Luc De Bry <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Not being a specialist in the History of Cooking Technologies, I am
> missing something here. I do not understand this "pre-pottery"
> expression.  How could a population rely on cereals crops without basic
> cooking/detoxifying technology?

This is precisely the problem I wqas referring to: we have all the
features of the Neolithic, i.e. domesticated crops and animals, permanent
settlements and even towns with 2 storey buildings, but we have no
pottery.  So it is called the pre-pottery Neolithic meaning the Neolithic
before pottery was invented. This period lasts for 1500 years in some
parts of Syria and Palestine.   However we also know of a number of other
aceramic societies - The Neolithic and Iron Age of Ireland and the
Iron Age and Early Medieval periods in Wales appear to have been without
pottery.

> About dates : Man learnt to control and to use the fire some 700,000
> years ago.  Millstones were used in High-Egypt some 17,000 years BC.
> The first cultures of cereals happened in the fertile crescent some
> 10,000 years B.C.

Actually cultivation begins about 8000 BC / 10000 *BP*.

> The technology to detoxify grains and beans must have existed BEFORE
> agriculture.

Certainly.  For example, we have the Natufian culture in Syria/Palestine
immediately preceding the Neolithic, with a dependence on collection of
wild cereals, including grindstones

<snip>
> Malting and brewing barley would have been just impossible without
> adequate containers for liquid fermentation, and beer-drinking.  And why
> would someone cultivate barley if he cannot detoxify it?

It would be possible to ferment it in skins/stomachs as someone pointed
out yesterday - and the narcotic effect of alcohol might be sufficent
reason to grow barley in small quantities.  But cooking in such
containers would be more difficult.

But of course as Jennie Brand Miller <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> The Australian Aboriginal people might be a good example here. They had
> no pottery.
>
> First they roasted the cereals (or other seeds such as acacias) in the
> ashes of a fire. The women would then separate the seeds from the dirt
> and ashes using a highly skilled shaking action in a coolamon (a curved
> wooden dish).  They would then grind the seeds on a grinding stone mixing in a
> little water.  They woould eat the paste with their fingers or
> alternatively cook the paste on a hot stone to form a kind of damper.

This is a possibility, but it sounds very labour intensive for an
agricultural society where the main food source may be cereals.  Does
anyone know of any ethnographic accounts of aceramic agricultural
societies?

Andrew Millard

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 Dr. Andrew Millard                              [log in to unmask]
 Department of Archaeology, University of Durham,   Tel: +44 191 374 4757
 South Road, Durham. DH1 3LE. United Kingdom.       Fax: +44 191 374 3619
                      http://www.dur.ac.uk/~drk0arm/
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