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Thematic issue

So Many Bowls… but in Which Sense?

On the Redistribution of Rations, Large Amounts of Bowls and Specialisation: Reassessing the Notions of Serial and Mass Production in Proto-Urban Mesopotamia
Plein de bols… mais dans quel sens ? Redistribution des rations, grandes quantités de bols et spécialisation : réévaluation des notions de production en série et de masse dans la Mésopotamie proto-urbaine
Johnny Samuele Baldi
p. 119-142

Résumés

Dans la littérature archéologique de l’Asie du Sud-Ouest protohistorique, le concept de production de masse a joué un rôle clé en tant que pivot d’une argumentation restée longtemps consensuelle. Cette sorte de postulat sur l’apparition de ce qu’on appelle « complexité sociale » met en relation la répétitivité de la production, la standardisation des produits finis, la spécialisation artisanale croissante et, à la fois comme aboutissement et moteur de tous ces phénomènes, l’avènement de l’urbanisation et des premiers États. Cette perspective associe la production de masse à la production en série d’un point de vue terminologique, sans faire de distinction sur le plan conceptuel, opérationnel ou de la culture matérielle. Cet article vise à identifier des critères permettant de différencier la production en série de celle de masse en analysant divers types de récipients en céramique de la fin de la préhistoire mésopotamienne, en particulier les Coba Bols (CBs) du 5e millénaire et les bols à bord biseauté (BRBs) du 4e millénaire av. n.è., provenant de fouilles en Syrie ou en cours au Kurdistan irakien. L’objectif est de caractériser les séquences opérationnelles « en série » et « de masse » comme des modes de fabrication distincts, impliquant des relations différentes – à la fois en termes de taux et de modèles de production – avec les phénomènes de standardisation et de spécialisation.

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Texte intégral

The data from Logardan are the result of research that began when, until 2019, R. Vallet (CNRS) was still the expedition leader. Then as now, this research was made possible by the support of the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, as well as the Directorate of Antiquities of Sulaymaniyah. Among my Kurdish colleagues, a special thanks goes to Kak Kamal Rahouf, who has worked with us for many years, Kak Nawshirwan Aziz Mohammad, director of excavations in the Governorate of Sumaymaniyah, and Kak Gharib Hama Hussein, former Director of the Directorate of Sulaymaniyah. I would also like to thank Pamela Fragnoli (Austrian Archaeological Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences) and Francesca Balossi (Sapienza University of Rome), who co-organised with me the workshop Serialising, standardising, specialising: Investigating a techno-social nexus underlying social complexity during the 13th ICAANE conference in Copenhagen in May 2023. This article is largely indebted to the stimuli that, over time, I have received thanks to their work and the discussions I have had with them. However, during that workshop, the majority of the observations, questions and criticisms came from Maria Bianca D’Anna (X-ray Center, Austrian Academy of Sciences): this article owes much to her friendship, the accuracy of her insights and the fruitful discussions we had. Eventually, if anyone were to wonder how it is possible that F. Balossi Restelli, P. Fragnoli and M. B. D’Anna all belong to the archaeological “school” trained at Arslantepe, I would say the answer is quite obvious: it is definitely not by accident.

Introduction: to avoid “mass” overshadowing a multiplicity of solutions

1Recent research on social aspects of food management, commensality, feasting, food politics and redistribution of rations in late prehistoric Mesopotamia has often been intrinsically associated to topics such as work organisation, social evolution and normalisation and repetitiveness of the ways of manufacturing the containers in which food was consumed (see for instance Pollock 2003, 2013, 2015; Helwing 2003; Frangipane 2016, 2018; D’Anna 2012; Balossi Restelli 2012b, 2012c; Baldi 2012c; Kennedy 2012). In essence, the appearance of recurring and regulated practices of food redistribution as well as large-scale, “public” consumption events is paralleled by the occurrence of large concentrations of bowls, be it Coba Bowls (CBs) in the 5th and Bevelled-Rim Bowls (BRBs) in the 4th millennium BCE. This happens so remarkably from a quantitative point of view that the expression “mass production” has become established as a sort of factual observation for all these bowls. In a concise way, this terminological choice makes it possible both to evoke the uniformity of certain food practices associated to specific types of very simple containers, and to account for the distinctly cursory, fast-fashioned, and definitely crude nature of these bowls (Al Quntar and Abu Jayyab 2014). Indeed, the highly modern definition of “mass production” establishes an extremely suggestive correlation between the repetitive stability of the pottery shapes used during certain collective food consumption practices, the large quantity of bowls required for these purposes and the expedient rapidity of the production methods.

