Between Feasts and Daily Meals. Towards an Archaeology of Commensal Spaces (original) (raw)
Commensality and Diacritical Feasting in the British Iron Age, 2022
The study of feasting within the archaeological discipline stretches into its earliest conception (Hayden & Villeneuve, 2011, 434), however it is only since the 1990's that feasting has been applied to archaeological narratives under a post-processual doctrine. In large part, this is down to the seminal ethno-archaeological works of Dietler (Dietler, 1990, 1996 & 2001) and his categorization of distinctive feasting patterns as well as the associated socio-political functions they perform, and the interest groups they benefit. He broadly categorizes three means by which gastro-politics play out in the context of feasting, entrepreneurial feasting, patron-role feasting (both a part of commensal feasting strategies) and diacritical feasting (Dietler, 1996).
This research paper examines the complexity and structure of a farming landscape through spatial and social boundaries as extended from the surrounding landscape to the village core. As late back as the 14th century, travellers have often referred to Tinos as the best farmed island of the Cyclades. Today, Tinos’ landscape is a composition of blurred boundaries between natural and man-made features. To allow farming the steep and dry land, hills and mountainous areas had to be landscaped using terraces. Some of these terraces are ancient, but most were created under Venetian rule and expanded after the 18th century when the island fell under Ottoman rule. Heavily populated at that time, the island needed to be intensely farmed in order to cover the daily needs for food, which caused the further expansion of the network of terraces. Land, water and “air” ownership have been studied through the lens of boundaries in relation to people’s daily connection and food, since annual festivities and religious festivals in the village are always connected with food. This paper focuses on the village of Kampos today, at a time when farming no longer holds the same key role in the island’s commercial and cultural life as in the past. Kampos is one of the oldest villages of the island and is a catholic village with rural economy. The village since 12 years ago had no central public space, such as a village square. Villagers used other communal areas in their everyday lives, such as the laundry rooms and the old stone ovens. A vital public space was the streets of the village themselves. However nowadays the new square at the centre of the village is referred as a communal space for the use and benefit of the village community. This ongoing research explores the presence and the negotiation of these boundaries as they lead to understanding ownership and bonding within village culture. How these boundaries are extended into the villager’s social life, how these boundaries disappear or intermingle through the communal meals and the ritual of food. The fluidity of most of the spatial boundaries reveals the existence of social, ethical and emotional limits. The conclusions are tentative as the research is ongoing. However this study of boundaries, which determine ownership in daily practice, leads to seeing boundaries as creating contact zones and spaces of ethics. The land use and ownership, since the 14th century, when we have the first written proof of land ownership on the island. Since that time, hierarchy and land distribution played a key role in the feudal system prevailing under Venetian rule (1390 - 1715). On Tinos, feudalism was implemented in a different way than in any other area or island, or the rest of Greece and similar countries of the Byzantium. Some of the public land belonged to the feudal lords, who awarded powers at the request of the parties concerned.This established a different reading of the landscape and the land’s production. Land fields were described by the seeds and products they were producing. Contracts, legata ( a type of covenant related to the church) and testaments reveal an understanding of the value of the land, at the time they were compiled. Certainly, different types of boundaries can create different understandings of the ownership or claim of ownership. Land inherited and land acquired by work creates different types of ownership and bonding. The fact that the stone walls of each property do not necessarily point to a fixed boundary allows the creation of a contact zone, an intermediate space of communication, a space of conflict and agreement. The owners need to conclude an agreement. True stories as narrated by Kampos’ villagers talk about how conflicts and agreements on disputed and indefinable boundaries or village common land create a different type of bonding/ownership for the villagers not only with their land, but also with the area of their village. On the other hand water unravels a different situation, since in Kampos there is private, communal and public water; water as a boundary creates a different situation each time. Water first appears as a communal good in the village, a place where nowadays women wash their carpets or heavy fabrics at the laundry rooms [plystres] of the village. The laundry halls of Kampos are located at the outskirts of village, next to the gardens and fields. The common understanding of water as property in the village, but also as “a common good”, not measured as matter but as time -in the contracts and covenants-, but also the creation of conflicts and agreements create another discourse regarding ownership. This discourse involves conflicts and agreements based on the prolonged used of the flow of water, beyond the time limits set by each owner’s contract. Another element “air” as the right to use, unfolds a big dispute in the village for more than a year. The new village square which had been donated to the village association and was constructed with the voluntary work of the villagers. The recent claim of a local businessman to buy the "air value” or the “right to use the air” of the new square, open a coffee shop and put tables and chairs on the square raised a big controversy among villagers. A large portion of the villagers claimed that the square, as a public space, had been created by them and it belonged to the village, as they said. The square might be empty during the day, but on feasts everyone could be there. Who would be the actual owner of the “air” of the new open square? The day of the Honey festival when different delicacies of local honey are made by the women of the village for the evening feast, the air smells honey, a communal smell that escapes through the open windows of village houses. On that summer day, the women of the village work together in the kitchen of the communal hall [leschi] of the village, they clean the village together and they bake and decorate their last honey sweets together. Everything must be ready to welcome the