Big Pots for Big Shots: Feasting and Storage in a Mississippian Community

In small-scale societies, ritual feasts are often an important setting for social integration and status competition. Material evidence of feasting and food storage may be preserved in community ceremonial precincts, such as platform mounds. To identify food-consumption activities, ceramic samples f...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American antiquity 1993-01, Vol.58 (1), p.80-96
Main Author: Blitz, John H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Archaeological sites
Archaeology
Ceramics
Chiefdoms
Communities
Excavations
Food
Food consumption
Gulf languages
Paleoanthropology
Platform mounds
Pottery
Prehistoric era
Prehistoric peoples
Rites, ceremonies and celebrations
Social life & customs
Villages
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Summary:In small-scale societies, ritual feasts are often an important setting for social integration and status competition. Material evidence of feasting and food storage may be preserved in community ceremonial precincts, such as platform mounds. To identify food-consumption activities, ceramic samples from mound and village contexts at the prehistoric Lubbub Creek site in Alabama are compared. There are no significant differences in the distribution of decorated types, ware categories, or vessel shapes. However, the mound has a more restricted range of vessel sizes and disproportionately larger vessels than the village sample. These results, together with supporting feature and faunal data, suggest that mound activities included large-group feasts and food storage.
ISSN:0002-7316
2325-5064
DOI:10.2307/281455