Item Details

Feasting the Community: Ritual and Power on the Sicilian Acropoleis (10th– 6th centuries bc)

Issue: Vol 26 No. 2 (2013)

Journal: Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology

Subject Areas: Ancient History Archaeology

DOI: 10.1558/jmea.v26i2.211

Abstract:

In recent years, the emergence of new theoretical perspectives such as post-structuralism, post-colonialism and feminism in the study of colonial situations in the ancient Mediterranean have broken the hegemony long held by acculturation. Earlier perspectives focused mainly on the colonies, Greek or Phoenician, and considered them as the only active agents, while local populations were traditionally interpreted as static and monolithic entities, passive recipients of colonial innovations. Moving away from these interpretations and approaching new ways of reading colonial histories, the focus of this article is centered on the native Sicilian people, particularly on the recuperation of their agency, through an analysis of their ritual politics. In this case I examine processes of making social identities and the idea of community that these peoples constructed through the collective practices carried out in their main communal ritual settings, the acropoleis.

Author: Meritxell Ferrer Martín

View Original Web Page

References :

http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/jmea.v26i2.211

Albanese Procelli, R.M. 2003 Sicani, siculi, elimi: forme di identità, modi di contatto e processi di trasformazion. Milano: Longanesi.
Albanese Procelli, R.M. 2005 Pratiche alimentari nella Sicilia protostorica e arcaica tra tradizione e innovazione. In P. Attema (ed.), Papers in Italian Archaeology 6: Communities and Settlements from the Neolithic to the Early Medieval Period. British Archaeological Reports, International Series 1452: 358-66. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Albanese Procelli, R.M. 2006 Pratiche religiose in Sicilia tra proto-storia e arcaismo. In P. Anello, G. Martorana and R. Sammartano (eds.), Ethne e religione nella Sicilia Antica. Supplemento a Kokalos 18: 43-70. Roma: Bretschneider.
Albanese Procelli, R.M., and E. Procelli 2007 Lo spazio domestico nella Sicilia indígena tra la protostoria e l’età arcaica. In M.C. Belarte (ed.), L’espai domèstic i l’organització de la societat a la protohistòria de la Mediterrànea occidental (1er mil•leni a.C.), 349-62. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona.
Antonaccio, C. 2001 Colonization and acculturation. In I. Malkin (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity, 113-57. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Antonaccio, C. 2004 Siculo-geometric and the Sikels: identity and material culture in eastern Sicily. In K. Lomas (ed.), Greek Identity in the Western Mediterranean, 55-81. Leiden: Brill.
Antonaccio, C. 2005 Excavating colonization. In H. Hurst and S. Owen (eds.), Ancient Colonizations: Analogy, Similarity and Difference, 97-113. London: Duckworth.
Aranda, G., S. Montón and M. Sánchez-Romero (eds.) 2011 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner: Feasting Rituals in the Prehistoric Societies of Societies ofEurope and the Near East. London: Oxbow Books.
Appadurai, A. 1981 Gastro-politics in Hindu South Asia. American Ethnologist 3: 484-511.
Barrett, J. 1991 Towards an archaeology of ritual. In P. Garwood, D. Jennings, R. Skeates and J. Thoms (eds.), Sacred and Profane: Proceedings of a Conference on Archaeology, Ritual and Religion, 1-9. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Barrett, J. 1994 Fragments from Antiquity: An Archaeology of Social Life 2900–1200 BC. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bell, C. 1992 Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bell, C. 1997 Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bourdieu, P. 1972 Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique: précédé de trois études d’ethnologie kabyle. Genève: Libraire Droz.
Bourdieu, P. 1980 La sens pratique. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.
