Foodways and Cooking Practices in Anatolia Between the 2nd and 1st Millennium BCE

This study investigates the foodways widespread in Anatolia between the Late Bronze Age and Early and Middle Iron Age (1650-650 BCE) through the lens of cooking devices (fire installations and kitchenware). Based on a comparative qualitative and quantitative analysis of these tools, I highlight the potential continuities and discontinuities in cooking practices across six geographic regions (Western, Northern, Central, Mediterranean, Eastern, and Southeastern Anatolia), both diachronically and synchronically. This research draws upon published materials discovered over a century of field research at various sites (110 in total) on the Anatolian Peninsula. The analysed dataset was supplemented with a corpus of unpublished materials gathered at the archaeological sites of Uşaklı Höyük, Kınık Höyük, Porsuk-Zeyve Höyük, and Boğazköy-Ḫattuša. Overall, 954 fire installations and 9295 kitchenware were documented. Hearths, ovens, andiron, cooking pots, and baking plates were subjected to analysis and interpretation from a functional standpoint, taking into account their archaeological context of discovery and their physical and technical properties (size, shape, type of fabric, colours, traces of use, production techniques). To provide further support for the typological subdivision and the interpretation of construction techniques and mode of use of these cooking devices, I carried out statistical analyses and integrated information from new multidisciplinary approaches, including palaeoeconomy studies, petrographic and chemical analyses, residue analysis, experimental archaeology, and ethnoarchaeological observations. For each region that makes up the Anatolian Peninsula, I discuss the different types of fire installations and kitchenware, highlighting the potential continuities and discontinuities in a diachronic key, particularly following macro-developments beyond a regional scale and local phenomena. Furthermore, through a comparative analysis of the disparate regions within a synchronic key, I discern similarities, contrasts, and prospective instances of cultural interaction between them. Specifically, the resulting picture is one of a composite Anatolia both during the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age from the point of view of foodways. I suggest that cooking habits were not homogenised among the Hittite Empire and other regional polities during the Late Bronze Age, but local differences were maintained. With the collapse of the supra-regional system of the great powers that had characterised the 2nd Millennium BCE in the Eastern Mediterranean, the aforementioned regional and sub-regional differences in cooking habits seem to persist and become more visible. Based on this, I hypothesise three distinct regional phenomena within Anatolian cooking practices (reorganisation, transformation and continuity) and discuss their possible internal and external causes.