Feast! Throughout human history, and in all parts of the world,
feasts have been at the heart of life. The great museums of the
world are full of the remains of countless ghostly feasts - dishes
that once bore rich meats, pitchers used to pour choice wines, tall
jars that held beer sipped through long straws of gold and lapis,
immense cauldrons from which hundreds of people could be served.
Why were feasts so important, and is there more to feasting than
abundance and enjoyment? The Never-Ending Feast is a pioneering
work that draws on anthropology, archaeology and history to look at
the dynamics of feasting among the great societies of antiquity
renowned for their magnificence and might. Reflecting new
directions in academic study, the focus shifts beyond the medieval
and early modern periods in Western Europe, eastwards to
Mesopotamia, Assyria and Achaemenid Persia, early Greece, the
Mongol Empire, Shang China and Heian Japan. The past speaks through
texts and artefacts. We see how feasts were the primary arena for
displays of hierarchy, status and power; a stage upon which
loyalties and alliances were negotiated; the occasion for the
mobilization and distribution of resources, a means of pleasing the
gods, and the place where identities were created, consolidated -
and destroyed. The Never-Ending Feast transforms our understanding
of feasting past and present, revitalising the fields of
anthropology, archaeology, history, museum studies, material
culture and food studies, for all of which it is essential reading.
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