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Hamilakis, Yannis. "Eating the dead: mortuary feasting and the politics of memory in the
Aegean bronze age societies", from Branigan, K. (1998) Cemetery and society in the
Aegean bronze age. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, pp.115-132.

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OF 220 BRA
8
Eating the Dead: Mortuary Feasting and the
Politics of Memory in the Aegean Bronze Age
Societies
Yannis Hamilakis
Introduction
What I am hoping to do in this paper is first,
to investigate the social meaning of food
and drink consumption in a mortuary con-
text and secondly, in the light of that mean-
ing to look at some of the Bronze Age
Aegean evidence and attempt to produce
some alternative stories on dying (or din-
ing?) in the Aegean during the Bronze Age. I
therefore hope to use the Aegean data more
as a case study within a more widely rele-
vant framework, rather than as the main
theme of the paper. In other words, my
rather optimistic venture could be also read
as an implicit statement on what I think we
should be doing with Aegean data.
I am not a specialist in mortuary archaeol-
ogy (if there is such a thing) and my excuse
for participating in this volume, together
with people who have spent many years
studying burial eVidence, in the hope that I
might have something to contribute, has to
do first, with the fact that recently, while
doing other research, I have re-discovered
how fascinating Aegean mortuary data are,
and secondly, with my long-term interest on
and engagement with the anthropology
and archaeology of food and drink con-
sumption. I therefore thought that it would
be potentially interesting to try and marry
the two.
Eating, Dying, and the Memory of the
Body
There is now a growing body of literature in
anthropology which shows that in peoples'
cosmologies and perceptions, eating and
dying, food and death are closely con-
nected, both homologically and antitheti-
cally. Humans are consumed by death,
vanish as does food and drink consumed in
a mortuary context. Eating and digestion,
therefore, is a metaphor for death (cf. Foster
1990; Parry 1985). Moreover, during food
consumption humans do not simply con-
sume food, they are at the same time con-
sumed, are incorporated within a
community: food acqUires an active role in
embodying humans within a social group
which is defined by commensality (Fischler
1988: 281). The homology, however, works
at another level, as well: as Foster put it with
reference to practices and stories in New
Ireland, 'being fed is logically eqUivalent to
being cannibalized' (1990: 439). Eating
incorporates an aggressive element and to
feed others and at the same time abstain
from eating, is to exercise control not only
over your body but also over the bodies of
others, since you reduce them to passive
consumers-consumables. The cultural logic
of eating, therefore, is close to the cultural
logic of death in many ways.
 116 Yannis Hamilakis
The two phenomena are also connected
as oppositions. Let me elaborate on this: it is
now commonplace in anthropology and
social theory that food and drink consump-
tion does not simply sustain life in the bio-
logical sense, it does not simply make
humans biologically. It also makes humans
sOcially (cf. from a rapidly growing litera-
tureAppadurai 1981; Falk 1994; Curtin and
Heldke 1992; Lupton 1996; Fischler 1988;
Caplan 1994; Sherratt 1995; Hamilakis
1995, in press). In contrast to the dominant
western perceptions which see humans as
bounded individual entities in opposition to
the world of material things which are con-
sumed by humans in an objectified manner,
it is now clear from many studies that in
many societies' cosmologies such a rigid
separation between humans and things (in
this case food) simply does not exist
(Appadurai 1986; Miller 1987, 1995a,
1995b). Humans as social entities make
themselves through the consumption of
food and drink. They construct themselves
as social persons through eating and drink-
ing. If, therefore, eating and drinking makes
humans biologically and SOcially, death
runs in the opposite direction, unmaking
humans as bodies and as social persons.
In addition to this homological and anti-
thetical connection, however, there is
another closely related link: in both cases
the locus of social action, the arena in
which humans are made and unmade is the
human body, or to put it in another more
. constructive way, the condition of human
embodiment. Parenthetically, let me just
note that it is only very recently that some
archaeological writings, following the resur-
rection of interest on the body in the social
sciences in general, have started exploring
the issue of embodiment. They attempt to
go beyond the Foucaultian notions of the
body as instrument and passive object of
suppressive power (e.g. Foucault 1979) and
to reify human agency and its embodied
properties (e.g. Meskell 1996; Yates 1993).
While the archaeology of embodiment is
still a project to be developed, it is becom-
ing more widely acknowledged that we
should try and comprehend humans in the
past as embodied social relationships, with
sensory and emotive properties (e.g. Tarlow
1997). In other words, to think in terms of
what can be called somatic modes of being
in and attending to the world (Seremetakis
1994; Falk 1994; Shilling 1993; Csordas
1990,1993).
Still, however, I cannot claim that I have
satisfactorily demonstrated the social role
and meaning of eating and drinking in a
mortuary context. That missing link is, I
think, provided by a rich body of ethnogra-
phy especially from Melanesia. I am talking
about the work of Munn (1986), Kuchler
(1987, 1988), and especially, Eves (1996)
and Battaglia (1990). It is well known that
mortuary ceremonies are one of the most
important institutions in Melanesian soci-
eties, and the above researchers have
shown that mortuary feasting has to do
with a process crucial in the constitution of
social life in these societies: the construc-
tion of memory and forgetting. It is now
more or less generally accepted that mem-
ory is a social rather than an individual pro-
cess and that all memory is collective
memory, is structured by group identities
(Halbwachs 1980; Fentress and Wickham
1992). Memory should not be treated as a
passive container of experience but as an
active process of recording, retaining,
restructuring, suppressing and erasing
(Connerton 1989; Fentress and Wickham
1992; Melion and Kuchler 1991). I must
also stress that I am mostly talking here
about incorporating mnemonic practices, as
defined by Connelton (1989), as opposed to
inscribing practices such as textual, icono-
graphic, artefactual, and monumental rep-

