Ancient Cookware from the Levant An Ethnoarchaeological Perspective20190724 91841 1b3ij1j (original) (raw)

There are few sources, besides ceramics, for studying ancient foodways or how people related to food. Ancient cooking practices and gastronomy remain virtually unknown. Biblical texts that mention meals include many names for pots, epigraphic data about cuisine are often ambiguous, and drawings of feasting scenes rarely include detailed portrayals of the foods eaten on such occasions. In Ancient Cookware from the Levant: An Ethnoarchaeological Perspective, Gloria London explains that "the best available sources of information on how foods were processed and cooked come from excavated pottery and, if preserved, floral and faunal material found in pots, pits, hearths, dumps, or store rooms" (2). Since cooking pots were ubiquitous and, once fired, virtually indestructible, and since they are easily recognizable, they provide a rich resource for those wishing to study the connection between pots and daily life in antiquity. London explains that, "Although outwardly unappealing, these pots not only filled an indispensable need for preparing meals but also provided connections among the people who cooked the food, shared it, and passed those traditions to the next generation" (1). London wants "to narrow the gap between excavated sherds and our concept of ancient meals"; in order to do so, she adopts a perspective that "begins with how food was processed, preserved, cooked, stored, and transported in clay containers" (1). In order to study these topics in antiquity, London investigates cookware and cooking practices in contemporary traditional societies. Such a ceramic ethnoarchaeological study of traditional lifestyles illuminates the day-today human experience related to ceramics and food in antiquity.