Feasting and Social Complexity in Later Iron Age East Anglia

This study examines feasting and consumption as indicators of social complexity in the Later Iron Age, a time of rapid change in settlements, material culture and social and political organisation. In doing so Sarah Ralph re-evaluates old sites and analyses newer ones, identifying features which denote feasting, and going on to discuss when and why feasts occured, who organised and attended them and how they changed over time. Light is shed on life and time cycles and on feasting as a response to political change, and there are important observations about the growing numbers of Roman items in the material culture of later Iron Age East Anglia. Appendices contain maps and a catalogue of all of the sites which can be associarted with feasting.