2However, the very definition of “mass production” sometimes risks establishing a semantic shift and, to some extent, a sort of taken-for-granted equation between protohistoric phenomena and a set of circumstances proper to the contemporary world. This is not to criticise the expression “mass production” as anti-historical, or the way it is used by those who have studied this topic, since, of course, no author has ever attached to it the current meaning of automated, industrial manufacturing (sensu Borth 1945). Here the purpose is rather to try to establish more clearly the limits and applicability of the (very effective) definition of mass production, so that this expression does not end up as a generic term associated to any very abundant output and, thus, to blur distinct ways of organising and standardising production.

  • 1 For a summary of the analyses and hypotheses (and sometimes preconceived ideas) on the distinctive (...)
  • 2 This multifunctionality seems to be confirmed by organic residue analyses on a few BRBs specimens f (...)
  • 3 Although the specific uses of BRBs may be the subject of ongoing debate based on analyses of chemic (...)

3Indeed, a variability of meanings and customs under the umbrella term “mass productions” is inherent in the chronological and cultural distance that separates CBs and BRBs—the former associated with traditions typical of the mid–5th millennium northern Mesopotamia, and the latter an expression of the Uruk world during the 4th millennium BCE (fig. 1). CBs have often been presented as the most explicit and crude example of the end of the elegantly painted Ubaid pottery traditions at the beginning of the Late Chalcolithic (Garstang 1953; Akkermans 1988a, 1988b, 1988c; Baldi 2012b, 2012e, 2013; Baldi and Abu Jayyab 2012; Al Quntar and Abu Jayyab 2014; Marro ed. 2012; Trufelli 1993, 1994, Helwing 2003; Rothman 2000, 2002). In parallel, their role has also been studied in relation to the emergence of new commensal habits (Baldi 2012a, 2012c; Kennedy 2012; Helwing 2003; Abu Jayyab 2019). On the other hand, an enormous literature exists on BRBs,1 in particular on their possible functions. Some scholars considered them to be items with religious significance, namely markers of infant burials (de Mecquenem 1943: 12), holders for aromatics burnt in funeral areas (Buchanan 1967: 539), votive or dedicatory bowls (Campbell Thompson and Mallowan 1933: 168; Beale 1978), and special tableware for funerary banquets (Forest 1987). Other scholars have interpreted BRBs as food vessels likely to be involved in administrative and economic transactions, namely tools for processing dairy products (Delougaz 1952: 128), means for tax payment in Naturalia (Nicholas 1987: 71; 1990: 128), or packages to desiccate and transport salt cakes (Buccellati 1990: 25). More specifically, there is a fairly broad consensus that they were containers used to distribute food rations to workers (Nissen 1970: 137; Johnson 1973: 132; Sürenhagen 1974: 101; Zagarell 1989: 294; Rothman 2004: 101; Englund 2001), or moulds for baking leavened bread rations (Schmidt 1982; Chazan and Lehner 1990; Wengrow 2001: 171; Goulder 2010). Since these hypotheses are based on specific case studies observed at sites distant from each other in time and space, one cannot exclude that the great flexibility and functional adaptability of BRBs have made them a multifunctional ceramic type.2 But multifunctionality is a quite frequent attribute among bowls with simple profile and ergonomics. Therefore, it is clear that the overwhelming success of BRBs over time and space was rather dictated by a strong functional raison d’être (Potts 2009), which, whatever their specific use from time to time, was rooted not only in the economic and social value of food, but also in its centralisation and distribution by specific means and under precise circumstances.3

4Yet, some studies have suggested that, despite the differences between the 5th millennium northern Mesopotamian world and the 4th millennium Uruk cultural sphere, there was some kind of evolution that connected food consumption practices and craft organisational patterns behind diverse types of “mass produced” containers (Rothman 2004; Guarino 2008; Helwing 2003; Renette et al. 2021). Consequently, beyond the large quantities that these vessels have in common, it is worthwhile to try to define the specificities of the food redistribution and craft production systems these two types of bowls were respectively an expression, with their historically specific ways of embodying standardisation and specialisation.

