ANCIENT FOOD TECHNOLOGY IN GREECE
The Mediterranean area enjoys a generally consistent climate and vegetation, which, broadly speaking, apparently has changed little since antiquity. The winters, stretching between October and April, are generally wet and mild; the summer months, May through September, are hot and dry. Unlike in Egypt and Mesopotamia, where rivers seasonally provided (or not) ample water for irrigation agriculture, farmers throughout the Mediterranean region, like those in Anatolia, Northern Assyria, Syria, and Palestine, predominantly engaged in dry farming and depended upon adequate supplies of rain for crops sown during the autumn and winter months.
Cereals, legumes, and many fruits, vegetables, and nuts grow in abundance wherever fertile soil and moisture permit, while the lack of summer rains restricts the growth of most orchard crops. The notable exceptions are the olive, fig, and grapevine, which need relatively little water to thrive. Indeed, the Mediterranean triad, that is the cereals, both wheat and barley, the grapevine, and the olive tree — though some would include the legumes as well made up the most important cash crops in the Bronze Age Aegean. The appearance of Bronze Age palace institutions on Crete and in southern Greece, according to some scholars, arose from the systematic exploitation of these and other crops predominantly restricted to particular regions.
The palaces of the Minoans, and later the Mycenaeans who continued their bureaucratic system, served as redistributive centers for goods collected from surrounding rural areas and maintained in central storehouses. Other scholars argue that there is insufficient archaeological evidence for intensive exploitation of vines and olives before the Middle Bronze Age, and probably later. They contend that the rise of palace cultures rests upon other foundations, such as control of production. The records of the Minoan and Mycenaean bureaucracies, as recorded in the Linear A and Β scripts, respectively, are important sources for the palace economy, but they provide little information on rural economic activities.
Likewise, they provide not a full record of the operations of the state bureaucracy, but shorthand notations on details of direct interest to the palace during a single year. The tablets record primarily receipt and disbursement of goods and inventories, and list most commonly such food items as cereals (both wheat and barley), olives, honey, oil, figs, and livestock. Data gleaned from them, however, indicate that the state exercised little direct control over production of staple crops, such as grain and grapes, or products made from them, merely contenting itself with receiving them from agricultural areas and redistributing them to dependents in the form of ration payments. It took a direct interest, however, in certain agricultural products and in their industrial processes, such as, for exampie, flax for textiles and oil for perfumes.
Cereals
Grain needed storage facilities while awaiting distribution or processing into various food products. Storage might take various forms, such as a large building that set aside a special storeroom for grain in loose form, a small building given entirely over to the same purpose, small clay or stone-lined shallow pits (bothroi), clay bins, and large terra-cotta vessels (pithoi) placed in select rooms or courtyards of palaces, such as Knossos, Phaistos, and Mycenae. Most of these would be difficult to recognize as grain storage facilities without some physical evidence that grain had been stored there. Storerooms in the Unexplored Mansion at Knossos, for example, contained jars of emmer wheat, bread or macaroni wheat, hulled barley, and some legumes and figs. The wheat and barley, stored as free or cleaned grains, were apparently awaiting final processing.
Emmer spikelets found in mid-fourteenth-ccntury B. C. storerooms in Assiros Toumba, in Macedonia, however, had apparently been incompletely threshed. This practice not only obviated the need to process all the grain at one time, but also gave added protection against pests and fungal attack, and so was probably the preferred method for long-term storage.
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| Milling flour scenes |
Additionally, he adds that the stone lining was sufficient to protect the grain in the essentially dry climate of Crete, particularly when, as at Knossos, the pits were located in elevated locations. Finally, he notes that the size of the pits would be no hindrance to grain storage if the purpose was to store seed for the coming year or to maintain a long-term reserve. While the virtues of belowground grain storage in Crete may be open to interpretation, both Strasser and Halstead agree that the above ground facilities at Mallia and elsewhere served the purpose effectively.
