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THE CASE OF THE “HUSKING TRAYS”: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF A POTTERY TYPOLOGY SUPPOSED TO BE USED FOR BAKING BREAD Sergio Taranto1 ABSTRACT In the present research, the attention is focused on the so called “husking trays”; one of the most “international” pottery shapes used by the communities of Upper Mesopotamia during the 7th and the first half of the 6th millennium BC. The main characteristic of these large trays is that their interior surfaces were crossed by incisions and impressions of different depths. Several hy- potheses were suggested by the scholars about how the husking trays could have been used, but these ones have remained merely theories so far. The two most shared hypotheses about their functionality have been tested through a first set of experiments. RESUMEN En la investigación actual la atención ésta focalizada en los llamados “husking trays”, una de las formas cerámicas más “internacionales” utilizadas por las comunidades del Neolítico Final a lo largo del 7º y la primera mitad del 6º milenio BC. La principal característica de estas grandes bandejas cerámicas es que tienen una superficie interior con incisiones e impresiones de distinta profundidad. Diversas hipótesis han sido sugeridas por los científicos sobre como los husking trays pudieron haber sido utilizados, pero estas no han salido del ámbito de la teoría. Las dos hipótesis más compartidas sobre su posible función han sido objeto de una primera serie de pruebas experimentales. Keywords: Late Neolithic, Upper Mesopotamia, pottery, cereals, ovens, bread. Palabras clave: Neolítico Final, Alta Mesopotamia, cerámica, cereales, hornos, pan 1. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in joint research with l’Università degli studi di Roma la Sapienza. GRAMPO; SAPPO; LTFAPA [email protected] Butlletí Arqueològic, V, 40 (2018), ISSN 1695­5862 (p 57­63) 58 SERGIO TARANTO Introduction As early as the mid-Twentieth century several fragments of a large pottery ba- sins came to the light from Late Neolithic strata of archaeological excavations in the Northern Mesopotamia. They were large trays with wide oval bases (up to 60 cm in length and 40 cm long) and low sides (ca. 10 cm high) made of a coarsely strew-tempered clay. Both the base and the sides were extremely thick and usu- ally carried out in a rough way. Meanwhile the outer surfaces did not show any decoration, the inner surfaces were completely crossed by incisions, impressions or grooves of different depths. By these actions the surfaces could be characterized by a wide variety of patterns: parallel lines, criss-crossed lines, impressions and also combining different patterns together. These marks entirely covered the inte- rior surface of the husking trays and have always caught the curiosity of scholars. Functional hypothesis Since the first findings of fragments of husking trays, the archaeologists (Lloyd and Safar 1945), made the attempt to imagine a function for a such peculiar pot- tery shape. Thus, they suggested that those basins were used to facilitate the de- tachment of the grains from their husk. For this reason, they gave them the name “husking trays”. Likely they supposed that these trays were used like large graters on which corrugated surface the spikes would be rubbed so on the corrugated sur- face that the cereal caryopsis should be husked. In the early 80’s, when M. Voigt was writing about the husking trays found in the excavation of Hajji Firuz Tepe in Iran, she questioned the previous interpretation of Lloyd and Safar. She wrote: “It is unlikely that the trays were used for husking, given their size and weight and the availability of baskets for tossing grain into the wind….One possibility is that they were used to bake flat bread: when heated, their textured, matte interiors would have provided a surface on which a thin layer of dough could have been cooked and removed with a minimum of sticking” (Voigt 1983). Since then, it had begun to be doubted that the husking trays had the function that their name suggests. Today a lot of scholars tend not to believe it. Instead Voigt’s hypotheses had enough success within the scientific world. Other scholar hypotheses were put forward, but with less success. Experimental tests To verify if the two most shared hypotheses about the functionality of the husking trays were actually feasible, experimental tests were carried out1: a “husking experiment” and a series of “baking experiments”. 