A table

Résumé En

: Combining the points of view of social anthropology and archaeology has made it possible to reveal the banquet or ceremonial feast as a total social phenomenon. Indeed, occurring only in rare occasions, it gathers, most often in stratified societies with sacrificial religions, large numbers of guests treated to drinks and rare and expensive foods in quantity, to honour someone or something and to ostentatiously display the organisers’ power. While this practice has been recognised in many societies, living, ancient or extinct, around the world, it had not yet been made the subject of a large-scale synthesis. It was therefore necessary to question in an interdisciplinary way the ins and outs of the festive banquet in relation to the cosmogonies and social practices of the social spaces concerned. The nine essays collected here, derived from the communications given at the workshop held in Strasbourg, contribute to the debate on important questions linked to the banquet, such as temporality (farming cycles or cosmogonic myths), location (public or private, outdoors or indoors), commensality, hospitality, types of products consumed, and table manners, finally posing the hypothesis that the organisation of a banquet implies the existence of a wealthy sedentary hierarchical society, if not ostentatious. The diversity of geo-cultural areas, time periods, and cases treated made it possible to capture the banquet in its many aspects by suggesting new ideas and paths of research.