Aegean Feasting: A Minoan Perspective

Abstract

This survey of feasting in Bronze Age Crete reveals that feasts could be either exclusive elite celebrations or unrestricted occasions in which social identity rather than power was most important. In contrast, Mycenaean feasting on the Greek mainland seems to have arisen from elite customs aimed at exclusion. A comparison of the evidence for Late Minoan IIIC feasting at Phaistos and convivial practices on the mainland indicates new Mycenaean components to Cretan feasting, suggesting that the earlier pattern had shifted and that Cretan feasts had similarly become elite instruments of competition and negotiation for authority.