Cooking Pottery

The Sanctuary of Apollo in ancient Halasarna was a site of religious and social importance in the landscape of Hellenistic Kos. Besides the Pan-Hellenic Asklepieion, the sanctuary of Apollo was the most important religious site on the island. As a place of visitation, the sanctuary was pilgrims’ destination. Moreover, Halasarna was a significant urban centre and production place of transport amphorae. The Hellenistic pottery from the sanctuary, discovered during the excavations of the University of Athens, provides us with new information about ceramic production and distribution at Halasarna. In the framework of project THALIS - UOA - The Apollo Sanctuary and the Late Roman Settlement in Halasarna (Kos). The history of an ancient sanctuary, its decline & its final transformation into a Late Roman/Early Christian settlement typological studies and laboratory analyses were carried out. These studies included also typological and macroscopic fabric analyses of cooking pottery. Additionally, 11 fragments of Hellenistic cooking pots were analysed through thin section petrography, neutron activation analysis (NAA) and portable X-ray fluorescence analysis (pXRF). Research into the provenance and technology of this specific class of pottery tells us much about the relationships between the sanctuary of Apollo and its surrounding sites. This poster illustrates the repertoire of forms as well as their chronology. There are also results of laboratory analyses suggesting the presence of locally manufactured cooking pottery as well as products from the vicinity.

The Akrotiri cooking vessel assemblage is well represented in
several successive phases throughout the Bronze Age. We present an interdisciplinary approach to study the relationships between morphology, technology and use for the Middle and early Late Cycladic periods at Akrotiri. Based on the changes and variations observed in cooking pot morphology, the ceramic material has been analysed using a variety of analytical approaches (mineralogical and microstructural). These analyses provided evidence for technological variation related to manufacturing technology, in particular the use of raw material and firing temperatures, some of which may be linked to the performance and use of the pottery. Molecular analyses in cooking vessels from Akrotiri were also undertaken as another means to determine the relationship between form, production
technology and use. Although the small number of samples in
the pilot study did not allow the identification of statistically
significant patterns, the obtained results shed light on several
issues. The poor preservation of residues as well as the identification
of beeswax in samples of some vessel types raises the
question to which extent those types may have been used for
cooking activities. On the other hand, tripod cooking vessels
that preserved good residues were apparently fired to high temperatures
during manufacture, inducing an increased thermal
conductivity which may have allowed a good control over heat
development during cooking.

The influence of temper on the performance characteristics of cooking ware pottery is assessed. Emphasis is placed on the examination of the impact of temper shape (platy vs. angular) on strength, toughness, thermal conductivity and thermal shock resistance. Mechanical and thermal tests performed on experimental briquettes tempered with phyllite or granite show that an improvement of those material properties thought to be relevant for cooking ware is achieved when replacing platy phyllitic with angular granitic temper.

This paper examines the interplay between manufacturing parameters and material properties in archaeological ceramic cooking ware. While previous studies on material properties have focused on the response of ceramic vessels to mechanical and thermal loads, emphasis is placed here on thermal properties and their influence on the suitability of a vessel to be used for different cooking methods. We illustrate how the material properties of a ceramic cooking vessel are influenced by its manufacture and how these material properties in turn may influence the performance and ultimately selection of certain vessels to be used for specific cooking practices for the example of late Bronze Age (LCIA) cooking vessels from Akrotiri, Greece.

An analysis of pottery production in ancient Phoenicia reveals not only the land division into city-states in Hellenistic times, but also the blending in individual periods of the multifarious cultural influences reaching in from the western coast of Asia Minor, the Aegean, North African coast and Italy. The native Phoenician tradition clearly loses in significance with the arrival of the Romans in the East.

It is now widely accepted that pottery formed a significant part of trading goods in ancient times. However, the focus of archaeology mostly lied on the so called 'fine wares', mainly because the fabrics are better known and the chronology of the associated shapes have been studied in more depths. This paper reports the results of our recent studies on pottery from closed deposits (ca. 350-250 BCE) representing the earliest phases of Priene. By combining typological studies with ceramic thin section petrography we can now show that the picture of the ancient pottery trade we have created over the last decades clearly is a distorted one. We can demonstrate that 'coarse ware' formed at least an equivalent part of the overall imports of ceramic vessels to the city. This, for example, comprises large amounts of cooking wares, including cooking devices such as braziers and cooking stands. In addition, a variety of 'plain ware' shapes have been imported frequently, such as grinding bowls or jars. In some aspects, these imports were even more important for the provision of the city then fine wares. While for the latter there were at least supplements made available by the local potters, some of the coarse ware production centers seemed to have held monopolies over certain periods of time (e. g. cooking devices and grinding bowls). The main reason for this development can very likely be found in their technical characteristics, which indicate that they were the outcome of highly specialized workshops. Overall, this interdisciplinary study helps to elucidate aspects of circulation and technology of the so called coarse and plain wares and may also contribute to our understanding of the social dimension of pottery trade in Priene.

In former studies on archaeological cooking pots or archaeological pyrotechnical ceramics their thermal conductivity was discussed only in relation with other parameters but, it was never actually determined. In the present study a modified Lees’ disk setup was used in order to determine the thermal conductivity of a series of experimental ceramic disks. As for the manufacture of these disks typical ceramic fabrics were simulated, which can be observed in archaeological cooking pots. In order to assess the effect of production parameters on the thermal conductivity, two different clays, one non-calcareous and one calcareous,were
tempered with different amounts of granite or phyllite and were fired at three different temperatures: 550 ◦C, 850 ◦C and 1050 ◦C. The most important parameters emerged as the degree of vitrification and porosity of the ceramic matrix.

«Utilitarian Ceramics in the Royal Hospital» in André TEIXEIRA; Edite Martins ALBERTO e Rodrigo Banha da SILVA, coord. cient. All Saints Royal Hospital: Lisbon and Public Health, Lisboa, Câmara Municipal de Lisboa – Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa, 2021, p. 595-603.

This paper presents a first approach to the petrographic analysis of ceramics in the early medieval Vega of Granada (south east Spain) between the 6th and the 11th centuries. The cooking wares of two sites of the Vega with urban character, Ilbira and Garnata, are considered. They were, at different times, political capitals of the area and the production and distribution of their ceramic products have much to tell us about the nature and extent of their authority. The petrographic study shows that the assemblages of cooking pots retrieved at each site have characteristic fabric groups that allow us to relate to production centres in the vicinity of the site, if not in the site itself. Furthermore, the petrographic analysis proves that a small number of vessels move between the sites. The pattern of this movement is consistent with the historical and archaeological background of the Vega of Granada.