Bourdieu, P. 1988 La distinction: critique sociale du jugement. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.
Bradley, R. 2005 Ritual and Domestic Life in Prehistoric Europe. London: Routledge.
Bray, T. (ed.). 2003 The Archaeology and Politics of Food and Feasting in Early States and Empires. New York: Kluver Academic/Plenum. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/b100538
Brück, J. 1999 Ritual and rationality: some problems of interpretation in European archaeology. Journal of European Archaeology 2: 313-44.
Caplan, P. 1997 Approaches to the study of food, health and identity. In P. Caplan (ed.), Food, Health and Identity, 1-31. London: Routledge.
Castellana, G. 1990 L’insediamento di Montagnoli nei pressi di Selinunte: un contributo per la conoscenza delle poblazioni anelleniche Lungo il corso finale del Belice. In Gli Elimi e l’area elima, Atti del Seminario di Studi, 325-33. Palermo: Archivo Storico Siciliano.
Castellana, G. 1992 Nuovi dati su scavi condotti nel versante orientale del Basso Belice en el bacino finale del Platani. Giornate Internazionali di Studi sull’area elima (Gibellina 19-22 Settembre 1991), 191-202. Pisa-Gibellina: Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.
Castellana, G. 2000 La Cultura del medio bronzo nell’agrigentino ed i rapporti con il mondo miceneo. Palermo: Regione Siciliana - Beni Culturali.
Connerton, P. 1989 How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511628061
Counighan, C. 1999 The Anthropology of Food and Body: Gender, Meaning and Power. New York: Routledge.
Counighan, C., and P. van Esterik (eds.) 1997 Food and Culture: A Reader. London: Routledge.
Delgado, A. 2008 Alimentos, poder e identidad en las comunidades fenicias occidentales. Cuadernos de prehistoria y arqueología de la Universidad de Granada 18: 163-88.
Delgado, A. 2010 De las cocinas coloniales y otras historias silenciadas: domesticidad, subalternidad e hibridación en las colonias fenicias occidentales. In C. Mata Parreño, G. Pérez Jordà and J. Vives-Ferrándiz Sánchez (eds), De la cuina a la taula. IV Reunió d’Economia en el Primer Millenni a.C. Saguntum Extra 9: 27-42. València: Universitat de València.
Delgado, A., and M. Ferrer 2011a Representing communities in heterogeneous worlds: staple foods and ritual practices in the Phoenician diaspora. In G. Aranda, S. Montón and M. Sánchez Romero (eds.), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner: Feasting Rituals in the Prehistoric Societies of Europe and the Near East, 184-203. London: Oxbow Books.
Delgado, A., and M. Ferrer 2011b Life and death in ancient colonies: domesticity, material culture and sexual politics in the Western Phoenician world, 8th to 6th centuries BCE. In E. C. Cassella and B. Voss (eds.), The Archaeology of Colonialism: Intimate Encounters and Sexual Effects, 195-213. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
De Miro, E. 1981 Ricerche archeologiche nella Sicilia centro-meridionale. Kokalos 26-28: 561-66.
De Miro, E. 1983 Forme di contatto e processi di transformazione nelle società antiche: essempio da Sabucina. In Forme di contatto e processi di transformazione nelle società antiche Atti del comvegno (Cortona 24–30 maggio 1981), 335-44. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.
De Miro, E. 1988 Polizzello, centro della Sicania. Quaderni dell’Istituto di Archaeologia della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia della Università di Messina 3: 25-42.
Dietler, M. 1990 Driven by the drink: the role of drinking in the political economy and the case of early Iron Age France. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 9: 352-406. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0278-4165(90)90011-2
Dietler, M. 1995 The cup of Gyptis: rethinking the colonial encounter in early Iron Age western Europe and the relevance of world systems models. Journal of European Archaeology 3: 89-111.
Dietler, M. 2001 Theorizing the feast: rituals of consumption, commensal politics, and power in African contexts. In M. Dietler and B. Hayden (eds.), Feasts: Anthropological and Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics and Power, 65-114. Washington: Smithonian Institution Press.
