The Politics of Feasting: Civic Commensality and the Rise of the Polis in the Early Iron Age to Archaic Transition on Crete, CA. 700-500 BCE
- Date: Wednesday, September 26, 2018 - 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Building: Life
Room: DNA C228
The Politics of Feasting: Civic Commensality and the Rise of the Polis in the Early Iron Age to Archaic Transition on Crete, CA. 700-500 BCE
The goal of this thesis is to explore the role that civic (i.e. state-sponsored) feasting and drinking played in early polis (pl. poleis), or city-state formation on Crete in the Early Iron Age to Archaic transition on Crete, ca. 700-500 BCE. Using the two recently excavated civic feasting structures at the site of Azoria as a model for both “inclusive” and “exclusive” forms of civic feasting, this project compares and contrasts the role that it played at a number of other sites in central and east Crete. In order to categorize the structures as either inclusive or exclusive, all forms of published evidence were examined including the buildings’ architecture and the socially valued goods and ceramics found within the structures. Ultimately, this project demonstrates that in the 8th century BCE, inclusive feasting rituals and association with the past were used as means of creating and maintaining a strong group identity, which paved the way for the use of more exclusive practices in the 7th century BCE, where sub-group identities and alliances were formed amongst members of the larger group. However, at the sites where there was evidence for multiple civic feasting venues it appears that by the 7th century BCE, the interplay of both inclusive and exclusive forms of feasting were crucial to the process of identity formation for the citizens of these proto-poleis.
Examining Committee:
Supervisor: Rodney Fitzsimons
Committee: Jennifer Moore (chair), Marit Munson
External Examiner: Clara Margaret Scarry, University of North Carolina
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Posted on September 20, 2018