The above ground granary complex at the Middle-Minoan palace at Mallia possessed eight circular structures arranged in two rows of four granaries each and the whole surrounded on three sides by a wall. These circular, plaster-lined structures were smaller than the underground koulouras at Knossos and Phaistos, varying in diameter between 3.7 m. and 4.0 m. The height of these structures is unknown, but at least five possessed a central pillar that probably supported a roof of some type. Strasser suggests a flat roof. If correct, the Mallia granary complex would constitute a granary type distinct from the usual domed, or beehive, granary common to Egypt, such as are represented in tomb paintings from Thebes, Beni Hasan, and Tell el-Amarna, as well as that found at the Palestinian site of Beth Yerah. The granary complex at Mallia, however, may be an exception to Bronze Age Aegean granaries that appear to reflect Egyptian and Near Eastern influence.
Early examples of round, dome-shaped buildings, which may have served as granaries, include the mainland "Rundbauten" of Orchomenos and Tiryns, both dating to the Early Helladic II period. The round structures at Orchomenos may have served as granaries, but their numbers suggest to Renfrew that they most likely were dwellings. The one at Tiryns may have also had a storage purpose, because it possessed plastered interior walls and was subdivided into separate compartments. But even this suggestion has its detractors. The best example, and the one most closely parallel to eastern granaries, however, is an Early Cylcadic vessel from Phylakopi. Made of steatite, the Melos vase, as it is usually called, is a model of a granary complex composed of seven circular bins arranged on three sides of an open court and surrounded by a wall possessing an entrance and gateway.
The granary compartments are open and so the exact shape of the roof is unknown. A dome-shaped roof seems probable, because in nearly all particulars the model closely resembles the granary complex at Beth Yerah in Palestine and the Egyptian granary complexes seen in tomb paintings and represented by models from, among others, the First and Second-Dynasty Royal tombs at Helwan and the Fifth-Dynasty model from Giza. In all save the appearance of a central pillar and possible flat roof, the Melos vase also reflects the structural design of the granaries at Mallia.
Evidence for processing cereals in the Aegean is confined primarily to numerous finds of Neolithic and Bronze Age saddle querns and handstones and to a few samples of stored grain, such as barley and wheat, for example at Troy, in the Thracian Chersonese, on Cos, Cyprus, and on Crete at Myrtos and Magasà, on the Cycladic island of Syros, and on the mainland at Mycenae, in various sites in the Argolid, such as Tiryns and Asine, and at Tsangli and Tsani in Thessaly. An intensive study of ground stone tools in the southern Argolid indicates that Bronze Age saddle querns were generally larger than their Neolithic predecessors and resemble closely those found at Lerna, Tiryns, and Asine to the north.
The reasons for this arc unknown. Saddle querns, usually round, ovate, rectangular, or square in shape, were often made of a hard lava, such as andesite, with a pitted and abrasive surface, imported in raw or finished form from Aegina in the Saronic Gulf. Handstones, made usually of andesite or greenstone, came in a variety of shapes, such as spherical, conical, ovate, and irregular, much as they did in the Neolithic Period. Small in size, averaging 0.10 m. in length, 0.09 m. in width, and 0.04 m. in thickness, they display little change over time. A study of ground stone materials from Mycenae dating between the Middle Helladic and Late Helladic III noted a slight change in shape of handstones to a longer and narrower form. The tripod mortars, often spouted, appearing at Late Bronze Age Mycenae and Tiryns, were probably intrusions from the Near East where they have been found at Jericho and Ebla.
The best source to provide a context to processing apparatus comes from the Late Bronze Age West House at Akrotiri on the island of Thera. One room on Thera and Crete the ground floor was apparently devoted to processing in a manner that recalls those at the palace at Ebla, but on a much smaller scale. On one side was a raised platform on the top of which were embedded two saddle querns. Excavations in the house have yielded remains of processed legumes and cereals. This material included fragments of hulled barley that seems to have been pounded in a mortar, and samples of finely ground flour. Among the latter were proportionally small amounts made from einkorn wheat and larger volumes coming from legumes and, especially, barley. Two other rooms on the ground floor served as storage areas, one for long-term storage of grain probably only threshed and then sieved to remove bulk contaminants. The second room yielded both wheat and barley flour, and so was probably a sort of kitchen where cleaned grain was processed into a form suitable for cooking and baking.
