Cambridge Archaeological Journal http://journals.cambridge.org/CAJ Additional services for Cambridge Archaeological Journal: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here ‘Drinking the Feast’: Alcohol and the Legitimation of Power in Celtic Europe Bettina Arnold Cambridge Archaeological Journal / Volume 9 / Issue 01 / April 1999, pp 71 ­ 93 DOI: 10.1017/S0959774300015213, Published online: 14 October 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0959774300015213 How to cite this article: Bettina Arnold (1999). ‘Drinking the Feast’: Alcohol and the Legitimation of Power in Celtic Europe. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 9, pp 71­93 doi:10.1017/ S0959774300015213 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAJ, IP address: 24.22.205.184 on 24 Aug 2013 Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9:1 (1999), pp. 71-93 'Drinking the Feast': Alcohol and the Legitimation of Power in Celtic Europe Bettina Arnold Drinking and feasting were an integral part of life in Iron Age Europe and the British Isles. The distribution of food and especially drink in prescribed fashion played a key role in establishing and maintaining social relationships. Alcoholic beverages were important consumable status items in prehistoric Europe, serving as a social lubricant as well as a social barrier. The metal, ceramic and wooden vessels required for the preparation, distribu- tion and consumption of these beverages were a vehicle for inter- and intragroup competi- tion, and underwent considerable change, both symbolic and material, through time. This article will attempt a cognitive analysis of the material culture of Iron Age drinking and feasting by integrating archaeological and documentary evidence. The impact of contact with the Mediterranean world, gender configurations, and the ideology of power and patronage will be discussed in relation to changing material culture assemblages. -The distribution and consumption of alcohol played Mediterranean opinions on the subject of Celtic an important role in prehistoric cultures in continen- drinking practices were not very complimentary, nor tal Europe as well as in the British Isles. Significant particularly objective, but the documentary evidence ritually as well as socio-politically (Murray 1996), does provide us with useful background informa- feasting behaviour is documented in the archaeo- tion against which to interpret the archaeological logical, historical, and literary records. The drinking record (Champion 1985). Plato, writing in the mid- and feasting equipment itself is made of materials as dle of the fourth century BC (about 150 years after the diverse as wood, ceramic, horn, leather, iron, bronze, manufacture of the Vix krater), includes the Celts in silver, and gold. Elaborate sets of ceramic vessels 'a list of six barbarian warlike peoples who are given associated with the consumption of food and drink to drunkenness, as opposed to Spartan restraint' first appear in Continental European burials at least (Laws 1:637: Tierney 1960, 194). Diodorus Siculus, by the Urnfield period (Kossack 1964,99) and possi- 300 years later, describes the Celts in a similar fash- bly as early as the Late Neolithic (Sherratt 1987; 1995; ion: They are exceedingly fond of wine and sate 1997). In the later Bronze Age and Iron Age, local themselves with the unmixed wine imported by mer- wood and pottery products are gradually augmented chants; their desire makes them drink it greedily, by imported ceramics and metal vessels in the buri- and when they become drunk they fall into a stupor als of elite individuals. Extravagant vessel assem- or into a maniacal disposition' (Diodorus Siculus blages peak in the wealthy chieftains' graves of the V:26,2-3: Tierney 1960,249). Late Hallstatt period, best exemplified by the 1.64 The central role of alcohol consumption in Celtic metre high krater of Vix, larger than any bronze culture is generally accepted (Dietler 1989b; 1990; vessel preserved from the contemporary Greek - Enright 1996). Scholars of Celtic literature, archae- world. The krater was part of the equipment in a ologists, and historians all describe banquets and Gaulish elite burial and was probably manufactured feasts in considerable detail within their respective by Greek artisans for a powerful northern personage spheres of interest. Unfortunately, few scholars look (Joffroy 1962). outside their own disciplines for the cognitive system 71 Bettina Arnold underlying this drinking and feasting behaviour. This heavily patinated by Christian influences, but pre- is particularly true of archaeology, which is tradi- serving earlier non-Christian elements; 4) the archaeo- tionally wary of literary and historical sources. It