resentations. Incorporating mnemonic prac-
tices may include some inscribing practices
(such as the use of iconography or artefacts)
but they mainly involve performative cere-
monies which generate bodily sensory and
emotional experiences, resulting in habitual
memory being sedimented in the body.
Food and drink consumption is the classic
and most obvious case in point. Even if we
did not have the ethnography, we would
only need the much quoted passage from
Marcel Proust, where the madeleine cakes
were enough to evoke and awake the
senses and create sensory memory in a
synaesthetic manner, where one sense is
stored in another (Seremetakis 1994; Sutton
1997), leading to the recollection of the
pieces of a fragmented past:
And suddenly the memory came back to me.
The taste was that of the little piece of
madeleine cake which one Sunday morning
at Cambray ... when I had gone to her room to
say good morning to her, my aunt Leonie had
offered to me after dipping it in her lime-
flower tea. The sight of the petite madeleine
cake had not reminded me of this before I had
tasted it ... But when, out of a former past,
nothing any longer remains, after the death of
humans, the destruction of things, alone,
frailer but more alive, more immaterial, more
perSistent, more faithful, the smell and the
taste still remain for a long time, like souls, to
be recalled, to wait, to hope, on the ruin of
everything else, to carry without yielding, on
this almost impalpable droplet, the immense
edifice of memory (Proust 1987: 46 cited in
Caplan 1994, her translation).
If incorporated practices such as eating
and drinking have such a mnemonic power,
these same practices in a mortuary context,
where the emotions and sensory stimula-
tions generated by food are combined with
those generated by the embodied experi-
ence of death, a much more powerful
mnemonic device would be produced. But
the Melanesian data show that these cere-
Eating the Dead 11 7
monies are also about social forgetting,
about 'finishing' or 'killing' the memory,
where the social relationships with the
deceased are severed and new relationships
with the living are initiated. The dead are
finished as social persons since they cease
to participate in the networks of exchange,
sharing and commensality which define
and construct sociality. What is 'killed' is
not the memory of the person itself, but the
memory of the social person as player and
participant in the construction of social
experience. The 'killing' of memory leaves a
'positively valued negative space' (Battaglia
1990: 196) which can be filled with the new
social relationships. Mortuary feasting,
therefore, is a mode of generalised con-
sumption, where food, bodies, persons and
memories are consumed. In MelaneSia, this
involves in addition to the consumption of
food, the consumption of objects such as
axes, which like food, vanish in the commu-
nity; they are taken away by the partici-
pants without any obligation for reciprocity.
Together with food, they fonn a 'corpse'
which has been accumulated with the sole
aim to be consumed (Battaglia 1990). I
would also argue that the Widely recorded
practice of metaphorical or literal endocan-
nibalism, the eating of the dead body, either
part of the flesh, or the pounded bones, in
many cases has to do with the 'killing', the
erasing of memory. This is the reason given
by Amahuaca Indian in the Andes for the
practice for en do cannibalism (Dole 1962):
Amahuaca consume the pulverised bones
of the deceased and drink its ashes in 'an
attempt to banish the spirit ... to forget the
dead' (Dole 1962: 570; for similar meanings
attributed to metaphorical endocannibal-
ism see Young 1989: 197-98).
The processes of remembering and for-
getting in a m0l1uary context, however, do
not focus only on the dead. The ceremonies
and the rituals themselves become impor-
118 Yannis Hamilakis
tant additional parameters (Eves 1996). The
embodied practices of eating and drinking
will evoke to the participants memories of
other similar events and naturally, a process
of comparison will come into play. Through
the selective process of remembering and
forgetting, previous occasions of mortuary
feasting may be recalled, they will come
into play and threaten the current social
nexus or may be disregarded as inferior
(together with their agents) and be erased
from the social memory (see below).
It should not be forgotten that these
social practices create certain spatialities,
produce a specific type of space, a distinc-
tive heterotopia. Foucault (1986) has noted
that cemeteries are one of the most charac-
teristic such 'other places' which operate in
another temporality, the heterochrony of
death, which disrupts the experiental social
time of everyday life (1986: 26). This dis-
tinctive spatiality and temporality of the
experience contributes further to the inten-
Sity of the sense of bodily memory.
Memory and forgetting, however, is a
field of contestation, a discourse of power.
The fabrication of memory and forgetting
constitute a distinctive 'political economy',
a process with important social implica-
tions. Le Goff has noted (with reference to
historical societies but it is equally applica-
ble to prehistoric ones) that,
collective memory has been an important
issue in the struggle of power among social
forces. To make themselves the master of
memory and forgetfulness is one of the
great preoccupations of the classes, groups
and individuals who have dominated and
continue to dominate historical societies
(1992: 54).
As Connerton has observed (1989), bod-
ily mnemonic practices, unlike discurSive,
inscribing practices are more difficult to
question, they carry emotive subordinating
and subversive powers which can be
utilised in the poetics and politics of social
contestation. Mortuary ceremonies due to
their emotive force, have the ability to bring
together people from different social groups
who do not usually interact in other social
contexts or may even have been opponents
(cf. Parkin 1972: 77): such interaction
would have been problematic in the space
of everyday life but in the heterotopic space
of death it becomes possible, although it
may be subject to certain rites of passage
(see below). Nachman (1978) prOVides a
good example here in the context of the
analysis of mortuary feasting among the
Nissan in Melanesia. He argues that mortu-
ary feasting (and other embodied practices
performed in the mortuary context such as
dancing and speech making) expresses and
incorporates what he calls 'moral aggres-
sion' , sy.mbolic violence which remains
impliCit, being at the same time extremely
effective since the subordinating power of
the embodied experiences of death, diges-
tion and bodily expression, prevent people
from questioning motives and challenging
intentions (1978: 767-75). As Foster has
observed, the lOgiC of mortuary feasting
'constructs food giving not as reCiprocal
nurturing but rather as unilateral force-
feeding' (1990: 444). Social actors may
allow themselves to be victimised in this
case, but they are in full knowledge that
challenge and response will follow using
the same media, embodied practices.
Moreover, the heterotopia of the ceme-
tery or the tomb is a controlled space, a
source of social power with restricted
accesses.
Heterotopias always presuppose a system
of opening and closing that both isolates
them and makes them penetrable. In gen-
eral, the heterotopic site is not freely acces-
sible like a public place. Either the entry is
compulsory, as in the case of entering a
barracks or a prison, or else the individual

