The Power of Feasts

Brian Hayden is Professor Emeritus in the Archaeology Department at Simon Fraser University. His research focuses on the behaviors, societies, economics, rituals, and political organizations of past people and, specifically, the dynamics of feasting from an ethnoarchaeological perspective. He has worked with traditional people in Australia, the Maya Highlands, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Polynesia, and British Columbia in order to learn about traditional technologies and how they are linked to the other aspects of cultures. He is the author of numerous articles and books including Archaeology: the Science of Once and Future Things; The Pithouses of Keatley Creek; Shamans, Sorcerers, and Saints: The Prehistory of Religion; Feasts (with Michael Dietler); Paleolithic Reflections; and Lithic Studies among the Highland Maya.

'Hayden touches on a huge variety of themes of the broadest interest and importance, from domestication to state formation, and religion to prostitution (the latter two sometimes simultaneously) … His book pulls together decades of personal research integrated into an overarching and compelling account of nothing less than feasting as human history.' Robert Witcher, Antiquity

• 1. Before the feast: overview of the importance of feasting; 2. Food sharing and the primate foundations of feasting behavior Suzanne Villeneuve; 3. Simple hunter/gatherers; 4. Transegalitarian hunter/gatherers; 5. Domesticating plants and animals for feasts; 6. The horticultural explosion; 7. Chiefs up the ante; 8. The first states; 9. Feasting in industrial societies.