What’s For Dinner? The Answer Is In the Pot By Andrea M. Berlin 046 Pottery talks. That’s a little secret archaeologists know but few outsiders are privy to. And pottery can talk—a lot. If you were to excavate George Washington’s dining room at Mount Vernon and recover fragments of the many plates and cups and bowls and serving dishes used there, you would conclude that our first president cared greatly about food and entertainment. If you went on to excavate the pantry and kitchen and recovered the numerous storage, preparation and cooking vessels that were used there, you would further conclude that this was a household essentially organized around food: its cultivation, storage, processing (by grinding or salting) and seemingly nonstop preparation and service, usually to many people at once. Happily for historians, we not only know who lived at Mount Vernon, we have written sources concerning what life was like there. These records include Washington’s own diaries and accounts as well as visitors’ descriptions, such as this one from 1782 by the Marquis de Chastellux, a wealthy French nobleman: “[We enjoyed] an excellent breakfast at nine in the morning, a big dinner at two o’clock, tea and punch in the afternoon, and an elegant little supper. [These] divided the day most happily, for those whose appetites were equal to it.” 1 The excavation of a house in Italy dating from the fourth through the second centuries B.C.E., on the other hand, would present you with an entirely different picture. There you would find a limited variety among the relatively few vessels, generally plainly finished—in other words, undecorated common pottery. There would be no vessels for large-scale entertaining or even for preparing and cooking different sorts of meals. But as with Mount Vernon, for Republican period Italy there are also written sources that complement the archaeological record. Romans of that time were thrifty, even penurious, as the contemporary Stoic philosopher Poseidonius describes: “The Romans of early times were moderate and highly virtuous in all things. The utensils which [they] bought were of earthenware, and in them were the simplest foods and drinks in the world.” 2 As an archaeologist, and specifically as a ceramics (pottery) specialist, I am heartened by the congruence between these written descriptions and their respective collections of household goods. That is because for most archaeological sites, household pottery is abundant but written records identifying the residents and detailing their lives are lacking. It is the job of an archaeological ceramicist to identify that pottery—by fabric, origin, form and function—and then to “read” this material to see what it reveals about the 048people who left it behind. I will explain how pottery is read by using pottery from three different settlements from three different centuries. As it happens, however, all three settlements are found on the same site. The site is Tel Anafa, a small mound 27 miles east of the Phoenician port of Tyre, in the Hula Valley of northern Israel. The name is modern Hebrew for “Mound of the Water Heron.” The valley’s high water table used to support fish ponds that attracted all kinds of water birds, including herons. Excavations began in 1968 under the direction of Saul Weinberg of the University of Missouri-Columbia. In 1978 the University of Michigan joined the effort, under the direction of Sharon Herbert. By the last season, in 1986, about 20 percent of the mound’s upper levels had been cleared and thousands of artifacts recovered—including more than 22,000 pounds of pottery. That’s 11 tons! 3 The Third-Century B.C.E. Settlement The first settlers about whom we have substantial evidence came to Tel Anafa early in the third century B.C.E. (the early Hellenistic period). The discovery of fifteen coins of Ptolemy I (301–280 B.C.E.) allow us to date the settlement. Ptolemy was a general under Alexander the Great. When Alexander died in 323, Ptolemy claimed hegemony over Egypt, Palestine and Phoenicia, the southernmost sections of Alexander’s realms. No one challenged his claim to Egypt, but he spent 30 years fighting for Palestine and Phoenicia. His chief nemesis was Seleucus I, another of Alexander’s generals. Seleucus had claimed the bulk of what had been the Achaemenid Persian Empire, from 049Asia Minor in the west to Bactria in the east and as far south as Palestine. In 301 B.C.E. the two former generals agreed to a division: Seleucus would control northern and central Phoenicia and Ptolemy would control southern Phoenicia and Palestine. Ptolemy’s territories included the Hula Valley, which was largely unsettled at the time. The Ptolemies organized their empire around agriculture and maintained their economy 1