Kitchen Culture in 13th-Century Syria

While food studies have long been part of archaeological research, they have only recently entered the archaeology of the Islamic world. The archaeology of food and cooking has been primarily based on botanical analysis of kitchen waste and formal stylistic ceramic analysis of cooking wares, with the aim to describe in broad terms diet and consumption. We know very little, however, about actual practice: how people prepared food, why they chose the ingredients they did, and how the household kitchen functioned on a daily basis. This essay is a study of evolving cooking practices at the Transjordanian site of Tall Ḥisbān through the life history of a single cook pot in its larger setting, pulling on the analysis of the well-preserved botanical remains of the pot’s associated fill, materials analysis of the vessel, and a critical reading of Arabic cooking manuals of the period. Macrobotanical, phytolith, starch, residue, isotope, and use-wear analyses together reconstruct cooking conditions (cooking temperature and time, fuel used), ingredients and seasoning, and special characteristics of the cooking vessel. The article, further, compares 13th-century practices to later periods at the site, which have been more extensively studied and reflect a more urban culture, as well as spatial distribution of activities related to food preparation.