Dietler, M. 2005 The archaeology of colonization and the colonization of archaeology. In G. Stein (ed.), The Archaeology of Colonial Encounters, 33-68. Santa Fe and Oxford: School of American Research and James Currey.
Dietler, M. 2010 Archaeologies of Colonialism: Consumption, Entanglement and Violence in Ancient Mediterranean France. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dietler, M., and B. Hayden (eds.) 2001 Feasts: Anthropological and Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics and Power. Washington: Smithonian Institution Press.
Di Rosa, M. 1999 Studio archeologico dei resti faunistici rinvenuti a Colle Madore. In S. Vassallo (ed.), Colle Madore: un casi di ellenizzazione in terra sicana, 255-66. Palermo: Regione Siciliana–Beni Culturali.
Domínguez Monedero, A.J. 2010 Dos religiones en contacto en ambiente colonial: Griegos y no Griegos en la Sicilia antigua. Polifemo 10: 131-84.
Domínguez Monedero, A.J. 2012 Local responses to colonization. Some additional perspectives. Ancient West and East 11: 205- 18.
Douglas, M. 1975 Deciphering a meal. In M. Douglas (ed.), Implicit Meanings: Selected Essays in Anthropology, 231-50. London: Routledge.
Ferrer, M. 2010 La (re-)creación de una memoria: la materialización de un ‘sentido de lugar’ en la Sicilia occidental, ss. VIII-V a.C. Bollettino di Archaeologia On-line, volume speciale: 43-52.
Ferrer, M. 2012 Acrópolis sicilianas: rituales, comunidades y poderes (ss. X-V a.C.). Unpublished PhD dissertation. Pompeu Fabra University–IUHJVV, Barcelona. Internet Edition: http://www.tdx.cat/handle/10803/83650
Gonlin, N., and J. Lohse (eds.) 2007 Commoner Ritual and Ideology in Ancient Mesoamerica. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
Goody, J. 1984 Cooking, Cuisine and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gumerman, G. 1997 Food and complex societies. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 4: 105-39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02428056
Guzzone, C. 2009 I santuari. In R. Panvini (ed.), Sabucina, 50 anni di studi e ricerche archeologiche, 91-121. Palermo: Regione Siciliana––Beni Culturali.
Halstead, P., and J. Barrett (eds.) 2004 Food, Cuisine and Society in Prehistoric Greece. Oxford: Oxbow.
Hamilakis, Y. 1998 Eating the dead: mortuary feasting and the politics of memory in the Aegean Bronze Age societies. In K. Branigan (ed.), Cemetery and Society in the Aegean Bronze Age, 115-32. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press.
Hamilakis, Y. 2003 The sacred geography of hunting: wild animals, social power and gender in early farming societies. British School at Athens Studies 9: 239-47.
Hamilakis, Y. 2008 Time, performance, and the production of a mnemonic record: from feasting to an archaeology of eating and drinking. In L. Hitchcock, R. Laffineur and J. Crowley (eds.), DAIS: The Aegean Feast. Aegaeum 29: 3-20. Liège: Université de Liège.
Hayden, B. and S. Villeneuve 2011 A century of feasting studies. Annual Review of Anthropology 40: 433-49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-081309-145740
Hnatiuk, T. 2003 Preliminary faunal report on the Acropolis of Monte Polizzo, 2003. Appendix 2 in I. Morris, T. Jackman, B. Garnard, E. Blake and S. Tusa (eds.), Stanford University excavations on the acropolis of Monte Polizzo, Sicily 4: preliminary report on the 2002 season. Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 48: 247-53.
Hobsbawm, E., and T. Ranger (eds.) 1983 The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hodos, T. 2000 Wine wares in protohistoric eastern Sicily. In C.J. Smith and J. Serrati (eds.), Ancient Sicily: Archaeology and History from Aeneas to Augustus, 41-54. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2006 Local Responses to Colonization in the Iron Age Mediterranean. London: Routledge.
Hodos, T. 2009 Colonial engagements in the global Mediterranean Iron Age. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 19: 221-41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0959774309000286
