The Akha, “Rife with Feasts”

The Akha constitute the relatively poor end of the hill tribe spectrum, but they have a wide range of feasts that employ the available surplus production. This chapter shows how Akha feasts support the economic, ritual, and sociopolitical organization of communities. The role of taboos as aggrandizer strategies is explored and the internal dynamics of the ritual-political structure of villages is examined. Examples of the range of Akha feasts are described and explanations provided in terms of how they dovetail with various levels of sociopolitical groups, including household, clan, administrative, and village levels, but especially lineages. The important issue of why some households do not participate in feasts is raised. Material patterning of feasts is again discussed.

Tribal Feasting in Vietnam

Vietnam has an unusual number and diversity of hill tribe groups. Some of these still lived in long houses until recently. These groups provided important information on how feasting differed in communities dominated by corporate groups. Residential corporate groups constitute important phenomena in prehistoric archaeology. This chapter tries to address reasons for corporate group formation, variability in corporate group organization and dynamics, and reasons for abandoning residential corporate group lifestyles. Defense and elder control via bridewealth are viewed as the main proximate reasons for creating corporate groups, while aggrandizer strategies based on self-interest provide the ultimate reasons for their creation. This chapter describes the dynamics of corporate groups and the way in which feasting patterns help create these organizations among the Rhadé, Monong, and Ta Oi. Benefits for member families are also discussed.

Hill Tribes in General

This chapter provides an overview of the range of variation in hill tribes in the Southeast Asia culture area. It examines commonalities and differences in subsistence, village and kinship organization, corporate vs. nuclear households, ancestor cults, conflicts, ideology, and political organization. Sources of power and benefits of office holding are explored. A common hill tribe sociopolitical baseline is proposed, and feasts are situated within a holistic context involving all of these factors. The implications of material patterning from feasts are explicitly addressed.

Laotian Tribal Feasts

Several exploratory survey trips to Laos revealed relatively poorly developed feasting traditions apparently due to very low levels of food production and wealth. However, a number of ritual structures and pilgrimage sites were observed with associated feasting areas and events. These had clear archaeological consequences in their material patterns. The broader question of the benefits that such activities served was more problematic. Remnant long houses were observed but conditions did not seem to correspond to traditional contexts.

The Remarkable Torajan Feasting Complex

The villages in Tana Toraja, Sulawesi, host some of the most lavish feasts in Southeast Asia, especially for funerals or memorials. In addition megaliths were raised for the wealthiest deceased family members. There is also considerable variability in economics, sociopolitical organization, and feasting within the Torajan area. This chapter discusses and tries to explain some of this variability, from low level transegalitarian villages in poor mountainous areas to the proto- or real chiefdom levels of the valley bottoms where paddy rice produces major surpluses. The corporate kindred with its ancestral house as the center of ritual and feasting activities is a distinctive feature of Torajan societies. Slavery was very developed, and secondary burials were strongly associated with elites in order to provide enough time to amass as much wealth as possible for proper funeral feasts. Why funeral feasts feature so prominently in Southeast Asia tribal societies is discussed. Other feasts were hosted by households, reciprocal work groups, lineages, corporate kindreds, villages, districts, and village alliances.

Conclusions

This chapter addresses the question of why people spend lavishly to host feasts, and what they hope to gain from doing so. Ephemeral status is contrasted with practical benefits. The role of ideology in hill tribe behavior is reviewed as well. Constraints are discussed especially for acquiring the wealth necessary to underwrite lavish feasts. The acquisition of domestic animals is pivotal in understanding the ability to host feasts in Southeast Asia, and this feature has wide ranging consequences for the development of socioeconomic inequalities in supposedly “egalitarian” hill tribe communities. Other aggrandizer strategies are discussed, especially the charging of high prices for marriage alliances and for respectable funerals. Feasting is but one aggrandizer strategy, and it plays a critical role in the creation of political power at the village level. Archaeological patterning is reviewed, and issues that require further investigation are presented.

The Sumban Megalithic Feasting Complex

The most active and still vibrant megalithic tradition in Southeast Asia is probably found in Sumba. Given the importance of megaliths and their interpretation in prehistoric archaeology, and given the intimate association of megaliths and feasting in the Torajan area, we focused considerable attention on the feasting traditions of Sumba, especially as they related to megaliths. The megaliths are also associated spatially and behaviorally with ancestral corporate lineage houses. The logic of megalithic construction is discussed together with benefits sought by hosts for sponsoring feasts. The range of major feasting types is described.

The Fundamentals of Feasts

This introduction discusses why feasts are important to study for both archaeologists and ethnographers, especially at the transegalitarian level. It sets out the major concepts of transegalitarian societies, aggrandizers, feast definitions, feast types, functions and benefits of feasts, and feasting characteristics. It reviews some of the major works previously published that discuss traditional feasting in Southeast Asia. Explanations of feasts from different theoretical schools are presented together with the political ecology framework used in this study. Important issues are highlighted and methods used in original fieldwork are presented.