Inside Ancient Kitchens: New Directions in the Study of Daily Meals and Feasts

2: Food Preparation and Feasting in the Household and Political Economy of Pre-Hispanic Philippine Chiefdoms

17 Food PreParation and Feasting in the household and Political economy oF Pre-hisPanic PhiliPPine chieFdoms laura lee Junker and lisa niziolek At the dawn of European colonization in the mid-second millennium AD, the Philippine islands, like most of Southeast Asia, were inhabited by an eclectic mix of ethnically and linguistically distinct societies ranging from small-scale hunter-gathering bands to what might be termed as ranked tribal societies, to hereditarily stratified chiefdoms like Manila and Cebu, and even to larger-scale Islamic sultanates like the Sulu and Magindanao (Jocano 1975; Junker 1999) (Figure 2.1). Going further back in time to the 1000 BC Metal Age, archaeological evidence for differential distribution of status goods in burials, such as elaborate bronze objects, decorated earthenware, and exotic beads, suggests the growth of chiefdom-level societies involved in long-distance prestige-goods trade along the Philippine coasts (Dizon 1996; Hutterer 1974, 1977; Junker 1999: 168–171). By the late first millennium AD, Chinese texts provide us with the names and descriptions of Philippine chiefs and their polities that began to make maritime tributary missions to the Chinese court, offering spices, marine delicacies, and forest products for Chinese silks, porcelain , and other exotic luxury goods that had expanding significance in their chiefly political economies (Scott 1984). Powerful political networks were built from locally produced wealth but especially from 2 18 laura lee Junker and lisa niziolek the wealth obtained through foreign trade, which was expended through gifting and status-enhancing events associated with marriage, war coalition–building , and cementing trade alliances with interior populations controlling export products for the Chinese trade (Junker 1990, 1999, 2002). Pre-colonial Southeast Asian kingdoms and chiefdoms tended to be organized around personal alliance and clientage networks rather than strongly corporate political entities (Andaya 1992: 405; Geertz 1973: 331–338; 1980; Junker 2003; Reid 1992: 460–463; Tambiah 1976; Wheatley 1975, 1983; Winzeler 1981; Wolters 1999). These highly volatile alliance networks were maintained through the charismatic attraction of individuals, through theatrical ceremonialism highlighting the sacred power of rulers, and, perhaps most significantly in terms of archaeological study, through the circulation of wealth among allied leaders and elite patrons and their fluctuating cadre of supporters. Much of the politically manipulable wealth was obtained through long-distance luxury trade, which linked Southeast Asia with India, China, and Arab trade ports by the early first millennium AD. The prestational events so critical to expanding political networks—such as bridewealth exchanges and elite marriages , death rites, the ascension of chiefs, war celebrations and peace pacts, 2.1. The location of tenth- to sixteenth-century Southeast Asian kingdoms and chiefdoms , including major polities of the Philippines known through Chinese accounts, Spanish records, and archaeological research. 19 Food PreParation and Feasting in the household and ceremonialism associated with exchange partnerships—took place in the context of competitive feasting events that were an almost ubiquitous feature of Southeast Asian complex societies (Junker 2001a; Reid 1988: 41–42; Wolters 1999). In contact period Philippine chiefdoms, these feasts, whether sponsored by paramount chieftains, lesser-ranked nobility, or would-be elites, took place within households centered in pile-house complexes of varying scale, where the meat, rice, special food delicacies, alcoholic drinks, and other foodstuffs to be consumed were prepared in large quantities by kinspersons and allies within the fenced house-yard. Although many food-preparation implements in tropical island Southeast Asia are manufactured of perishable materials, and many animals, fish, tubers, and other plant foods are prepared and cooked without any use of ceramic vessels, there are archaeologically recognizable traces of food preparation for these feasting events in durable artifacts and the patterned distribution of processed animal bones and other food remains. There is significant ethnographic work on ritual feasting in Southeast Asian societies of varying scale (e.g., Beatty 1991; Clarke 2001; Gibson 1986; Kirsch 1973; Volkman 1985; Voss 1987) and some historic analysis of feasts in pre-modern Southeast Asian kingdoms and chiefdoms (e.g., Hall 1992; Jocano 1975; Reid 1988: 32–42; Scott 1994: 35–53), but archaeological studies are limited (e.g., DeVera 1990; Higham 1996: 133, 151–158; Junker 1999, 2001b; Junker, Mudar, and Schwaller 1994; Kim 1994; Mudar 1997). Long-term archaeological investigations in the Tanjay region have produced the largest volume of work to date on ritual feasting in the pre-contact Philippine coastal chiefdoms and adjacent upland ranked societies (Junker 1999, 2001b; but also see Bacus...