Hodos, T. 2012 Paradigm shifts in Mediterranean archaeology. Ancient West and East 11: 205-18.
Holloway, R.R., M.S. Joukowsky and S.S. Lukesh 1990 La Muculufa: the early Bronze Age sanctuary. The early Bronze Age village. Revue des Archeologues et Historiens d’Art de Louvain 23: 11-68.
Humphrey, C., and J. Laidlaw 1994 The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship. Oxford: Clarendon.
Jennings, J., K. Antrobus, S. Atencio, E. Glavich, R. Johnson, G. Loffler and C. Luu 2005 'Drinking beer in a blissful mood': Alcohol production, operational chains, and feasting in the ancient world. Current Archaeology 46: 275-303.
Joyce, A 2000 The founding of Monte Albán: sacred propositions and social practices. In M. Dobres and J. Robb (eds.), Agency in Archaeology, 71-91. London: Routledge Press.
Kertzer, D. 1988 Ritual, Politics, and Power. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Leighton, R. 1999 Sicily Before History: An Archaeological Survey from the Paleolithic to the Iron Age. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Mertens, D. 2006 Città e monumenti dei Greci d’Occidente: dalla colonizzazione alla crisi di fine V secolo a.C. Roma: Brettschneider.
Mills, B. 2007 Performing the feast: visual display and suprahousehold commensalism in the Puebloan Southwest. American Antiquity 72: 210-39. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/40035812
Morris, I., E. Blake, T. Jackman and S. Tusa 2002 Stanford University excavations on the acropolis of Monte Polizzo, Sicily, II: preliminary report on the 2001 season. Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 47: 153-98. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/4238796
Morris, I., E. Blake , T. Jackman, B. Garnard and S. Tusa 2003 Stanford University excavations on the acropolis of Monte Polizzo, Sicily, III: preliminary report on the 2002 season. Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 48: 243-315. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/4238811
Morris, I., and S. Tusa 2004 Scavi sull’ acropoli di Monte Polizzo (TP), 2000–2003. Sicilia Archeologica 37: 277-97.
Mühlenbock, C. 2008 Fragments from a Mountain Society. Tradition, Innovation and Interaction at Archaic Monte Polizzo, Sicily. Göteborg: Gotarch series C.
Palermo, D. 1981 Polizzello. Cronache di Archeologia 20: 104-147.
Palermo, D., D. Tanasi and E. Pappalardo 2009 Polizzello. Le origini del Santuario. In M. Congiu, C. Micchè and S. Modeo (eds.), EIS AKRA. Insediamenti di altura in Sicilia dalla Preistoria al III sec. a.C. Atti del V Convegno di Studi (Caltanissetta, 10–11 maggio 2008), 47-88. Palermo: Salvatore Sciascia Editore.
Panvini, R. (ed.). 2009 Sabucina, 50 anni di studi e ricerche archeologiche. Palermo: Regione Siciliana–Beni Culturali.
Pappalardo, E. 2009 Il settore centrale. In C. Guzzone, D. Palermo and R. Panvini (eds.), Polizzello. Scavi del 2004 nell’area del santuario arcaico dell’acropoli, 119-172. Palermo: Regione Siciliana.
Pauketat, T., L. Kelly, G. Fritz, N. Lopinot, S. Elias and E. Hargrave 2002 The residues of feasting and public ritual at early Cahokia. American Antiquity 67: 257-79. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2694566
Plunket, P. (ed.) 2002 Domestic Ritual in Ancient Mesoamerica. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles.
Renfrew, C. 1985 The Archaeology of Cult: The Sanctuary of Phylakopi. London: Thames and Hudson.
Renfrew, C. 1994 The archaeology of religion. In C. Renfrew and E. Zubrow (eds.), The Ancient Mind: Elements of Cognitive Archaeology, 47-54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scholliers, P. (ed.) 2001 Food, Drink And Identity: Cooking, Eating, and Drinking in Europe since the Middle Ages. Oxford: Berg.
Seremetakis, C. N. 1994 The Senses Still: Perception and Memory as Material Culture in Modernity. Chicago: the University of Chicago Press.
Simmel, G. 1994 [1910] The sociology of meal. Food and Foodways 5: 345-50.