Methodology: to extricate distinct feasting occasions and different ways of making bowls

5The attempt to attribute distinct definitions to different ways of manufacturing large quantities of bowls (without levelling them to the generic label of mass production) does not call into question the link between the emergence of recurring food redistribution practices and the development of strategies to make bowls in great numbers (Frangipane 1989; Baldi 2012a, 2012c; Abu Jayyab 2019; Balossi Restelli 2019; D’Anna 2020). Rather, the aim is to bring out the variability and evolution of production procedures adopted as a function of the change over time of food practices requiring the use of many bowls.

6Accordingly, starting from specific contexts of various sites (fig. 1), it is necessary to reconstruct what the precise characteristics of the ways of consuming food in bowls produced on a large scale were. At the same time, the actual extent to which bowls from these contexts were widely produced needs to be understood.

Fig. 1 – Geographical location of the sites mentioned in the text, with colour indication of the presence of large quantities of different varieties of CBs (on the left, in blue), or accumulations of BRBs (on the right, in red).

Fig. 1 – Geographical location of the sites mentioned in the text, with colour indication of the presence of large quantities of different varieties of CBs (on the left, in blue), or accumulations of BRBs (on the right, in red).
  • 4 Some recent remarkable studies focus on aspects purely related to craft organisation during these p (...)

7Therefore, here it is not a matter of investigating the craft areas and facilities where the various types of bowls were fashioned and fired, or the organisational methods underlying the work of craftspeople.4 Relevant contexts for this kind of analysis are only those related to the diverse collective practices of food consumption and distribution that characterised proto-urban Mesopotamian communities between the 5th and 4th millennia BCE. The aim is to establish a more precise quantitative definition of the “mass” of bowls (namely to estimate their number in the spaces and on the occasions in which they were used), and the amount of work and labour that went into their production. In other words, the bowls are studied based on the locations and settings where they were used during public food events, in order to focus on reconstructing the specific attributes of these different food-sharing practices. In light of the numerous scholars who have emphasised the correlation between communal eating practices and the large-scale production of bowls, how did the evolution of these large communal food gatherings affect (or rather, how was it connected to) the more or less massive quantity of bowls manufactured and the organisational patterns of their production?

  • 5 According to the EVR counting, each rim (or series of rim fragments after they have been reattached (...)
  • 6 The EVE is obtained by dividing the sum of the circumference portions of all the rims by 360 (Orton (...)

8Within defined functional spaces dedicated to food sharing, the vessels, however abundant, have been quantified both by Estimated Vessels Represented (EVR)5 and Estimated Vessels Equivalent (EVE)6 counting. The EVR is a very effective way of expressing the maximum number of ceramic individuals represented in a sample. However, EVR neglects the degree of fragmentation, which affects the chances of a pot being represented in the sample. Therefore, it generally leads to a significant overestimation of the individuals that actually made up an assemblage when it was intact (see Orton 1993; Arcelin and Truffeau-Libre 1998). On the other hand, given that each rim represents a part of an original pot mouth, the EVE, namely the total of these parts divided by a complete circumference, approximately determines the number of whole pots corresponding to the assemblage being handled. Thus, EVE is an estimate that makes it possible to compensate for the effects of the fragmentation rate and its variability depending on the different contexts, ceramic shapes and fabrics (see Orton 1993; Plog 1985; Rice 1987: 292, and fig. 7.9).

  • 7 Clearly, all the ceramic materials considered here were in primary deposition and come from floors (...)
  • 8 On a purely methodological and practical level, the schematic reconstruction of the manufacturing s (...)
  • 9 In fact, the chaînes opératoires do express the technical identities of different craft communities (...)