Similarly, one section of the early palace at Phaistos comprised a complex of rooms fitted with benches. The bench of one room, in a manner similar to the installation at Akrotiri, contained a cavity, which must at one time have supported the quern found next to it. In an adjoining room one bench associated with a drain and potstand and limestone basin built into another bench may indicate preparation of some sort of liquid. The stoa of Building J/T at Kommos contained four contiguous three-sided bins each associated with a quern. Apparently, the worker — to judge from entries in Linear Β tablets, most likely a woman — sat or knelt behind the quern that was slanted so that ground flour fell directly onto the floor of the bin. These enclosures were apparently designed to contain flour to be made into bread products or gruels.
Portable braziers and hearths appear frequently in Minoan houses and palaces; fixed or permanent hearths and ovens are less common. Middle Minoan fixed hearths at Knossos and Mallia take the form of a clay or stucco foundation, circular in shape, in the middle of which is a shallow cavity. Phaistos and Mallia have yielded as well rectangular fixed hearths with a shallow cavity. Most Late Minoan hearths at Kommos are pi-shaped and constructed of flat stones set on edge against a wall or in a corner. Only fragmentary examples of fixed hearths have appeared on the mainland. Although used as well for light, warmth, and focal points for social and religious gatherings, hearths also served to cook food. Various types of domestic cooking pots have come to light on Crete and on the mainland, such as triangular cooking pots, pans of various sizes and shapes, mixing bowls, jugs, and cups, made of pottery or bronze.
Although size, shape, and decoration of cooking vessels varied somewhat over time, the uses of the various cooking utensils changed little. Bronze tripod pots and kettles allowed soups and stews to be cooked over a lire placed in a brazier or hearth, while spits served to roast meat. Large permanent cooking installations were once thought to have existed only on the outside of buildings. Discoveries on Crete at Zakro and Kommos imply otherwise. The central courtyard of the Late Minoan I palace at Zakro possessed an elaborate kitchen. The room contained processing tools, such as a mortar, for preparing food, and a fixed hearth, portable braziers and grills, and various pots for cooking.
Animal bones found in the area give a hint at some of the foods prepared here. In the North House at Kommos one structure may have been an oven similar to those of the ancient Near East. The thin layer of clay lining the interior of the stone slabs forming the side walls begins to curve upward and inward at the point above the top of the slabs. If it did form a dome, it is no longer extant. Evidence for indoor fixed cooking installations on the mainland is scant. Vickery notes a domed oven found in the Troad inside a house at Thermi, and suggests that structures discovered inside houses in Thessaly at Dimini and Sesklo were also domed ovens.
The direct evidence for bread in the prehistoric Aegean remains meager. If the Mycenaean word a-to-po-qo, found on Linear Β tablets from Mycenae and Pylos, can be equated with the classical Greek word for baker, αρτοκόπος, then two conclusions reasonably follow. First, the Mycenaeans did bake bread; and second, bread making was for some individuals a profession. For the bread making process itself, we must rely on supposition from the little physical evidence found to date.
Hearths and braziers could have been used to make flat breads by heating the dough directly on hot cinders. Alternately, dough might be placed on a stone or earthenware plate, covered in some fashion, and set on the ashes. The presence of a domed oven at Kommos perhaps implies the knowledge of yeast and so the ability to make leavened bread. In the same room as the oven in the North House at Kommos, for example, stood a layer of stones next to a three-sided enclosure similar to those in Building J/T . This may have formed a platform for processing foods, such as cereals. Although beer is sometimes listed as a possible drink known to Minoans and Mycenaeans, there is no evidence to support the claim.
The earliest evidence for the wild grape appears in the Franchthi Cave, in the Argolid, dating to ca. 11,000 B. C. Although it is difficult to distinguish the wild grape from its cultivated form, grape cultivation, along with other fruits, may have arisen in eastern Macedonia, near Sitagroi, during the Late Neolithic period, at least by ca. 2800 B. C. The best evidence for it, however, comes from southern Greece, at Lerna, dated to ca. 22002000־־ B. C. The Early Bronze Age finds grapes widespread throughout the Greek Mainland in Thessaly, Attica, and the Peloponnese, in the Cyclades, and on the island of Crete. In what manner they were consumed is open to question. Many were probably eaten raw, while others may have been dried into raisins, as was done in the days of Hesiod and Homer. The earliest archaeological evidence for wine comes from Early Minoan (ca. 2170 B. C.) sites of Myrtos, on Crete, and Early Helladic (ca.2100 B.C.) Aghios Kosmas, in Attica. The former site yielded a pithos containing crushed grape skins and pips, finds suggestive to some scholars of fermented grape juice or wine. Colin Renfrew connects the appearance in the archaeological record of small cups and jugs of various shapes with the development of the new beverage in the Early Bronze Age.
