ABSTRACT
Food and drink are perhaps the most fundamental, if short-lived, media of material culture. The serving and sharing of these essential elements make up one of the central daily activities of the human domestic group. It is the everyday practices of who provides sustenance for whom, and in what circumstances, that give family relationships and social classifications their substance; and it is here, both through the provision of daily bread and the rarer occasions of sacrifice, that the major metaphors of religious thinking have their origin.