has to submit to rites and purifications. To
get it one must have a certain permission
and make certain gestures. (Foucault 1986:
26).
It follows, therefore, that control over the
ritual entering into the mnemoscapes and
heterotopias of death constitute a power
mechanism. Moreover, parameters such as
the quantity and elaboration of food and
drink consumed, the processes of competi-
tive consumption, the intensity of the other
bodily practices carried out in the mortuary
context and the number of participants, are
some of the cards played in this game of
remembering and forgetting (cf. Kirsch
1973, among many others).
Mortuary Feasting, Remembering and
Forgetting in the Bronze Age Aegean
Let me now tum to the Aegean data: I
would like to attempt and offer some very
brief answers to three interconnected ques-
tions: (1) What is the evidence for mortuary
feasting in the Aegean during the Bronze
Age? (2) Does the Aegean evidence fit with
the ideas discussed above on the meaning
of mortuary feasting? (3) Can we recon-
struct at least some aspects of the political
economy of mortuary feasting in the Bronze
Age Aegean? It must be stressed that I have
not done an exhaustive research of the
extremely rich Aegean mortuary database; I
have surveyed part of this vast literature
and I have chosen some examples which I
believe illustrate my points, and, hopefully,
will demonstrate the need for further analy-
sis and empirical research in the light of the
present theoretical framework.
Starting with the first question, even a
cursory survey of the evidence WOllld
reveal that mortuary feasting was indeed
practised in the Aegean Bronze Age,
although its intensity, character and scale of
participation seem to have varied spatially
Eating the Dead 119
as well as chronologically. There is matelial
evidence of food remains in many cases,
although this is the most problematic cate-
gory of material due to preservational and
recovery obstacles. Animal remains could
have been easily mixed with human skele-
tal remains, and systematic recovery of
plant remains requires specific field tech-
niques, rarely practised, especially in the
excavation of mortuary contexts. In addi-
tion, the remains may have been destroyed
or swept away during the regular "clean-
ings" of the tombs, of which more below.
Nevertheless there are many cases where
animal remains have been noticed. Here are
some examples.
From Crete, at Lebena, Alexiou (1960:
226) found teeth and bones of large and
small animals, and similar finds from other
Early Minoan tholos tombs at Ag. Triadha,
Krasi and Archanes have been reported
(Branigan 1993: 77; Marinatos 1929: 124).
There are also many cases from later tombs
of all kind (e.g. the MM I tomb 19 from the
Fourni cemetery at Archanes - Maggidis
1995; also this volume). From the main-
land, it is well known that animal remains
were recorded in shaft graves, in
Mycenaean tholos tombs, and very often in
chamber tombs. From Lerna some remains
of plants (cereals and pulses) have been
found (Blackburn 1970). From Mycenae,
animal remains have been found in ten
cases in the Shaft Graves (Voutsaki 1993),
and in several chamber tombs (e.g. in tombs
IS, 24, 78, 79, 81 and 100, bones of
sheep/goat, cow and pig have been
recorded, some of them burnt - Xenaki-
Sakellariou 1985). In Perati many tombs
contained animal bones (the excavator
identified sheep/goat and birds among oth-
ers), many of them burnt (e.g. Iakovidis
1969: 279, 280, 283, 276, 160, 169, 287).
From the LH III tholoi at Myrsinochori and
Voidokoilia near Pylos, bones of young
120 Yannis Hamilakis
sheep/goats and cow have been reported
(Marinatos 1957). From the tholos tomb