Smith, M. 2006 The archaeology of food preference. American Anthropologist 108: 480-93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/aa.2006.108.3.480
Spatafora, F. 2003 Monte Maranfusa, un insediamento nella media Valle del Belice: l’abitato indigeno. Palermo: Regione Siciliana–Beni Culturali.
Spatafora, F. 2009 Culti e ceramiche greche nei santuari dei centri indigeni della Sicilia occidentale. In S. Fortunelli and C. Masseria (eds.), Ceramica attica da santuari della Grecia, della Ionia e dell’Italia, 739-54. Lavello: Ossana Edizioni
Spatafora, F. 2010 Per un’ “archeologia degli incontri”: Sicani e Elimi nella Sicilia greca. In H. Tréziny (ed.), Contacts et échanges technologiques entre Grecs et indigèns de la Catalogne à la Mar Noire, 25-40. Aix-en-Provence: Éditions Errance
Sutton, D. 2001 Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and Memory. New York: Berg.
Swenson, E. 2006 Competitive feasting, religious pluralism, and decentralized power in the Late Moche Period. In William H. Isbell and H. Silverman (eds.), Andean Archaeology III: North and South, 112-41. New York: Springer/Plenum Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/0-387-28940-2_6
Tanasi, D. 2005 Mycenean pottery imports and local imitations: Sicily vs. southern Italy. In R. Laffineur (ed.), EMPORIA: Aegeans in the Central and Eastern Mediterranean, Aegaeum 25: 561-69. Liège, Austin: Université de Liège, University of Texas at Austin.
Tanasi, D. 2009a L’acropoli di Polizzello tra le fine del X e gli inizi dell’VIII secolo a.C. In M. Congiu, C. Micchè and S. Modeo (eds.), EIS AKRA: Insediamenti di altura in Sicilia dalla Preistoria al III sec. a.C. Atti del V Convegno di Studi (Caltanissetta, 10–11 maggio 2008), 49-59. Palermo: Salvatore Sciascia Editore.
Tanasi, D. 2009b Il settore settentrionale dell’acropoli. In C. Guzzone, D. Palermo and R. Panvini (eds.), Polizzello: Scavi del 2004 nell’area del santuario arcaico dell’acropoli, 9-117. Palermo: Regione Siciliana– Beni Culturali.
Tanasi, D. 2012 La Montagna di Polizello alla fine dell’Età del Bronzo: il caso dell’Edificio Nord sull’acropoli. In Atti del Convegno ‘Dai Ciclopi agli Ecisti. Società e territorio nella Sicilia preistorica e protostorica’ (San Cipirello, 16–19 novembre 2006), 961-72. Firenze: Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria.
Thomas, N. 1991 Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture and Colonialism in the Pacific. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Tronchetti, C., and P. van Dommelen 2005 Entangled objects and hybrid practices: colonial contacts and elite connections at Monte Parma, Sardinia. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 18: 183-208. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/jmea.2005.18.2.183
Twiss, K. 2012 The archaeology of food and social diversity. Journal of Archaeological Research 20: 357-95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10814-012-9058-5
van Dommelen, P. 1998 On Colonial Grounds: A Comparative Study of Colonialism and Rural Settlement in 1st millennium B.C. West Central Sardinia. Archaeological Studies Leiden University 2. Leiden: Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University.
van Dommelen, P. 2006 Colonial matters: material culture and postcolonial theory in colonial situations. In C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Kuechler, M. Rowlands and P. Spyer (eds.), Handbook of Material Culture, 267-308. London: Sage.
van Dommelen, P., and M. Rowlands 2012 Material concerns and colonial encounters. In J. Maran and P.W. Stockhammer (eds.), Materiality and Social Practice: Transformative Capacities of Intercultural Encounters, 20-31. Oxford: Oxbow.
Vassallo, S. 1999 Colle Madore: un casi di ellenizzazione in terra sicana. Palermo: Regione siciliana–Beni Culturali.
Vassallo, S. 2002 Himera. La colonia greca e gli indigeni. In F. Spatafora and S. Vassallo (eds.), Sicani Elimi e Greci. Storie di contatti e terre di frontera, 36-43. Palermo: Regione Siciliana– Beni Culturali.
Weismantel, M. 1989 Food, Gender and Poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.