Roundup of Archaeology and History July 14-July 20

Here are two posts I enjoyed this week–bread and picrolite figurines (I’m not sure what that shows about me…). I’m deep into several projects that you will see the fruits of in the coming months, but have to remain faceless for now. One will involve a cookbook of foods from my fiction and some very cool added recipes from a friend who works with the truly ancient recipes. Just hang on, it’s coming free to you, my long time blog readers and friends.

Bread 14,000 years ago, at least 3,000 years before agriculture in the region. A hunter-gatherer fireplace revealed charred crumbs of bread, DNA studies showed. Grains—barley, einkorn wheat or oats—were gathered, ground and baked into what was probably an unleavened flatbread cooked on hot stone or ashes of an open fireplace. It now looks like the culture of grinding and baking pre-existed and probably helped drive the rise of agriculture, the switch to settling in one place and growing stuff. These trace remains of bread come from northern Jordan. The previous earliest bread came from Çatalhöyük in Turkey and dated to about 9,100 years ago, that is after settled agriculture in that region. But such close study of food remains has not until now been done at most early archaeological excavations, so our lack of information is probably driven by lack of collecting it rather than lack of pre-agricultural bread. Other evidence in the same fireplace with the bread crumbs indicates bread might have been a special, high effort food for feasting, rather than the daily staple we think of. Gathering, grinding etc. would represent a lot of labor. I find this idea of what drives cultural change quite intriguing. A chicken and egg question of wide implications. What turns a group of human beings to choose a radically different structure to their lives? Click here for The Guardian “Archaeologists find earliest evidence of bread”  

In the realms of archaeological finds, Cyprus’s picrolite figurines aren’t super sexy or dramatic, but I love them. Picrolite is a pale green stone that apparently is easy to carve and smooth to a polish. Chalcolithic era figurines in abundance have been found on Cyprus—another this year at a prehistoric excavation in the Polis Chrysochous region, as reported in this article. Their faces pull one directly into this early human time. Many represent women in labor. They evoke something powerful from the human soul, I think. I’m glad more are coming from the ground as each season of digs progresses on Cyprus. Click here for Archaeology News Network “Chalcolithic and Bronze Age finds at Makounta Voules excavations in Cyprus”