1. A set of experiments were performed. Here only the main results will be shown. Butlletí Arqueològic, V, 40 (2018), ISSN 1695­5862 (p 57­63) THE CASE OF THE “HUSKING TRAYS”: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF A POTTERY TYPOLOGY 59 To limit the variables involved in the experiments, some parameters related to the main aspects of the tests (pottery, fire installations, cereal, dough, sour- dough, fuel) were arbitrarily chosen2. • Reproduction of the husking trays. The first step was to reproduce the husking trays on the basis of a precise context which showed a good con- cerning documentation (Mathieu 2002). The Syrian archaeological site of Tell Sabi Abyad was chosen (Nieuwenhuyse 2008). On the basis of the drawings and the compositional data of husking trays found in this site, functional replicas were recreated. Six reproductions, were performed according to both the pinching and the coiling techniques with coarse clay, a large amount of vegetal bits and water3. • Reproduction of the fire installations. To test the second hypothesis it was necessary to reproduce also the three kinds of fire installations supposed to be present in that period: domed-oven, tabun-like oven4 and fireplace. Husking Experiment Firstly, the husking trays were used to separate the grains from the husk to verify the hypothesis suggested by Lloyd, Safar and Braidwood. Thus, the husk- ing trays were used like large graters. Barley spikes were rubbed against the inner surface of the husking trays. The experimental tests have revealed that is highly unlikely that the husking trays were used in this manner because the surface eas- ily eroded; the pottery is too fragile to do an action like this one with such hard grains. In addition, the impressions/incisions did not seem to be functional, if anything they were an obstacle. Usually, the impressions and the grooves were so large that whole bits of spikes filled them without breaking up. Baking Experiment Then the husking trays were used as trays to bake bread. Obviously, there is an infinite variety of kinds of bread in the world. The objective was also to 2. During the experiments both durum wheat and hulled barley were used according to the main common paleobotanical remains of the Late Neolitihic sites and Sabi Abyad (Ak- kermans et al. 2014); the flour was stone-grounded and was roughly sifted. For the baking tests wood-coal was used as fuel. 3. The major part of the husking tray replicas was carried out during the course of experi- mental archaeology maintained by professor C. Lemorini in the 2015/16 at the Sapienza Uni- versity of Rome. 4. The actual existence of tabun-like ovens for the Neolithic Period of the Near East was recently questioned (Balossi-Mori 2014). Butlletí Arqueològic, V, 40 (2018), ISSN 1695­5862 (p 57­63) 60 SERGIO TARANTO obtain a bread not completely burned and yet not so undercooked. Preferably a bread baked homogenously. To understand what happened during the experiments it is necessary to un- derline two concepts of the physical and chemical transformation involved in baking bread: 1) The crust of the bread comes out when the superficial part of the dough abruptly comes into contact with high temperatures, while the inside part of the dough turns into crumbs caused by a different kind of phe- nomena. 2) In the cereals there is a great concentration of gluten. It creates strong interconnections inside the dough and the bread became a unity: the loaf. I baking experiment In the first set of experiments, the husking trays were used for baking bread in the domed oven (fig. 1). Even if the variables like consistency of dough (liq- uid, semiliquid or solid), cooking-time, temperatures, presence/absence of sour- dough, kinds of cereal-flour were changed, the results were always negative. While at the base of the tray the dough remained totally undercooked; so wet and tenuous that the marks of the tray were completely useless. Instead the top of the dough turned into a super-hard crust that stuck in a very strong way to the sides of the husking tray. After baking it was impossible to take out the bread from the tray without the help of metal tools and to avoid damaging the ceramic surface. All these problems were due to the fact that the heat only came from the top. II baking experiment Bread was baked by means of the tabun-like oven in the way that the heat would have come from the bottom. The tray was put at the top of the oven (fig. 2). Also, with this kind of oven the variables were changed more times but, suf- ficient satisfactory results were never obtained. In fact, not only did the upper surface of the bread remained undercooked but, the use of this kind of oven left burning traces on the external surface of the tray that does not appear on the archaeological shards. III baking experiment For the third set of experiments the hypothesis suggested by Voigt was tested: the husking trays were used with the simple fireplace. Once again, even though the variables were changed, the husking trays did not work either: the dough never got completely baked. The reason was that the husking tray was so large Butlletí Arqueològic, V, 40 (2018), ISSN 1695­5862 (p 57­63) THE CASE OF THE “HUSKING TRAYS”: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF A POTTERY TYPOLOGY 61 that it prevented the oxygen to feed the burning-coals below 5; it extinguished them and the dough did not have enough heat to turn into bread.

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