Feeding the Household and the Spirit During the Ubaid Period at Kenan Tepe, Turkey

Summary

This is an abstract from the "From Households to Empires: Papers Presented in Honor of Bradley J. Parker" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

During the Ubaid Period, a small village overlooked the Tigris River at the site we now call Kenan Tepe. Here, household members carried out activities both inside and around their houses, as well as utilizing roof-top spaces. During its habitation one of the structures burned and collapsed, preserving evidence of daily household activities in a manner only possible through disastrous events of the living. Inspired by work with Dr. Bradley Parker, I use evidence of household activities to craft an ancient taste of place for Kenan Tepe through analyses of food preparation assemblages, with special attention paid to ground stone tools. Cook pots and grinding stones are anything but simple and cannot be interpreted as serving solely practical functions. The imminently durable basalt favored by Kenan Tepe residents shows that one block of stone was used for generations, transformed from one tool to the next as use shaped both its functionality and meaning. Of use for both the living and the dead, ground stone tools of Ubaid Period Kenan Tepe exhibit extreme repurposing over the course of their multiple use lives.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• From Households to Empires: Papers Presented in Honor of Bradley J. Parker   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25274