and the chamber tomb 2 at Dendra, many
animal bones (sheep/goat and cow), some
of them burnt, have been reported (Persson
1931: 29, 80). From the Mycenaean cham-
ber tomb at Galatas, Northeast Pelopon-
nese, I analysed bones of sheep/goat, hare,
roe deer and birds, which indicate mortuary
feasting (Hamilakis 1996a). Finally, Tsountas
has noted remains 'of a funeral banquet' in
front of the entrance of the tholos tomb at
Menidi (cited in Kontorli-Papadopoulou
1995: 119).
More illuminating evidence is offered,
however, by the pottery and other vessels
and implements associated with food and
drink consumption. For example, it is well
known that the commonest pottery shape
from the Mesara tholos tomb is the conical
cup, and most of the other shapes (such as
jugs, plates and bowls) indicate food and
drink consumption, as has been noted by
Branigan (1993) and Walberg (1987: 60 and
passim), among others. Broken kylikes and
other drinking shapes are one of the com-
monest remains in Mycenaean burials, both
in the mainland and in Crete. For example,
at the Mycenaean settlement at Prosymna,
from the 1068 pots recorded by the excava-
tor, drinking vessels such as kylikes and
goblets form the largest group (ca 400),
with the group of pouring vessels such as
jugs and mugs coming second (ca 245). The
rest of the assemblage consist of jars,
amphoras, stirrup-jars, 'feeding bottles' and
alabastra (Blegen 1937: 259).
Finally, the existence of many outer
chambers, paved areas, platforms, 'altars',
and delimited spaces with enclosure walls
outside tombs (in many cases with finds of
drinking and eating vessels, cf. Branigan
1991: 187), indicate ritual ceremonies most
likely to involve eating and drinking, as
well as other forms of embodied practices
such as dancing, as Branigan has suggested
(1991: 187; 1993). Examples here include
the outer chambers at the Early Minoan
tombs of Ag. Triadha A, Apesokari B, Lebena
Y2 and Ag. Kyriaki, all filled with masses of
conical cups (Branigan 1993: 77-78); paved
areas (which seem to be a Widespread fea-
ture in Minoan, especially EM, tombs d.
Soles 1992: 223-24) outside tholos tomb E
at Koumasa (Xanthoudides 1924: 6; Brani-
gan 1993: 138; Figure 8.1) and Platanos B
(Xanthoudides 1924: 90; Branigan 1993:
94), at the area in front of the chamber
tombs N-V-VI at Mochlos (Seager 1912: 40;
Soles 1992: 56-57), at Apesokari (Davaras
1966: 441) and Archanes (burial building
6), where animal bones and many cups
were also found (Sakellarakis 1975: 172-
74); the 'altars' at Apesokari (Branigan
1993: 62), Kamilari A (Branigan 1993: 128),
tomb 19 at Phourni (Maggidis 1995: 573);
and the platform and the peribolos wall at
Ag. Kyriaki (Blackman and Branigan 1982:
45) and Kamilari (Branigan 1993: 128).
Similar platforms have been reported from
early Cycladic cemeteries (Doumas 1987).
And I would also mention the Archanes
neopalatial building 4 in the Fourni ceme-
tery, with its wine press and the masses of
conical cups (Sakellarakis and Sakellarakis
1991: 86-88). It seems, therefore, that there
is plenty of evidence for mortuary feasting,
although it seems that drinking was a more
commonly practised activity and involved
more participants than eating.
One possible objection and a method-
ological difficulty with regard to the above
evidence concerns the idea that at least
some of the remains of eating and drinking
may represent libations and offerings to the
dead, an explanation very commonly found
in the narratives of Aegean Bronze Age mor-
tuary archaeology. It is quite likely that
some of those practices were indeed taking
place, but that still does not invalidate my

