Commensality and the Construction of Value

This paper explores the relationship between mundane domestic and more formal meals in recent rural Greece, as a prelude to a diachronic examination of the range of commensal behavior through the Neolithic and Bronze Age of the same region. Analysis of recent practices highlights the role of a hierarchy of low- to high-value foods. While Neolithic commensality beyond the household emphasizes equality and collective cohesion, formal commensality takes a strikingly and increasingly diacritical form through the Bronze Age. It is argued that Bronze Age diacritical commensality was part of a broader strategy of elite ‘choreography’ of social life. A hierarchy of foods, which linked diacritical behavior, labor mobilization and risk buffering, may have played a critical role in driving this trajectory of change

Feast, Food and Fodder in Neolithic-Bronze Age Greece: Commensality and the Construction of Value

This paper explores the relationship between mundane domestic and more formal meals in recent rural Greece, as a prelude to a diachronic examination of the range of commensal behavior through the Neolithic and Bronze Age of the same region. Analysis of recent practices highlights the role of a hierarchy of low- to high-value foods. While Neolithic commensality beyond the household emphasizes equality and collective cohesion, formal commensality takes a strikingly and increasingly diacritical form through the Bronze Age. It is argued that Bronze Age diacritical commensality was part of a broader strategy of elite ‘choreography’ of social life. A hierarchy of foods, which linked diacritical behavior, labor mobilization and risk buffering, may have played a critical role in driving this trajectory of change

Big flip graphs and their automorphism groups

In this paper, we study the relationship between the mapping class group of an infinite-type surface and the simultaneous flip graph, a variant of the flip graph for infinite-type surfaces defined by Fossas and Parlier [6]. We show that the extended mapping class group is isomorphic to a proper subgroup of the automorphism group of the flip graph, unlike in the finite-type case. This shows that Ivanov\u27s metaconjecture, which states that any “sufficiently rich" object associated to a finite-type surface has the extended mapping class group as its automorphism group, does not extend to simultaneous flip graphs of infinite-type surfaces

A human PrM antibody that recognizes a novel cryptic epitope on dengue E glycoprotein

10.1371/journal.pone.0033451PLoS ONE74

Early farmers from across Europe directly descended from Neolithic Aegeans

Farming and sedentism first appeared in southwestern Asia during the early Holocene and later spread to neighboring regions, including Europe, along multiple dispersal routes. Conspicuous uncertainties remain about the relative roles of migration, cultural diffusion, and admixture with local foragers in the early Neolithization of Europe. Here we present paleogenomic data for five Neolithic individuals from northern Greece and northwestern Turkey spanning the time and region of the earliest spread of farming into Europe. We use a novel approach to recalibrate raw reads and call genotypes from ancient DNA and observe striking genetic similarity both among Aegean early farmers and with those from across Europe. Our study demonstrates a direct genetic link between Mediterranean and Central European early farmers and those of Greece and Anatolia, extending the European Neolithic migratory chain all the way back to southwestern Asia

Early invaders - Farmers, the granary weevil and other uninvited guests in the Neolithic

The Neolithic and the spread of agriculture saw several introductions of insect species associated with the environments and activities of the first farmers. Fossil insect research from the Neolithic lake settlement of Dispilio in Macedonia, northern Greece, provides evidence for the early European introduction of a flightless weevil, the granary weevil, Sitophilus granarius, which has since become cosmopolitan and one of the most important pests of stored cereals. The records of the granary weevil from the Middle Neolithic in northern Greece illuminate the significance of surplus storage for the spread of agriculture. The granary weevil and the house fly, Musca domestica were also introduced in the Neolithic of central Europe, with the expansion of Linear Band Keramik (LBK) culture groups. This paper reviews Neolithic insect introductions in Europe, including storage pests, discusses their distribution during different periods and the reasons behind the trends observed. Storage farming may be differentiated from pastoral farming on the basis of insect introductions arriving with incoming agricultural groups

Between Feasts and Daily Meals

Erscheint in der Reihe "Berlin Studies of the Ancient World" herausgegeben von Exzellenzcluster 264 Topoi ; 30Commensality - Eating and drinking together in a common physical and social setting – is a central element in people’s everyday lives. This makes commensality a particularly important theme within which to explore social relations, social reproduction and the working of politics whether in the present or the past. Archaeological attention has been focused primarily on feasting and other special commensal occasions to the neglect of daily commensality. This volume seeks to redress this imbalance by emphasizing the dynamic relation between feasts and quotidian meals and devoting explicit attention to the micro- politics of Alltag (“the everyday”) rather than solely to special occasions. Case studies drawing on archaeological ( material) as well as written sources range from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in Western Asia and Greece, Formative to late pre-Columbian com munities in Andean South America, and modern Europe

Animal carcass processing, cooking and consumption at Early Neolithic Revenia-Korinou, northern Greece

The open-air settlement of Revenia-Korinou has yielded the largest Early Neolithic (7th millennium BC) faunal assemblage to date from Greece. The assemblage, recovered from numerous pits, is heavily dominated by domestic sheep, goats, pigs and cattle. Here we focus on the evidence for butchery and consumption of animals, to explore how carcass products were cooked (in the absence of cooking pots) and what if any role they played in commensal politics. Evidence for dismembering and filleting is sparse, implying butchery of domestic animal carcasses into large segments (including more or less complete limbs) for cooking, apparently in ovens or pits rather than on open fires. Subsequently limb bones were intensively smashed to extract marrow and probably grease, perhaps by boiling in organic containers. Dismembering, filleting and marrow extraction were most intensive for cattle, but bone grease was more systematically exploited in the case of sheep/goats, implying differences between taxa in contexts of consumption. Significant differences between pits in taxonomic composition and the incidence of gnawing and burning suggest that each represents short-term and/or localized discard, perhaps by a small residential group. Within individual pits, matching unfused diaphyses and epiphyses and joins between fragments broken in antiquity confirm rapid burial, but bones separated by dismembering seem to have been dispersed across the settlement before discard. The distribution of carcass products, both cooked and uncooked, played a role in shaping relationships between small residential units and the wider community at Early Neolithic Revenia-Korinou