9Concurrently, the bowls from 5th–4th millennia BCE banquet areas7 were characterised according to their chaînes opératoires, i.e. the sequences of gestures and craft operations involved in their manufacture. The aim here is to offer a summary reconstruction of the ways of fabricating containers used during communal feasts or redistributions, so as to be able to evaluate the workforce and the solutions employed to produce them in large numbers.8 In fact, technical traditions (specifically traditional pottery chaînes opératoires) express peculiar “ways of doing” and constitute specific technical signatures of distinct groups of producers (Baldi, 2012b, 2012c, 2012d, 2012e, 2013, 2016a, 2016b, 2020, 2021; Roux, 2019a, 2019b; Gosselain, 2002, 2018; Livingstone-Smith 2007; Patton 2008; Stark 1998b; Stark et al. 2008). Consequently, identifying the different chaînes opératoires documented within an assemblage (in this case, in an area or building where communal consumption of food has taken place) and mapping their spatial distribution means characterising the producers in terms of their crafts practices.9 This makes it possible to know if the bowls in question were made by one or several groups of craftspeople, and what their differences were in terms of the methods adopted to obtain the large quantities of vessels necessary for the feast under consideration. Within the framework of the present analysis, which does not aim to reconstruct the details of the production methods, the schematic characterisation and spatial distribution of the chaînes opératoires helps to trace the nexus between the modes of production and use of the bowls. Essentially, this means recognising similarities and differences between these traditional practices and between the communities (Roux and Courty 2005, 2007; Roux 2010; Baldi 2013, 2020) that carried them out.

  • 10 In the case studies taken into consideration, the degree of fragmentation of the assemblage made it (...)

10The degree of standardisation of the bowls produced according to each of the chaînes opératoires was assessed by calculating various morphometric coefficients of variation (CV; see Eerkens and Bettinger 2008; Roux 2003; Kotsonas 2014) based on the wall thickness in the middle portion of the bowl, height, rim diameter, and capacity.10

11This heuristic approach is applied to spaces where south-Mesopotamian-type BRBs and containers were used for food consumptions and redistributions. It uses mainly vessels from 4th millennium BCE Uruk contexts in the site of Logardan (Iraqi Kurdistan; fig. 1). Actually, this follows in the footsteps of similar studies that have already looked at the 5th millennium BCE CBs and vessels from other Syrian and north-Mesopotamian feast contexts by implementing an analogous analytical method (Baldi 2012c, 2012e; Baldi and Roux 2016).

Archaeological data

The first stages: from many crude CBs to few, highly prized bowls

  • 11 Overall, CBs represent between 55 and 80% of LC1 north-Mesopotamian assemblages (Abu Jayyab 2019).
  • 12 Unfortunately, in archaeological literature, the quantitative data available on CBs is often very g (...)
  • 13 See Arzt 2001: fig. 2.14, 2.15, 2.16 for Tell Ziyada; Helwing 2003: 71–75 and fig. 2, 3a, 3b, and E (...)
  • 14 Actually, however summary, some observations made by the excavators on the manufacturing methods of (...)
  • 15 This interpretation does not imply any undue logical leap assuming an overlap between the people wh (...)

12Indeed, during the Late Chalcolithic 1 (LC1—approximately 4700–4200 BCE), CBs embody the beginning of the nexus between special occasions of sharing food and production in large quantities of the containers used to consume it. This phaenomenon has been extensively studied in recent years (Helwing 2003; Baldi 2012a, 2012c, 2016b, 2016c; Baldi and Abu Jayyab 2012; Kennedy 2012; Al Quntar and Abu Jayyab 2014; Abu Jayyab 2019). In the mid–5th millennium BCE northern Mesopotamia there were several very different types of CBs, whose shapes were the result of a typical LC1 phenomenon, namely a clear typological regionalisation of the assemblages (Balossi Restelli 2012a, 2012b; Baldi 2016b; Baldi and Abu Jayyab 2012). Nevertheless, on the one hand, all the types were manufactured in great numbers11 and, on the other, they all were used for individual consumption of semi-solid substances during special occasions or feastings.12 Although ubiquitous in LC1 contexts, CBs were never associated with all kinds of spaces or buildings, but rather to some main dwellings, and more often to the central hall of public or communal tripartite edifices. In Tell Ziyada Levels 13–14 and 15–16, Değirmentepe Level 7, Norşuntepe Level 10, Kenan Tepe, Tepe Gawra XII, Hammam et-Turkman Level 5, and in Tell Feres Level 9B–9A,13 the spatial distribution of the CBs is basically the same, with huge accumulations of bowls in major tripartite buildings (fig. 2). At Tell Feres, the enormous accumulations of CBs fragments collected in the two levels of the building have been quantified (table 1). As far as the analysis of ceramic techniques and their spatial distribution is concerned, substantial information is only available from Kenan Tepe and Tell Feres (Kennedy 2012, 2019; Baldi 2012c). It cannot be established with certainty that the pattern observed in these two sites is also valid for the other contemporary contexts, where, however, nothing seems to contradict it.14 The recurring picture is that, in each of these major communal buildings, CBs used for handing-out were produced according to a single chaîne opératoire. This does not mean that the manufacturing method was the same at all the sites, meaning in villages of regions sometimes very distant from one another. But the pattern was the same everywhere: although the bowls used for banquets in these large buildings may be very numerous, at each of the considered sites CBs were all the output of a single technical tradition, that is to say, of a single group of producers. In particular, at Tell Feres, CBs used during feasts in the large tripartite building of Levels 9B–9A were made by hollowing-out a lump of clay and pinching and stretching the walls (Baldi 2012b, 2012c). It is impossible to ascertain the nature of the social bond that existed between the members of a group of producers underlying an archaeological chaîne opératoire (Gosselain 2018; Patton 2008; Stark 1998b). Nevertheless, this morphological and functional homogeneity, with a single ceramic shape produced according to a single technical tradition suggests a social (and probably kinship; Stark et al., 2008; Roux 2019b; Gosselain 2002) homogeneity of one group feasting in its own reunion building (or in the chief’s house), using its own bowls in a moment intended to strengthen internal social ties.15