r.
Figure 8.1 Plan of the prepalatial cemetery at Koumasa, showing the paved areas (after Xanthoudides 1924).
argument. First, the idea that most evidence
for feasting and drinking represents liba-
tions and offerings to the dead is very com-
monly founded on the extrapolation of later
perceptions about death and the Under-
world (Homeric epic, Classical era) to the
Bronze Age. So for some authors, food offer-
ings are to accompany the dead in her/his
journey to the 'Underworld'. This idea,
therefore, makes assumptions about Bronze
Age attitudes towards death, which are not
at all justified and empirically supported.
Secondly, the nature of the evidence in
most cases argues against them being
exclusively or mostly for libations and
offerings to the dead: for example, animal
bones seem to be the remnants of meals
Eating the Dead 121
---13
t
MTS,
(hence their disarticulated form and the
presence of cut marks) and pottery and
other vessels seem to have been used. More
importantly, in many cases the masses of
food and drink serving vessels testify to the
participation of a large number of people, as
does the provision and the organisation of
space in and around the tombs. This evi-
dence does not exclude, of-course, the pos-
sibility of libations but that would have
been only part of a series of ceremonies and
rituals involving embodied practices with
the living participants.
The second question (does the Aegean
evidence fit with the ideas on mortuary
feasting explored in the first part of this
paper?) requires more discussion, but I
122 Yannis Hamilakis
would like to suggest that there is plenty of
evidence which indicates that the fabri-
cation of remembering and forgetting
through bodily mnemonic devices involv-
ing feasting and other bodily practices, was
one of the main features of Aegean Bronze
Age mortuary ceremonies. The main ele-
ments known from ethnographic accounts
are all there: eating and drinking; dancing,
and I would suggest other bodily sensory
experiences such as consumption of nar-
cotics, as indicated by the many finds of the
so-called incense burners; (for some Cretan
post-palatial examples see Evans 1905); and
many different practices which could be
taken as an attempt to erase memory, to fin-
ish and kill the dead as social persons. One
such practice· is that of 'secondary burial'
(e.g. Cavanagh 1978) which in fact amounts
to the removal of bodies from their original
burial and their accumulation into anony-
mous piles. The practice, which is described
sometimes as 'clearance', was widely used
in Early Minoan tholos tombs where the
piles of disarticulated skeletons were
removed from the tomb proper and were
deposited to the adjoining rooms (Branigan
1987: 47). The same social logic may explain
some practices in collective burials, such as
the coveting of the accumulated skeletons
with a cmst of limestone or a layer of soil, a
slab or a layer of small stones: examples
here include tomb E at Koumasa (Branigan
1987: 47), the tomb A at Vravron-Lapoutsi
(Kontorli-Papadopoulou 1987: 155), and
tombs at Perati where the burials were form-
ing layers covered by soil (Iakovidis 1969:
76).
I would suggest that in the same interpre-
tative framework we could include phe-
nomena such as the intentional destmction
of pottery (mainly drinking vessels), as well
as the destmction, the 'killing' (or the sacri-
fice?) of other objects such as bronze ves-
sels, figurines and weapons, a practice
Widely recorded (cf. Grinsell 1961, 1973;
Fossey 1985, for some examples). Inten-
tionally broken kylikes have been repeat-
edly reported from LBA tombs at Armeni in
Crete, where they were found in the dromos
associated with cooking ware, and in a
small paved area linked to the dromos
(French 1990: 77), and from many Mycena-
ean tombs in the mainland (Astrom 1987:
215; Kontorli-Papadopoulou 1995: 118). At
Prosymna, Blegen reports broken kylikes or
cups at every dromos and he envisages a
ceremony where the survivors used to
'drink a toast in farewell to the dead, or to
pour a libation, and then to shatter the gob-
let against the door of the tomb' (Blegen
1937: 238). According to Voutsaki broken
kylikes were found in 67 out of 232 cham-
ber tombs (Voutsaki 1993: 86). Incidentally,
it is tempting to suggest that the occurrence
of broken kylikes in the dromos may repre-
sent a rite of passage before entering to the
ritually controlled heterotopic space of
death.
Examples of other artefacts include the
stone figurines from the EBA tombs at Ag.
Kosmas and Amorgos (Astrom 1987: 215);
the cmshed bronze bowls from Mycenaean
chamber tomb 7 (Persson 1942: 35-36),
and the bronze hydria and cauldrons from
tomb 2 at Dendra ( Persson 1931: 98); the
bent swords and daggers from tombs such
as the tholos at Nichoria (Wilkie 1987:
132), the Mycenaean tombs at Ialysos
(Rhodes), Pylos, Miletos (Astrom 1987:
215), Myrsinochori, Kakovatos, Peristeria,
Eglianos: Vagenas (Korres 1984: 96), and
the Early Minoan HI cemetery at Ag.
Photia, Crete (Davaras n.d: pI. 10; Figure
8.2). The deposition of artefacts with the
dead is in itself a form of 'killing', of death,
of termination of the social life of the spe-
cific object (Chapman 1994: 52; cf.
Kopytoff 1986), but the destruction of the
object adds a more dramatic element to the

