Kitchenalia in Bronze Age Cyprus

Abstract

This article explores the materiality of food production and consumption within the household in Bronze Age Cyprus. The focus is on embodied encounters with the “stuff of food”—the pots, pans, and other kitchen implements that were used on a daily basis—and how these shaped people's lives. Throughout the Early and Middle Bronze Ages, generations of families on Cyprus used Red Polished pottery to serve and consume food and drink: the round-bottomed pots were not designed to be laid on a table, indicative of the development of very specific customs of dining at home. The very limited range of pottery (wares and forms) available to the Early-Middle Cypriot householder suggests a monotone cultural experience. The introduction of vessels with flat bases or ring bases at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age might indicate a move to dining around a table—a radically different engagement with the physical, material world that undoubtedly affected social relations. This was accompanied by radical shifts in production practices—a move away from household production into the realm of craft specialists—alongside which there was an explosion in the range of tableware for consumption of food and drink and of utilitarian wares used within the kitchen. This article interrogates the implied transformations in the cultural knowledge embedded within people's engagement with their material world and the very different visual and tactile experiences involved in the daily use of pottery in the Late Bronze Age Cypriot household.