| Abstract: |
Economic intensification has been documented in a diversity of small-scale societies. In this article, I use both ethnographic and archaeological data to argue that ceremonial feasting and the need for socially valued good, which are critical for ritual performance and necessary for a variety of social transactions, create the demand that underwrites and sustains economic intensification in small-scale societies. Food for large-scale feasts is acquired through the intensification of food production and procurement targeted specifically for feasting, rather than from surplus available from routine subsistence production. Large-scale demands for socially valued good tend to result in specialization on the production of "extraordinary" material culture, which is characterized by two modes of circulation, in networks of social obligations or as offering in sacred locations.
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