Table 1 – Deconstructing a large quantity of CBs: different methods of quantifying the CBs used and collected in Levels 9B and 9A of the Large Building at Tell Feres during the second quarter of the 5th millennium BCE.

Table 1 – Deconstructing a large quantity of CBs: different methods of quantifying the CBs used and collected in Levels 9B and 9A of the Large Building at Tell Feres during the second quarter of the 5th millennium BCE.

Fig. 2 – Large LC1 community building of Level 9B–9A at Tell Feres (French Archaeological Mission at Tell Feres al-Sharqi) and experimental session of hollowing-out a lump of clay (J. S. Baldi), the shaping technique that characterises all the CBs used and collected inside the communal building.

Fig. 2 – Large LC1 community building of Level 9B–9A at Tell Feres (French Archaeological Mission at Tell Feres al-Sharqi) and experimental session of hollowing-out a lump of clay (J. S. Baldi), the shaping technique that characterises all the CBs used and collected inside the communal building.
  • 16 Although the introduction of the rotary kinetic energy required new and specific skills, the bowls (...)

13A later evolutional stage shows how discontinuous the history of the different types of feasts attested in protohistoric Mesopotamia is. Post-CBs food consumption-based events escaped the paradigm of mobilising large quantities of bowls and, for this reason, are more elusive in the archaeological record and have been the subject of fewer studies (Baldi and Vallet 2018). However, the context documented at Tell Feres Level 5 (late LC 2) exemplifies well this (apparently new and certainly unknown for previous periods) banquet configuration (ibid.). In a buttressed building, situated in a dominant position with respect to the rest of the settlement, the distribution and consumption of food involved a restricted number of participants, judging by the small quantity of containers found in situ (Baldi and Roux 2016). Some of these vessels were quite coarse, while others were highly refined and well finished, but all belonged to the same technical tradition, of which two variants could be distinguished. One was represented by rather uneven bowls made by overlapping small round-section ring coils, while other fine bowls, assembled in the same way, were then shaped and finished using a potter’s wheel (fig. 3; ibid.). The number of bowls being used, and the way the food was being gathered and consumed, appear to be completely different from the collective meals where CBs were once employed. Yet again, the production of the bowls for these occasions was the work of a single group of producers (meaning a single community of practice), following a single technical tradition.16 It is surprising, however, to note that this same pattern of feasting, which at Tell Feres is the expression of a material-cultural (and ceramic) typically north-Mesopotamian system, is documented, in the same period and with the same features, also in the Uruk cultural sphere, at Logardan.

Fig. 3 – Experimental session and distinctive features of the wheel-coiling (on the left; J. S. Baldi), the technique used to shape the fine bowls collected inside the bipartite buttressed late LC2 building of Tell Feres Level 5 (on the right; French Archaeological Mission at Tell Feres al-Sharqi).

Fig. 3 – Experimental session and distinctive features of the wheel-coiling (on the left; J. S. Baldi), the technique used to shape the fine bowls collected inside the bipartite buttressed late LC2 building of Tell Feres Level 5 (on the right; French Archaeological Mission at Tell Feres al-Sharqi).

