica en la Bahía de Gijón desde las postrimerías del V milenio A. C.: enfoque arqueológico y paleoambiental y notas sobre la monumentalidad megalítica

“…La domesticación como mecanismo de creación de alimentos de lujo, algunos tan novedosos o raros como los cereales, destinados a su consumo en festines y celebraciones motivados por la intención de notoriedad de un determinado grupo social, es ya una vieja propuesta (Bender, 1978;Hayden, 2003).…”