The wine ideogram appears in early Cretan hieroglyphic and Linear A scripts and Mycenean texts in a form reminiscent of the Egyptian hieroglyph for wine. The long-standing controversy over the connection between Egyptian hieroglyphs and Minoan texts, as well as later Mycenaean Linear Β documents, has largely subsided. The correlation of Cretan wine ideograms, that is, Minoan hieroglyphic sign 116 and Linear A and Β forms, with the Egyptian hieroglyph, however, remains debatable. Palmer, for instance, even though she agrees that the Minoans knew the Near Eastern writing systems and patterned their own bookkeeping system on them, concludes that the similarity can be explained as merely the identification by both peoples of the trellised vine with the processed product.This does not, however, address the question of how the Minoans learned the technical knowledge of viticulture and winemaking.
An indigenous development of the winemaking process remains a possibility, though unproven. Otherwise, one can easily imagine that commercial contacts of Minoan merchants, cither directly or indirectly, with the products of Egypt and Syria-Palestine likewise brought to their attention knowledge of the processes used to produce them, especially where those products derived from food plants already known in Crete. If so, then it also remains possible that the Minoan script may have incorporated similar ways of representing at least this particular product. A precise determination of when this may have occurred is beyond our reach, but it probably happened in connection with the development of the Cretan hieroglyphic and Linear A scripts to organize and manage the resources of Minoan palaces early in the second millennium B.C.
The cultivated olive is a late comer to the Aegean, probably arriving from the Levant sometime in the fourth millennium B. C. Some evidence for olives have Age Aegean been found on Crete in Early Minoan (EM) Myrtos and Knossos and in a few Middle Minoan (MM) sites, but the material cannot be classified as wild or domesticated, since the two are difficult to distinguish. Whether the lack of evidence derives from the fact that the olive was little used during this time or, as Harriet Blitzer argues, that excavators have not actively looked for evidence is debated. Blitzer suggests that olive oil processing instruments in the EM (3500-2100 B.C.) and MM (2100-1700 B.C.) periods were made of wood or of nondescript stone and so have not survived or are unrecognizable.
Textual evidence from Linear A and Β tablets implies a significant importance attached to olive oil, not as a food item but in the form of perfume, an expensive and elite oriented luxury commodity. Olive oil, probably transported in stirrup jars or pithoi, formed part of Aegean contacts, including trade, with the Levant and the eastern Mediterranean. The difficulties inherent in distinguishing oil from grape processing installations, seen in Syria and Palestine, make it difficult to identify the archaeological from oil processing evidence for each in the Bronze Age Aegean as well. So, for example, large clay installations tubs possessing a spout at the base, found in many places on Crete such as Myrtos, may have served as oil separators, although their employment in winemaking and in washing vegetables or wool has also been suggested.
A recent study has classified forty-one Minoan wine (or oil) installations into three types. Each facility had two parts, the upper structure, or λήνος, constituted the basin where the fruit was trod or pressed; the lower part, or receptacle, called the υπολήνιον, collected the liquid expressed by hand or feet. The most common type, Type I, comprising thirty-two examples, was of terra-cotta construction and took the form of a truncated cone with a trough-spout at the bottom that protruded over the collecting vessel. The receptacle was usually in the form of a terra-cotta pithos, jar, or basin, usually fixed into the ground. Installations of this type, reported on Crete at Phourni, Knossos, Vathypetro, Mallia, Gournia, Myrtos, Palaikastro, Kato Zakros, and Epano Zakros, date from the prepalatial period of the third millennium B. C. through the Middle Minoan period.
