Modern Restaurants and Ancient Commensality

Abstract

Commensality in terms of archaeological investigations seems to revolve around questions of feasting and everyday eating patterns. The nature of the available evidence moves archaeologists and ancient historians to conjecture about these questions in innovative and thoughtful ways. How can a modern historian of food enter into this conversation? The history of restaurants in the West seems to provide one way into this debate and poses the question of what evidence we actually have for what commensality might be.