Feasting, Phoenician Trade and Dynamics of Social Change in Northeastern Iberia: Rituals of Commensality in the Early Iron Age Settlement of Sant Jaume (Alcanar, Catalonia)

Abstract

The archaeological study of feasting practices has proved to be one of the most fruitful lines of research in the social interpretation of the Mediterranean protohistoric record. The focus has been particularly effective for assessing the development of socio-political complexity and the evolution of socialization strategies that characterize many small-scale societies. In seeking to provide a similar assessment, this study analyses a set of ceramic tableware recovered from the early Iron Age site (seventh to sixth centuries BC) of Sant Jaume (Alcanar, Catalonia) and its associated domestic spaces and architectonic structures. Drawing on the postulates of commensality studies, we examine the functional and symbolic characteristics of these artefacts and the social practices linked to them.