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ABSTRACT
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 of the Pictorial Style. Mycenaean feasting is an expression of the hierarchical sociopolitical structure of the palaces.
INTRODUCTION
In this paper I survey the artifactual evidence for Mycenaean feasting, including pottery, bronze vessels, frescoes, Linear B ideograms, and painted representations on pottery and other terracotta artifacts.1 There is no generally accepted definition of feasting: some scholars prefer a definition that encompasses most occasions of the consumption of food and drink; others argue for a more restrictive one.2 For the purposes of this investigation, I define feasting as the formal ceremony of communal eating and drinking to celebrate significant occasions. I exclude the quotidian partaking of food and drink that is carried out for biological or fundamental social reasons, such as eating with family or casually with acquaintances, friends, and colleagues-activities that do not include any perceived reciprocity. Material evidence for either eating or drinking may indicate feasting, but one must scrutinize the evidence closely to determine whether the remains are the result of formal and ritual activities not involving feasting. For example, 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 a priori 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/ Instead, the information collected for this research is that which to...