... symbolise Ideological notions of civility and characterise barbaric ways of life.2 Control of nature by sedentary agriculture and the domestication of food producing animals were representative of a civilised society, in contrast to the perceived barbarism of nomadic hunter gatherer societies, whose diet based on meat and milk was regarded as primitive and distasteful. Refined food such as bread, wine and oil were transformed into ideals that symbolised the imperial authority of the Rome.3 "Civilised" man developed rituals and etiquette pertaining to food that elevated him from the barbarism of instinctive gorging and the power elite from the shadow of hunger. While food ideals and communal eating became hallmarks of civility that unified the community, the hierarchical structures that developed within these groups emphasised the status of the powerful in relation to others, and could provide a means to divide and exclude sections of the community, although Montanari explains that cultural cohesion ...

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