Finds of vats at Phourni stained with must (if correctly identified) and of carbonized grape seeds and raisins at Myrtos and Knossos imply that Type I installations processed grapes. On the other hand, carbonized olive pits discovered in the vicinity of this type installation at Phourni, Myrtos, Knossos, and Kommos indicate that they could process olives as well.
The other two types are extant in only a few specimens. Type II installations, of which only three examples have been identified, comprise a rectangular floor constructed above a fixed tcrra-cotta receptacle. The use to which Type II was put remains unknown, but its utilization for a liquid of some sort seems clear. Type III, with only six examples reported, is a shallow stone basin with narrow spout, forming a pear-shaped base, erected on a platform overlooking a receiving vessel. This fixture may have processed both oil and wine, although the usually shallow basin of this type is perhaps best suited to process olives. At Late Minoan Kommos, for example, two large installations probably operated to extract oil from olives. These emplacements take the form of a raised platform of stones supporting a circular spouted press-bed made of limestone.
Exactly how the olives were crushed in the shallow basins is unknown. The flat rims could have supported a basket, and stone weights found nearby may have served to weigh down a wooden beam, in an arrangement similar to lever-and-weight presses used in Syria and Palestine. The oil would have flowed through the narrow spout and emptied into a collecting basin placed underneath. Establishing a chronological range for these processing installations is difficult. Type I, the most numerous, may have been developed as early as the prepalatial oil processing period of the third millennium B. C., and flourished through the Middle installations Minoan into the Late Minoan period. The other two types were not as widespread and appear later than Type I, with Type II found contemporaneous with Type I at a few places, such as at Epano Zakros and Kato Zakros.
Type III, not found in connection with Types I and II, is a late innovation. Blitzer compares these installations, and others in Crete, with the contemporary stone press-bed found at Maroni on Cyprus, dated to ca. 1300 B. C., and sees them as indicative of an expansion of olive oil production by a centralized Mycenaean authority as part of a growing eastern Mediterranean trade. Other scholars, however, note that although similar press-beds have been found in Crete, such as at Knossos and Palaikastro, none dating to the Bronze Age have been found on the Greek mainland.
If the Type III press-beds at Kommos and elsewhere on Crete are remains of beam presses, the question of origin arises. An answer, however, is not forth coming from the evidence on hand at present, but their similarity with presses technology on Cyprus points to a Near Eastern origin for the technical knowledge for the lever-and-weight press. Although there may have been a lever-and-weight press operating in Ugarit as early as ca. 2300 B. C., the best physical evidence dates from the tenth through eighth centuries B. C. Fourteenth and thirteenth-century B. C. Ugaritic texts, however, refer to Levantine oil exports to Egypt and Cyprus, and the Ugaritic measure for both wine and olive oil, the kdyàr of ca. twenty-two liters, finds mention in Akkadian texts from other Near Eastern sites, such as Mari.
The appearancc of the same measure in Linear A tablets and its possible mention in a Late Bronze Age Linear Β text may also indicate Ugaritic trade in these products with the eastern Mediterranean world. The fact that the first-millennium B. C. Phoenician word kd appears in Greek by the late seventh century B. C. in the form of a loan word, κάδος, as well as in a Cypro-syllabic Greek inscription of ca. 600 B. C. on Cyprus points in the same direction. The knowledge of how to process olive oil, therefore, may have also accompanied the oil itself as part of early trade contacts.
Several palace complexes have yielded storage rooms with vessels containing liquids of some kind. The magazine at Mallia takes the form of a room with six bays, each containing two rows of large pithoi. Furrows ran from each pithos into two central drains that caught any spillage from the vessels and conducted it to a jar embedded in the floor. That this storeroom held olive oil is rendered probable from similar finds at Mycenae and Pyios. The former palace had a comparable arrangement in the 1'House of the Oil Merchant," so named because of stirrup jars impregnated with oil also found there. The magazines at Pylos, with pithoi arrayed in like fashion to those at Mycenae and Mallia, yielded Linear Β tablets referring to olive oil.