visitors on the night of the feast. That night too, just like every year, the village air vibrated with the smell of honey and the sounds of music, folk dancing, clapping and laughing. The communal space under the concept of the honey festival dissolves the spatial and social boundaries of the square or boundaries become permeable as the day of the “St. Trinity/Agia Triada” religious festival when boundaries of private, semi private, communal and public life intermingle. This is the day when some of the women of the village “opens up” the doors of their house to welcome the village’s community and other guests who have come to join the village celebration, to share a festive meal at their family house. A few days before the feast of the patron Saint of the village, St. Trinity/Agia Triada, village streets are cleaned and painted with white lime; so are the exterior walls of the church. On the day of the festival, the church and the streets are decorated with flowers. The mass involves a procession of priests, villagers and visitors, passing by the broadest, but still small streets of the village. After the end of the procession and the mass, selected houses of the village (whose owners wanted to offer festive meals) are ready to welcome their friends, relatives, neighbours, fellow villagers, villagers from other communities, as well as strangers who visit the village on that day. Both guests and hosts know that guests have to visit all the “open houses” of the village, sit on every house’s table and savour their festive meals. The priest of the village will make his turn on each and every one of the “open houses” to bless the meal. This meal involves a particular menu and particular food decorations. Boundaries of privacy dissolve and communal and religious bonds are revealed to express the identity of the village through the celebrations for its patron saint and the participation and sharing of a communal meal. The methodology for this paper was archival, research work on the history and anthropology of Tinos, complemented by observation and a series of interviews. The conclusions are tentative since this is an ongoing PhD research work. However our observation and findings define the village structure as this emerges as a living organism formed through the daily discourse about the existence or lack of boundaries, seen through the lens of property and ownership, but also in the sense of bonding and living together. This finding indicates the lack of clear boundaries, which creates an in-between space of communication, as well as claims and agreements among farmers. These observations tend to support the claim that there is a space “in-between”, which often appears where the lack of a physical boundary is replaced by social, ethical or even emotional boundaries. Food celebration and communal meals dissolve boundaries and create a space of identity and bonding for the village community. It appears that ownership in the sense of place is deeply rooted and connected with very essential, cultural elements of our daily life. Furthermore, Fustel De Coulanges claims that: “There are three things which from the most ancient times, we find founded and solidly established in these Greeks and Italian societies: the domestic religion; the family and the right of property - three things which had in the beginning a manifest relation, and which appear to have been inseparable.”Never the less the property of land and water connotes the property of products and food and the property of “air” as right to use connotes the need for a communal place where food becomes a different contact zone. Focusing on the meaning of boundaries as contact zones, the complexity of village life is revealed through the daily discourse on land, water and air, but also through the continuity of annual festivities when disagreements and discourses dissolve under the communal meals and the celebration of honey.
Lay the table! Food and Dining in the Urban Households of Habsburg‘s Temeswar and Banat
Neue Forschungen zur Ostmittel- und Südosteuropäischen Geschichte, 2023
This study is inspired by the countless objects involved in the meal ritual, certified by the wills, accompanied by inventories that are kept at the Temeswar archive. The perspective is micro-historical and multidisciplinary, and builds on social history, historical anthropology, history of material culture and archaeology. Although the study focuses on objects, this research brings closer the private sphere of urban dwellers three Centuries ago; therefore, people are also part of this paper’s focus, as both creators and users of the aforementioned objects. Building on these insights, this paper seeks to answer the following two-part question: What was consumed in the city in the 18th Century and what did dining look like back then?
2021
PhD dissertation. The aim of the study is to approach the interplay between socio-political development and the household as a social institution in south Norway in the period c. AD 350–900 through the perspective of cooking technology. Seemingly corresponding with the Early to Late Iron Age transition in the mid-6th century, culinary equipment in iron and soapstone succeeds a long-term focus on ceramics. This transitional period is a central research focus in the study. The transition is pursued from a ground-up and long-term perspective on crafts and culinary practice anchored in detailed analyses of materials and artefacts. Assemblage thinking and the Communities of Practice framework provide valuable perspectives on the emergent qualities of entities, whether it be artefact types or social units. The study establishes a relative chronology for the temporal selection of materials and artefact types, and demonstrates a sliding scale within the operational sequences of a meal: from an emphasis on serving in the Early Iron Age to cooking in the Late Iron Age. Macroscopic analyses and contextual studies of the artefact assemblage contribute to bridge the gap between ceramic, iron and soapstone technology and provide the basis for a new interpretive framework for iron and soapstone cooking equipment. When cooking equipment in iron turned up in the 7th and 8th centuries, it underlined the forging of new identities and connections with north-western Europe and especially central Sweden and the simultaneous development of local particularities. These developments are essential for the emergence of a soapstone industry in the Viking Age. The study further demonstrates that a collective cooking practice became increasingly private events during the Migration Period (c.AD 400-550). Changing the location for cooking, from large cooking-pit sites to private settlement sites, opened up for reorientation and discursive practice in the Merovingian Period as the meal changed character when food surfaced as a resource for leadership and underpinned the house with the hall as a social institution.