Figure 8.2 The bent bronze dagger (top) from the EM cemetery at Ag. Photia, Sitia (Davaras n .d. pI. 10; per-
mission requested).
ritual, a more powerful performative
embodying experience.
In the same social lOgic we should also
include the tantalizing hints for endocanni-
balism, the consumption of dead bodies: I
refer here to finds such as : the chopped and
deliberately broken bones from Ag. KyTiaki
(Blackman and Branigan 1982 : 53; Branigan
1987: 49), where in a sample of less than a
hundred bones with the largest being 6 cm
in length, the majority of them appear to
have been deliberately broken, and five
were clearly chopped or cut at both ends;
the small fragments of bones found in close
association with conical cups from the same
site (Blackman and Branigan 1982: 8, 25;
Branigan 1987: 49); the quem stone with
the remains of pounded bones in the saddle
from Kaminospelio (Blackman and
Branigan 1973: 202-206; Branigan 1987:
50); the similar frods of saddle querns from
Eating the Dead 123
Mochlos and Lema (tomb 220 - Blackburn
1970); the small cooking pot from Vorou
with the skeletal remains (including the
jaw) of a child in it (Branigan 1987: 48), and
finally the plentiful remains of burnt bones.
In attempting to answer the third ques-
tion (can we reconstruct some aspects of
the political economy of mortuary feasting
in the Bronze Age Aegean?), I will briefly
discuss a couple of examples. As I said ear-
lier, it seems that the intensity, scale and
most probably the social meaning of bod-
ily mnemonic devices involving feasting,
seems to have varied chronologically and
spatially. In the case of Ag. Kyriaki, for
example, we witness a significant increase
in the proportion of cups in relation to
other vessels, in the later and shorter
phase of its use (EMIII-MMI). This propor-
tion doubles from 39 .7% in the earlier
phase (EMI-II) to 79 .2% in the later (EMIII-
124 Yannis Hamilakis

