Guess Who's Coming to Dinner: Feasting Rituals in the Prehistoric Societies of Europe and the Near East

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner examines how specific types of food were prepared and eaten during feasting rituals in prehistoric Europe and the Near East. Such rituals allowed people to build and maintain their power and prestige and to maintain or contest the status quo. At the same time, they also contributed to the inner cohesion and sense of community of a group. When eating and drinking together, people share thoughts and beliefs and perceive the world and human relationships in a certain way. The twelve contributions to this book reflect the main theoretical and methodological issues related to the study of food and feasting in prehistoric Europe and the Near East.
The book is introduced by Ferrán Adrià, considered to be the world's greatest chef. Famed for his "molecular gastronomy", he invented the technique of reducing foods to their essence and then changing how they are presented, for example in the form of foam. In 2010,he was named Best Chef of the Decade by the prestigious Restaurant magazine.

Table of Contents

Prologue (Ferran Adrià)
1. Appetite Comes With Eating: An Overview of the Social Meaning of Ritual Food and Drink Consumption (Gonzalo Aranda Jiménez, Sandra Montón Subías, Margarita Sánchez Romero and Eva Alarcón García)
2. Commensality Rituals: Feeding Identities in Prehistory (Margarita Sánchez Romero)
3. Feasting and Social Dynamics in the Epipaleolithic of the Fertile Crescent: An Interpretive Exercise (Brian Hayden)
4. Evolving Human/Animal Interactions in the Near Eastern Neolithic: Feasting as a Case Study Nigel Goring-Morris and Anna Belfer-Cohen)
5. Feeding Stonehenge: Feasting in Late Neolithic Britain (Mike Parker Pearson, Joshua Pollard, Colin Richards, Julian Thomas, Kate Welham, Umberto Albarella, Ben Chan, Peter Marshall and Sarah Viner)
6. Political Cuisine: Rituals of Commensality in the Neolithic and Bronze Age Aegean (Paul Halstead and Valasia Isaakidou)
7. Drinking and Eating Together: the Social and Symbolic Context of commensality Rituals in the Bell Beakers of the Interior of Iberia (2500–2000 cal BC) (Rafael Garrido-Pena, Manuel A. Rojo-Guerra, Iñigo García-Martínez de Lagrán and Cristina Tejedor-Rodríguez)
8. Feasting Death: Funerary Rituals in the Bronze Age Societies of South-eastern Iberia (Gonzalo Aranda Jiménez and Sandra Montón Subias)
9. Feasting Metals and the Ideology of Power in the Late Bronze Age of Atlantic Iberia (Xosé-Lois Armada)
10. Representing Communities in Heterogeneous Worlds: Staple Foods and Ritual Practices in the Phoenician Diaspora (Ana Delgado and Meritxell Ferrer)
11. Consumption Relations within the Domestic Unit in the Northern Iberian Context (Ramon Buxó and Jordi Principal)
12. The Archaeological Identification of Feasts and Banquets: Theoretical Notes and the Case of Mas Castellar Lluís Garcia and Enriqueta Pons)

Gonzalo Aranda Jiménez is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology at the University of Granada, Spain.



Margarita Sánchez Romero is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology at the University of Granada, Spain.