Dutch Oven and Bantenese Cooking Stove: Coarse Earthenware Study in the Sultanate of Banten, Java, Indonesia

Abstract

This paper analyzes Dutch and indigenous adaptation processes of foodways in the colonial Dutch East Indies, using seventeenth to early nineteenth-century archaeological evidence from Banten, Java. Banten was a global trading center and the focal point of the expansion in Asia of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Its cosmopolitan and multinational society was already apparent when the Dutch arrived in 1596. Our research suggests that the Dutch in Banten adapted to using locally produced utilitarian earthenware instead of importing European vessels or having European-style cookware made in Banten. Banten’s pre-existing market-oriented urban society made many of the basic necessities available for the VOC garrison in Banten. Perhaps equally important in facilitating Dutch adaptation to local foodways was the presence of local women and Asian cooks in their daily life.