Table 1. Ag. Kyriaki. Quantitative expression of pottery shapes and individual pots per functional category. In the
category 'other' the following shapes are included: lids, pithoi, lamakes, cooking pots, double base and crucible
(based on Blackman and Branigan 1982). NB. The totals refer to the overall number of shapes and pots used in this
analysis and in this table are the sum of the 'food and drink/liquid serving vessels' and' other' vessels (Hamilakis
1995).

AG.KYRlAKI

Functional categories Number of shapes Number of pots %(*)

Food and drink/liquid serving vessels 49 1834 93.7

Pouring Vessels 21 483 24.7
Drinking vessels 15 1058 54.1
Othff 6 123 6.3

TOTAL 55 1957 100

* Percentage out of the total number of pots (1957).

MMI) (Tables 1,2; Figure 8.3). A chi-square Table 2. Ag. Kyriaki. Quantitative expression of the
test showed that this difference is highly main vessel forms in raw counts and percentages.
Based on Blackman and Branigan 1982, table 4.
significant statistically (Table 3). This pat- Percentages calculated out of the total number of pots
tern may indicate participation of a larger for each chronological phase. Pedestal bowls and large
number of people in the ceremonies. This bowls in Blackman and Branigan's table are included
in the 'bowls' category here. The category 'other'
could have been connected to the intensi- includes lids, a double vase, a crucible (EM I - II),
fication of competition among the elites, a pithoi, larnakes and cooking pots (EM III - MM I)
process which will lead to the establish- (Hamilakis 1995).
ment of palatial authorities. The presence AG.KYRIAKI
of larnakes and pithoi fragments at that
period, which according to Branigan Shape category EM 1- II EMill-MMI
denotes the emergence of the individual
Cups 494 (39.7 %) 564 (79.2 %)
above the communal level (in contrast to Jugs 325 (26.1 %) 47 (6.6 %)
the previous communal and undifferenti- Bowls 234 (18.8 %) 51 (7.2 %)
ated burial practice - Branigan 1993) may Jars 105 (8.4 %) 14 (2.0 %)
Spherical pyxides 32 (2.6 %)
have been related to the change in the Other 55 (4.4 %) 36 (5.0 %)
drinking pattern. Even in that second
phase, however, the number of partici- TOTAL 1245 712
pants must have remained small, given the
time span of the use of the tomb. The
assemblage is more likely to represent
Table 3. Ag. Kyriaki. Chi-Square test for the difference
repeated drinking ceremonies involving a in the relation between the quantity of cups and all
relatively small number of people, a other vessels in phases EM I-II and EM III-MM 1. Data
hypothesis further supported by the low from Table 2. Chi-Square value: 285.071; p:s; 0.001
ratio of pouring to drinking vessels. The (Hamilakis 1995).
use of a large number of shapes for drink- Shape categories EMI-II EMill-MMI
ing (most of them with features such as
handles, elaborated bases, rims, and gener- Cups 494 (39.7 %) 564 (79.2 %)
All other vessels 751 (60.3 %) 148(20.8 %)
ally elaborated bodies) and many of them

80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
1 2
Figure 8.3 Ag. Kyriaki: percentages of pottery shape categories in EMI-II (1) and EMIII-MMI (2) (Hamilakis
1995; data from Blackman and Branigan 1982).
with painted decoration, indicates a low
degree of standardisation of form and a rel-
atively large amount of energy devoted to
their production. By contrast, in the
neopalatial, high status chamber tomb at
Poros (Table 4; Muhly 1992), the drinking
vessels indicate mortuary feasting with a
large number of participants: the vast
majority of vessels found at the tomb
come in drinking shapes, and although the
period of use is much shorter, probably
only a couple of centuries (Muhly 1992:
105), the relative proportion of the drink
serving vessels is higher. Also, drinking
shapes were much more standardised, the
vast majority of drinking cups were plain
undecorated (Hamilakis 1995: 262), and
their manufacture reveals signs of mass
production, a more general tendency for
Eating the Dead 125
•
II
Cups
Jugs
1m Bowls
m Jars
0 Spher. pyxides
• Other
Phases
the period as a whole (Hamilakis 1995). Of
course some serving vessels - the ones
with elaborate shapes - tended to be
painted, were decorated with a vast variety
of elements and generally received a great
amount of investment in time, skill, labour
and material. As I have suggested else-
where, these developments reflect the
political tensions in neopalatial societies
with severe competition among the differ-
ent factions - the vertically divided social
groups with a diverse make-up including
elites and their followers but with a com-
mon allegiance (Hamilakis 1995, 1996b;
for discussion on social competition in
mortuary expressions cf. Cannon 1989; on
factional competition cf. Brumfiel 1989).
The pottery data from Poros testify to the
participation of a large number of people
126 Yannis Hamilakis

Table 4. Poros, Heraklion. Quantitative expression of pots in general and of painted pots in particular per func-
tional category. Data from Muhly 1992. The category 'other' includes: pithos, tripod cooking pot, burners, stirrup
jar, amphora, amphiconic small amphora, alabastron and flask (Hamilakis 1995).

POROS

Functional Number of Number of Number of

category shapes pots % (*) painted pots % (")

Food and drink/

liquid serving vessels 13 221 94.8 80 36.2
Pouring vessels 5 34 14.6 21 61.8
Drinking vessels 7 185 79.3 57 30.8
Other 8 12 5.2 8 66. 7

TOTAL 21 233 100 88 37.8

NB. The totals refer to the overall number of shapes and pots used in this analysis and in this table are the sum of
the 'food and drink/liquid serving vessels' and 'other' vessels.
* Percentage of pots out of the total number of pots used in this analysis (233).
** Percentage of painted pots for each functional category.

