POLITICS AT THE DINNER TABLE: THE SOCIAL PERFORMANCE OF BANQUETING AT ETRUSCAN POGGIO CIVITATE.

The Etruscan settlement Poggio Civitate preserves evidence of the intersections of social status, ritual, and communal banqueting that can be documented by integrating evidence from zooarchaeological, ceramic, iconographic, and spatial analyses. Comparisons of faunal remains from an elite residence with those from contemporary non-elite residential and industrial spaces suggests significant dietary distinctions between different classes. Not only are butchered animals separated by side, with certain right-sided elements found in elite contexts and left-sided elements in non-elite contexts, but elite contexts also contain higher proportions of large, wild animals hunted for food and/or display. Additionally, a large banqueting set recovered from an elite house of the 7th century BCE indicates that this residence was the venue for community-wide banquets. Such banquets would be held for important religious events or to mark significant or sacred community moments, such as aristocratic marriages or deaths. Communal celebrations offered local elites an opportunity to legitimize their authority to the larger community, through the sharing of high value food and wine, illustrating the benefits of their power, which was reinforced by the decorations on the banqueting equipment used during these celebrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]