- [I] #xref [[religious rituals that make practical sense]] - [n] [[social impacts of early cattle domestication in ancient Russia]] - [n] [[feast culture may be responsible for agriculture]] - [b] Very few people in England ate large amounts of meat before the Vikings settled, and there is no evidence that elites ate more meat than other people, [a major new bioarchaeological study suggests](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220421094123.htm). Its sister study also argues that peasants occasionally hosted lavish meat feasts for their rulers. The findings overturn major assumptions about early medieval English history. - [b] [The goose is an inconvenient bird – too big for one, but too small for two](https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2008.00530.x) ([[rossnerGooseInconvenientBird2009.pdf]]) - ["] The more exotic a food is, the better it is perceived. - ["] To show off in society by demonstrating that one can afford huge meals has traditions long back in history. For the Romans, extremely rare foods, such as stewed peacock tongue or the wombs of sows that have just given birth to piglets, were described as the utmost luxury. The more exotic, the better. - ["] When Westphalian peace was celebrated in 1648 following the end of the 30-year war, 120 courses were served to the participants in the peace congress dinner. Elegance and creativity in the appearance of each dish was probably more important than how the food actually tasted, because most of this food was never consumed by the guests for whom it was primarily intended. Instead, the dishes were taken out the backdoor of the kitchen and served to the poor. - [I] reminds me of the water-seller from Dune when Paul and Jessica first arrive. - [b] [The Dahomean Feast: Royal Women, Private Politics, and Culinary Practices in Atlantic West Africa](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10437-014-9156-5) ([[monroeDahomeanFeastRoyal2014.pdf]]) - ["] Feasting is a central component of elite power strategies in complex societies worldwide. In the precolonial Kingdom of Dahomey, located in the Republic of Bénin, public feasts were a critical component of royal strategies to attract and bind political subjects over the course of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, a period of dramatic political transformation on the Bight of Benin. - ["] In this paper, faunal and ceramic evidence from two excavated contexts is marshaled to distinguish the archaeological signatures of feasting in Dahomey, highlighting the importance of private feasts in attempts to build political influence in the domestic zones of Dahomean royal palaces. In particular, this analysis foregrounds how royal women jockeyed for power and influence during a period of political uncertainty.