Feasting is generally a ritualized activity, and faunal and artistic evidence from Neolithic Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia support the symbolic importance and memorialization of feast animals. Both daily meals and feasting were constant presences within the household, suggesting that both were key components of household identity. However, the two phenomena were kept largely spatially segregated within the household. The Çatalhöyük evidence suggests that in the Central Anatolian Neolithic, daily meals and ritualized feasting played different – but both fundamental and arguably complementary – roles in specifically household identities. Both also take the broader community into account in terms of their household uses and placements, but in opposite ways.