in the drinking mortuary ceremony and at
the same time indicate that status distinc-
tions were maintained and signified by the
presence of a few highly decorated vessels,
in addition to the vast majority of plain
undecorated ones. I could go on referring
to other examples such as the evidence for
a restrictive character of feasting in some
Cretan post-palatial burial contexts (in a
period marked by centralisation of power
- cf. Bennet 1990 - which may imply
decrease in the intensity of factional com-
petition), where the masses of simple
drinking cups of the neopalatial period
have been replaced with drinking sets of
elaborate vessels (e.g. tombs at Zafer
Papoura and Milatos - Evans 1905; Figure
8.4, 8.5), but I think that the discussed
examples suffice to illustrate the point:
that individuals and social groups with
conflicting interests and claims and aspira-
tions to power, were aware of the powerful
effect of habitual memories sedimented in
the body: the bodily memory of a big
funerary feast would have persisted
together with the generosity of the host,
when many other things and persons
would have vanished. Bodily mnemonic
devices such as feasting and drinking cere-
monies seemed to have played a key role
in the negotiations of power among the
competing elites and their factions, before
and after the development of palatial insti-
tutions. Alcohol consumption must have
contributed to the intense emotional
experience of the participants in the
mortuary feast. Power was contested over
and through bodies, bodily senses and
emotions.
Conclusions
It is well known that it is extremely diffi-
cult to express with discursive practices,
experiences which are not meant to be rep-
resented with words, but to be felt, sensed,
incorporated, embodied. I have no illu-
sions and I am fully aware of the fact that
in this article I have reduced the multiplic-
ity, fluidity and complexity of emotional
bodily experiences of food, digestion and
death into a dry, homogenised, inscribing
edifice. My only hope is that this text does
more justice to such rich and complex
 Eating the Dead 127

C l~t cut in Ftoo...

"W"it"- d.eca.ved. Bones
( 'tS .....' d.~et'-)

R~mo.;ns.'
of
Tvo,.'!!
Casket

a. TYll'ocl +teQrt~
ot
Pra5oter W' it fL
C~a'rcoa.e aGave

Figure 8.4 Plan of the post-palatial chamber Tomb of the Tripod Hearth', showing
among other features, the single set of elaborate bronze serving vessels
and artefacts possibly used for incense burning (after Evans 1905).

phenomena than some previous stories in
the archaeological literature. I hope to have
shown that the fabrication of remembering
and forgetting and the political economy of
bodily memories, offer a more interesting
way of thinking and writing about some
mortuary practices, including mortuary
feasting, than many of the conventional
stories revolving around anachronistic
concepts. I am not suggesting that other
parameters do not come into play in this
phenomenon, but I have chosen to focus
on a crucial and fundamental one, which is
very rarely acknowledged in the archaeo-
logical discourses.
This discussion should be situated
within an epistemic framework which
breaks away from the conventional archae-
ological treatment of food consumption,
material world and the human body. I have
tried to theorize food consumption as an
active, multifaceted social phenomenon
which is implicated in the construction of
social persons and evokes senses, emotions
128 Yannis Hamilakis
Figure 8.5 Drawing showing the group of bronze vessels and the tripod hearth in the south-west comer of
the interior of the post-palatial 'Tomb of the Tripod Hearth' (after Evans 1905).
and feelings. As such, it is intimately linked
with the condition of human embodiment
in all its aspects and forms, including that
of death. Moreover, I have tried to show
that food, being one of the most powerful
embodied mnemonic devices, can play a
key role in the production of remembering
and forgetting associated with the pro-
cesses of death. Finally, I have suggested
that the mnemoscapes of death offer a
unique arena for the re-enactment of the
contestations of power. Gastropolitics and
the politiCS of memory are played out in
the arena of the human body and in a het-
erotopiC (and heterochronic) space, the
access to which is subject to ritual control
but which also permits and invites interac-
tions which are impossible in other spaces.
The Bronze Age Aegean offers plenty of
evidence for mortuary feasting and mainly
drinking ceremonies, in the form of animal
and plant remains, food and drink serving
vessels, and sUitably arranged delimited
spaces around the tombs. Food and drink
consumption seemed to have been only
one of a whole range of devices aimed to
generate remembering and forgetting.
Others included dancing, consumption of
psychoactive substances, and the 'killing' of
memory with practices such as the 'sacri-
fice' of pottery, weapons and other objects,
the removal and the deposition of the disar-
ticulated body into anonymous piles, and
possibly the consumption of parts of the
dead body. This picture which has been
painted here with a fairly coarse brush, can
 Eating the Dead 129

start revealing details of the dynamics of A.strom, P.

power and their diachronic fluctuations, 1987 Intentional destruction of grave goods. In
once we start paying closer attention to the Laffineur 1987: 213-17.
active role of mortuary feasting and drink- Battaglia, D.
ing and the material culture associated with 1990 On the Bones of the Serpent: Person, Mem01Y
and Mortality in Sabarl Island Society.
it. By way of example, I have suggested here
(Chicago and London).
that embodied memory was one of the
Bem1et,].
resources used by the elites and their fac-
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lishment of palatial institutions, when of LM IBII Crete. AJA 94(2): 193-211.
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extremely fluid political landscape with 1970 Middle Helladic Graves and Burial Customs
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tion of bodily memories was an essential Argolid. phD Dissertation, University of
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Blackman, D. and K. Branigan
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