logical record, primarily from the Continent, since also applies to disciplines like Celtic studies which the burial and settlement record of the British Isles could benefit from an archaeological perspective in for the Iron Age is much less well documented or distinguishing rhetorical or symbolic elements in lit- preserved (Raftery 1994). erature from those which may contain historical fact.1 This discussion will attempt a text-aided, cog- While some caution is commendable, it can also nitive interpretation of the archaeological evidence be an obstacle to creative thinking. Conservative for drinking and feasting behaviour from the Late scholars argue, for example, that the Celtic literature Hallstatt period in west central Europe (600-400 BC), of the British Isles (most post-dating the sixth cen- with reference to late Iron Age evidence from the tury AD), is not relevant to the interpretation of pre- British Isles and the Continent. It is at this time that historic Iron Age Europe. The argument is that the the peoples known as Celts begin to appear in recog- insular Celtic cultures do not resemble the earlier nizable form in the material record, but the contem- Continental ones in any fundamental or identifiable porary Mediterranean written sources are meagre way. The definition of the term 'Celtic' itself is con- and problematic. The different sources of informa- tested (Arnold & Gibson 1995,2), but continues to be tion intersect or overlap to some extent, so there will used to describe the peoples linked by language and be some repetition of the more seminal arguments. material culture from Spain to the Black Sea during The information offered by Classical sources for Celtic the Iron Age, and will be used here in its most gen- drinking practices will be examined first. eral sense. More moderate researchers concede some affinity and continuity between British and Conti- The contemporary classical sources: strange nental Celtic cultures, particularly in the areas of people and weird practices material culture and technology. These are of course the best-documented sources of archaeological in- The general formula followed by most Classical au- formation and are not usually as well represented in thors describing the alien cultures on their peripher- the literature. The archaeological evidence certainly ies was modelled on Herodotus and consisted of documents major social and ideological changes in several categories of information: 1) population; 2) the centuries separating the chieftain of Hochdorf antiquity and ancient history; 3) way of life; 4) cus- (near Stuttgart, Germany; 550 BC) from Gereint ab toms (Tierney 1960,190). Unfortunately for modern Erbin in the Gododdin (Britain; AD 600) (Powell 1888; scholars the unusual and bizarre aspects of the last Jackson 1969, 150). There is, however, considerable two categories were generally recounted in some continuity through time and space in some areas of detail, while information considered mundane, com- material culture, especially those concerning the mon knowledge or uninteresting was less frequently socio-political and ideological importance of drink- recorded. Two pitfalls facing the modern scholar ing and feasting. The discussion below will explore attempting to derive 'facts' from these accounts are the foundations of this continuity through a com- 'Randvolkeridealisierung' (Tierney 1960, 214) and parison of textual and archaeological evidence. Arafat 'ethnographische Wandermotive' (Tierney 1960,201). & Morgan (1994), among others, have called for a The first is the tendency of Classical ethnographers more emic investigation of how contact with the to romanticize or demonize 'exotic' peoples. The sec- Mediterranean world affected existing patterns of ond refers to the borrowing of descriptions of cus- behaviour, particularly feasting and competitive dis- toms from accounts of one culture and transposing play among elites, in the Early Iron Age of south- them wholesale or only slightly modified to a com- west Germany, eastern France and Switzerland north pletely different group of people, whenever hard of the Alps. The synthesis of archaeological and writ- facts were lacking or could benefit from being fleshed ten 'records' of Celtic 'feasting' patterns which fol- out in a more dramatic way. The problem of succes- lows attempts to do this, although it does not claim sive 'borrowings' of another ethnographer's ideas to be exhaustive, much less definitive. and/or descriptions over several centuries has been The sources of information available for drink- discussed elsewhere (Tierney 1960; Nash 1976). ing and feasting behaviour in the Celtic world are: Despite these potential difficulties, several sig- 1) contemporary Greek and Roman