Grape-processing installations were located in and served predominantly rural areas; the finished product, that is wine, was transported to palatial centers. Mycenaean administrative tablets seem to reflect this scenario as well. Wine was a luxury item, locally produced in rural areas, but enjoyed primarily by the upper classes, except on occasion, usually religious, when it could be consumed generally. No evidence exists to show that the Minoans or Mycenaeans mechanically pressed the grapes following treading, although the possibility remains, at least for Late Bronze Age Kommos, if the inhabitants knew of and utilized the lever-and-weight press for pressing olives. However, λήνοι have yet to be discovered at a Mycenaean site. What kinds of wines Minoans and Mycenaeans produced remain unknown. Although no evidence exists to show that they made both red and white wines, Philip Stanley has suggested that they did distinguish among qualities.
In his discussion of a Linear Β text from Knossos, he notes that ideogram 131, the determinative for wine, was sometimes augmented with the word de-re-u-ko, a term connected with later Greek γλεύκος and of uncertain meaning. He interprets dere-u-ko as a word denoting high quality, and deduces that its connection with 131 identified a high grade wine. He concludes, then, that the Mycenaeans had three grades of wine. The best they denoted with the wine ideogram modified by the word de-re-u-ko. An unqualified 131 ideogram identified second class wine. Stanley further argues that 131 is a reduplicated version of 131b, a linguistic pattern adopted from Egyptian hieroglyphic to distinguish differences of quality. Hence, the basic ideogram 131b by itself represented the lowest quality wine. It should be noted, however, that other scholars see 131b as designating not wine but a related liquid, either must or vinegar.
While Stanley does not explain the differences in grade, Palmer correlates quality of wine with a particular stage in the winemaking process. She identifies de-re-u-ko as free-run must forced out of grapes by their own weight before treading. This juice left alone to ferment produces the wine denoted in the text as 131 qualified by de-re-u-ko. She asserts that ideogram 131 denoted wine made only from trodden grapes, or a mixture of trodden and pressed grapes. She is less sure about ideogram 131b, though she leans toward identifying it as vinegar.
Fermentation of wine probably took place in small receiving vats, or most probably in larger pithoi. Upon completion the wine-filled pithoi were most likely sealed and placed in large storage rooms of palaces or in separate magazines in surrounding districts along with vessels of oil and other commodities. Outside of the few remains of grape pips in EM Myrtos and EH Aghios Kosmas, evidence for wine storage is meager. What evidence there is, such as at MM Phaistos, LM Monastiraki, and LH Orchomenos, is ambiguous, since wine storage can rarely be differentiated from preservation of raisins. The socalled "Wine Magazine" at Pylos acquired its designation from the discovery in two rooms of numerous large pithoi and clay nodules of which four bore an impressed wine ideogram. The estimated minimum capacity of the pithoi in the large inner room is 4,683 liters. Since many of the nodules bore no commodity ideogram, products other than wine may have been stored there as well.
Miscellaneous Processes
Methods of food processing practiced during the Aegean Bronze Age remain littie understood today because of a lack of definitive archaeological material and the ambiguous nature of the linguistic evidence. Some of these processes may have arisen indigenously; others most likely developed under Near Eastern and Egyptian influence. This is particularly true for the production of olive oil and wine, as well as the storage and processing of cereals. Evidence for processing other food items is practically nonexistent. Finds of animal bones, such as those of sheep, goats, swine, cattle, and other small animals and fowl, plus artistic representations of various animals on cups and seals, imply the hunting of some and the domestication of other food animals. Although Homer's epics and the Linear Β tablets present a picture of a Mycenaean diet heavily weighted toward meat, archaeologists have little investigated cut marks on bones to confirm butchery methods, and no art historical material illustrates the process.
Physical evidence for the dietary role of fresh fish, at least, includes fish hooks and fish bones, found on Cyprus, Faros, Crete at Phaistos, Tylissos, and Knossos (still in a cooking pot), and on the mainland at Thebes remains of edible shellfish. Paintings on walls and pottery as well as seals showing fish and fishermen supplement the archeological material, at least for Minoans. Evidence for dried or salted fish, however, is totally lacking.
BY ROBERT I. CURTIS in the book 'ANCIENT FOOD TECHNOLOGY' Volume 5 of 'Technology and Change in History'. BRILL, Leiden, Boston, Koln, 2001, Chapter 6, 'The Greek World, Bronze Age', p.259-275. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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