Post by topdog on Jul 8, 2005 13:38:16 GMT -5
Africa and the Near East: Pot and Porridge, Bread and Oven. Two food systems maintained over 10 000 years
Randi Haaland
Joachim Frielesgt. 1, Department of Archaeology, University of Bergen
5007 Bergen, Norway. randi.haland@ark.uib.no
In Africa the invention of pottery occurred in the 10th millennium b.p. (uncalibrated dates). It took place in the southern Sahara, where ceramics appeared more than two thousand years before the cultivation of plants. The ceramics seems closely associated with the heavy reliance on aquatic resources and boiling of stew. The food habit seems to have been maintained also when they changed to food production, the difference being that one added the porridge to the stew. Food production and ceramic technology proceeded quite independently of each other. Agriculture and pottery technology did not go hand in hand in the Near East either. However, the development is the reverse of what we see in Africa. Here cereal cultivation was practised several thousand years before ceramic technology was adopted. Domestication of wheat and barley took place 10,000 b.p. while the inception of pottery did not start before 8000 b.p. The food prepared from the ground cereal seems to have been bread. If we look at the food traditions within these regions today we see that these two differences in food habits seem to be maintained. The emphasis in the Near East is on bread and the oven; in sub-Saharan Africa it is porridge and the pot. To get an understanding of the maintenance of these two different types of food systems over such a long time period, I will look at the close connection between the technologies, and cosmological and ideological beliefs related to food.
Randi Haaland
Joachim Frielesgt. 1, Department of Archaeology, University of Bergen
5007 Bergen, Norway. randi.haland@ark.uib.no
In Africa the invention of pottery occurred in the 10th millennium b.p. (uncalibrated dates). It took place in the southern Sahara, where ceramics appeared more than two thousand years before the cultivation of plants. The ceramics seems closely associated with the heavy reliance on aquatic resources and boiling of stew. The food habit seems to have been maintained also when they changed to food production, the difference being that one added the porridge to the stew. Food production and ceramic technology proceeded quite independently of each other. Agriculture and pottery technology did not go hand in hand in the Near East either. However, the development is the reverse of what we see in Africa. Here cereal cultivation was practised several thousand years before ceramic technology was adopted. Domestication of wheat and barley took place 10,000 b.p. while the inception of pottery did not start before 8000 b.p. The food prepared from the ground cereal seems to have been bread. If we look at the food traditions within these regions today we see that these two differences in food habits seem to be maintained. The emphasis in the Near East is on bread and the oven; in sub-Saharan Africa it is porridge and the pot. To get an understanding of the maintenance of these two different types of food systems over such a long time period, I will look at the close connection between the technologies, and cosmological and ideological beliefs related to food.