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Status-Related Variation in Foodways in the Moundville Chiefdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Paul D. Welch  and
C. Margaret Scarry
Paul D. Welch
Affiliation:
Anthropology Department, Queens College, 65–30 Kissena Boulevard, Flushing, NY 11367
C. Margaret Scarry
Affiliation:
Anthropology Department, University of North Carolina, CB 3115 Alumni Building, Chapel Hill, NC 27599
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Abstract

People use food and food-related behavior to express and reinforce a multitude of social relations. We examine subsistence remains and pottery recovered from several different social-status and functional contexts in the Moundville chiefdom. Differential distributions of plant and animal remains suggest that elite members of the society received food as tribute. The analyzed contexts also differ in the ratios of serving ware to cooking ware and in the relative frequencies of the functional types of serving vessels present. Greater emphasis was placed on the presentation of food in elite contexts, and the types of vessels used to serve or display food varied depending on whether the context was public or private. This patterning in food remains and pottery assemblages from different contexts is complex and cannot be explained by a single dimension of variability. Rather, to account for the patterns it is necessary to consider the evidence in terms of the ways people used food in different social settings.

Resumen

Resumen

Todas las personas expresan y consolidan una serie de relaciones sociales por medio de los alimentos y de los comportamientos relacionados con su consumo. En este trabajo se examinan restos de alimentos y cerámica recuperados en contextos arqueológicos del cacicazgo de Moundville. Los contextos varían, tanto en su función, como en su asociación a diferentes estratos sociales. La distribución de restos botánicos y faunísticos sugiere que los miembros de la elite de esta sociedad recibían alimentos en calidad de tributo. Los contextos analizados tambien varian en la distribución de la cerámica para servir en proporción con la cerámica para cocinar, asi como en las frecuencias relativas de tipos de cerámica para servir. Hubo mayor énfasis en la presentación de alimentos en los contextos asociados con los estratos sociales altos, y que el tipo de recipientes empleados para servir o exhibir alimentos varía de acuerdo al carácter privado o publico del contexto. Se propone que es imposible explicar los patrones hallados en base a una sola variable. El análisis de los patrones de restos de alimentos y complejo cerámico hace necesario tomar en consideración las diferentes formas en que las personas utilizaron alimentos en distintos contextos sociales.

Type
Articles
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , July 1995 , pp. 397 - 419
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1995

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