Feasting, Craft Specialization, and the Ritual Mode of Production in Small‐Scale Societies

TLDR

Economic intensification has been documented in diverse small-scale societies, yet prevailing theory emphasizes economic and political drivers while largely overlooking social action and ritual performance as motivations for change. This article argues that ceremonial feasting and the demand for socially valued goods—essential for ritual performance and social transactions—drive and sustain economic intensification in small-scale societies. By integrating ethnographic observations and archaeological records, the study demonstrates how feasting demands shape intensified food production and specialized craft production. Feasting food is sourced from intensified production rather than routine surplus, and the resulting large-scale demand for socially valued goods leads to specialization in extraordinary material culture that circulates through social obligation networks or sacred offerings. Keywords: craft specialization, exchange, feasting, ritual.

Abstract

Economic intensification has been documented in a diversity of small‐scale societies. The existing archaeological theory concerning such intensification has tended to privilege economic and political explanations and largely ignores social action and ritual performance as motivations for economic change. In this article, 1 use both ethnographic and archaeological data to argue that ceremonial feasting and the need for socially valued goods, which are critical for ritual performance and necessary for a variety of social transactions, create the demand that underwrites and sustains economic intensification in small‐scale societies. Food for large‐scale feasts is acquired through the intensification of food production and procurement targeted specifically for feasting, rather than from the surplus available from routine subsistence production. Large‐scale demands for socially valued goods tend to result in specialization on the production of "extraordinary" material culture, which is characterized by two modes of circulation, in networks of social obligations or as offerings in sacred locations. [Key words.craft specialization, exchange, feasting, ritual]