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Carbonized garlic, with modern garlic for comparison. (Photograph by Crawford H. Greenewalt, jr.)
Carbonized foodstuffs
The Lydians and their World
(2010)
Cat. 69
- Date
- Mid-6th c BC, Lydian
- Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
- Org09.002
- Material
- Organic
- Object Type
- Organic
- Site
- Sardis
- Sector
- MMS
- Trench
- MMS-I 84.1
- Locus
- MMS-I 84.1 Locus 34
- B-Grid Coordinates
- E145.7 - E150 / S67.2 - S70 *100.57 - 100.34
- Description
- Samples of carbonized foodstuffs from the Lydian houses in sector MMS-I (Cahill, “City of Sardis”), Areas 1, 3, and 4-6. These include wheat and barley, which would have been the staples of most ancient diets; tiny chickpeas; and carbonized garlic.
- Comments
- Large quantities of burned and carbonized foodstuffs are recovered only in unusual circumstances, such as when a house is destroyed by fire, as in the case of Sardis in the mid-sixth century (Cahill, “The Persian Sack of Sardis”). Among the larger finds were: a sack or basket full of barley; a large coarse handleless jar that contained chickpeas; another large cookingware amphora that contained barley in the “kitchen,” which was probably on a shelf over the grinding bench where the barley would have been ground; a cooking pot full of barley; and a head of garlic that was found next to a wall.
- See Also
- Cahill, “City of Sardis”; Greenewalt, “Bon Appetit”; Cahill, “Persian Sack”.
- Bibliography
- Greenewalt et al. 1988, 29; Greenewalt et al. 1990, 149; Cahill 2000
- Author
- NDC