Las prácticas de comensalidad como estrategia ideológica en el área central de la Contestania ibérica (VII-I a. C.)

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze a type of ritual practices with a great potential in structuring social and power relationships, specifically those related to the communal consumption of food and drink. One of our aims is to link together these commensal practices with ideological strategies deployed by the elites within the communities of central Contestania. We adopt a multi-scalar methodological approach and a broad diachronic perspective, between viith and ist centuries bc. We approach this kind of practices from the study of ceramic repertoires, mainly imported products in many cases related to the consumption of wine, their contexts of appearance, and their spatial reflection, defining what we could call a ‘commensal landscape’. This perspective and its combination with other variables such as the evolution of settlement patterns over seven centuries or its relation with different categories of feast and ideological strategies, will allow us to better understand the nuanced social processes which took place in this specific area of central Mediterranean Iberia during the Protohistory.