You Are How You Eat: Changes in Dining Style and Society at Late Bronze I Alalakh

Summary

Ceramics are intimately tied to both foodways and normative behavior within a culture. The appearance of a new shape or the long-term persistence of an old shape must be contextualized by first investigating the use to which the vessel was put, a use that can be inferred through multiple lines of evidence and explored using a variety of approaches. Recent excavations at Alalakh have illuminated the site’s Late Bronze I period, especially the troubled 17th-16th century BC transition from the Middle Bronze II. Striking continuity exists alongside major new introductions. Cups, craters, and pitchers with matching decorations form ‘drinking sets’ and persist though time even as the specific forms and decorations change in response to foreign aesthetics, suggesting continuity in drinking practices. On the other hand, the introduction of the large and very shallow ‘plate’ and the loss of Middle Bronze open forms may indicate a dramatic change in the way serving and dining was carried out. This paper examines what the style of dining may say about major social and cultural changes in the transition to the LB I period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Wheel of Fortune: Ceramic Analysis and the Study of Technology, Exchange, and Sociopolitical Change in the Mediterranean and Greater Near East   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17650