Mycenaean feasting on Tsoungiza at Ancient Nemea

Hesperia, Spring, 2004 by Mary K. Dabney, Paul Halstead, Patrick Thomas

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a ceremonial feasting deposit from Late Helladic IIIA2 Tsoungiza. The dominance of head and foot bones from at least six cattle suggests on-site butchery, with the possibility that the meat was distributed for consumption elsewhere. The pottery fulfills most of the criteria proposed here for recognizing feasting activities in ceramic assemblages. A ceramic female figure, similar to those from sanctuaries at Phylakopi and Mycenae, ties the feasting to religious rituals. It is suggested that regional feasts contributed to maintaining political and economic alliances within the area around Mycenae.

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Ancient Nemea is located in the northeast Peloponnese at the head of the Nemea Valley, outside the Argolid but within two hours walking distance of Mycenae. (1) Excavation of the Bronze Age settlement on the hill of Tsoungiza at Ancient Nemea took place from 1984 to 1986 as part of the Nemea Valley Archaeological Project (NVAP). One of the project goals is to study how the settlement was incorporated into larger social systems during different periods of occupation. After a period of abandonment in the Middle Bronze Age, the site was occupied continuously from the late Middle Helladic (MH) through the Late Helladic (LH) period. The number of structures found in the excavated area of the settlement increased from six during the Early Mycenaean (late MH through LH II) era to 10 in the Late Mycenaean (LH III) era (Fig. 1). Evidence from NVAP's surface survey and from excavations conducted by the University of California at Berkeley in deep trenches underneath the Classical Sanctuary of Zeus in the river valley below Tsoungiza suggests an even greater increase in Late Mycenaean settlement size. (2) Large refuse dumps of Late Mycenaean remains were found throughout the excavated area. One early LH IIIB1 refuse dump contained an estimated 1,400-2,100 vessels representing nearly the full range of ceramic vessel forms known at Mycenae. (3)

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

What brought about this change to a larger, denser settlement in the LH III period? The answer may lie in the remains of the earliest of these LH III refuse dumps, in excavation unit (EU) 9, the earliest excavated layers of which contained pottery dating to LH IIIA2 (early). (4)

FAUNAL EVIDENCE

The faunal remains from this deposit are distinctive. Cattle make up half of the identified material, with pig, sheep, and goat accounting for most of the remainder, but there are also a few specimens of dog, ass, and red deer. Half of the material exhibited traces of gnawing, indicating that the bone was accessible to scavengers (probably domestic dogs or pigs) either before or after incorporation in the dump. A quarter of the assemblage (including bones of cattle, pig, goat, dog, and ass) bore traces of burning, however, and butchery marks were observed on ca. 4% of the bones (including those of cattle, pig, and dog), leaving no doubt that much or all of the material was butchered and discarded by humans.

In terms of anatomical representation, the remains of pig and sheep/ goat include most parts of the carcass; those of dog, ass, and deer are too few for analysis, but remains of cattle are heavily biased toward the head and feet (Table 1). This bias is apparent whether bones are quantified in terms of minimum numbers of anatomical units (MinAU) or minimum numbers of individuals (MNI). Anatomical representation may be shaped by a number of factors, including archaeological retrieval and post-depositional attrition, as well as pre-depositional human behavior. Thus, the absence of such small body parts as the phalanges of pig and sheep/goat might plausibly be attributed to retrieval loss, but the "missing" body parts of cattle are not small and the routine use of sieving at Nemea seems to have ensured fairly complete recovery of identifiable fragments of this large taxon. Similarly, although the assemblage has been extensively gnawed, the missing and scarce body parts include some of the most robust (e.g., distal humerus, distal tibia) as well as the most vulnerable (e.g., proximal humerus). (5) Thus there can be little doubt that the biased anatomical representation of cattle is the result of selective human behavior.

Deposits dominated by head and foot bones of cattle are relatively common in Roman and medieval towns in northwest Europe. (6) Such assemblages are usually interpreted as primary butchery waste discarded by specialist butchers. Because animals are butchered in large numbers, different stages of carcass-processing tend to be separated in space and time and, as a result, the waste from different stages tends to be discarded in different contexts. In this case, however, butchery marks and types of fragmentation observed on cattle limb bones suggest that the discarded material does not represent primary butchery waste, but rather carcass parts that had been processed for the extraction of bone marrow. The faunal material thus arguably represents waste from food preparation or consumption, rather than primary butchery.