The next steps: from a few fancy bowls, back to a lot of rough BRBs

  • 17 Baldi and Zingarello 2021. Although Logardan is located in northern-central Mesopotamia, from a mat (...)
  • 18 Incidentally, a large number of both the coarse “proto”-BRBs (22) and elegant beaded-rim bowls (15) (...)

14Since 2015, excavations at Logardan (fig. 1; Chamchamal plain, Iraqi Kurdistan) are carried out as part of a French micro-regional, multi-period project, investigating three sites: Girdi Qala, Girdi Qala North and Logardan. In this area, but also in neighbouring sites excavated by other teams (Renette et al. 2021), the south-Mesopotamian Uruk presence is surprisingly ancient, attested since the very beginning of the 4th millennium BCE (see Lewis et al. 2020; Glatz et al. 2024a, 2024b). Alongside ceramic remains attributable to an indigenous Late Chalcolithic north-Mesopotamian community at Girdi Qala, the sites under investigation in the Chamchamal plain have yielded an extremely early and conspicuous Uruk evidence.17 Since the beginning of the 4th millennium BCE (local late LC2 / south-Mesopotamian Early Uruk phase), the basal levels of Girdi Qala were occupied by a large ceramic workshop devoted to south-Mesopotamian Uruk ceramics, while at Logardan the top of the hill was accessible thanks to a massive ramp running on the south-western slope. It was composed of uneven stones supporting a causeway with mortar, fragments of bricks and early Uruk sherds between the stones. Such a huge structure implied the use of a considerable workforce to arrange an access to the upper part of the site, dominated by a massive acropolis, with a large, buttressed building decorated with clay cones (Baldi 2022). In Level 4b, this monumental complex on the top of Logardan has yielded clear evidence for food-sharing (fig. 4). In fact, from the main hall of the buttressed building come 45 coarse V-shaped bowls (the so-called “proto-bevelled-rim bowls” (according to H. Wright’s definition; Wright 2014), namely a shape similar to the BRBs and wrongly regarded as the precursor to them, with thinner walls and roughly, loosely cut thinned rim). The main hall also yielded 36 beaded-rim little bowls with very fine and thin walls. In a side room were stored 51 Uruk bottles and upwards-turning spout jars, probably intended for the fermentation of liquids. This context suggests a fairly moderate number of participants in communal meetings or meals that included the use of both crude “proto”-BRBs and extremely fine tableware.18 Furthermore, from the point of view of the chaîne opératoire, all the in situ assemblage (coarse and fine bowls, but also jars) belonged to one macro-technical tradition. All the containers were fashioned by overlapping 2.5 cm thick rounded coils, and by a wheel-coiled variant, namely by superimposing coils of the same thickness and then using the rotational kinetic energy (RKE) for shaping the vessel on a potter’s wheel (fig. 4). This technique has nothing to do with the wheel-throwing. Yet, it is what we referred to as “wheel-coiling” technique, a very complex way of forming vessels that appears in Mesopotamia (in the North as well as in the Uruk southern sphere) in this period, i.e. at the beginning of the 4th millennium BCE. The wheel-coiling was exclusively reserved to these small, elegant, rare and very high-quality productions intended for very special occasions by the elites (Baldi 2022). This is exactly the same food consumption pattern already described for Tell Feres Level 5 in the same period. A few people gathered for meals that involved the use of a limited number of bowls, both coarse and very elaborate, all produced according to a single technical tradition by one group of craftspeople.

Fig. 4 – Logardan: plan of the monumental building from the Late LC2/Early Uruk Level 4b (on the left; FArMQaD), samples of spouted jars, proto-BRBs and fine wheel-coiled bowls with their distribution inside the building (in the middle; FArMQaD), and distinctive features of the shaping technique used to produce the bowls (on the right; J. S. Baldi).

Fig. 4 – Logardan: plan of the monumental building from the Late LC2/Early Uruk Level 4b (on the left; FArMQaD), samples of spouted jars, proto-BRBs and fine wheel-coiled bowls with their distribution inside the building (in the middle; FArMQaD), and distinctive features of the shaping technique used to produce the bowls (on the right; J. S. Baldi).
  • 19 Due to the entirely South Mesopotamian cultural nature of the assemblage from these levels at Logar (...)

15In the following phase (early Middle Uruk—Level 4a, shortly after 3700 BCE),19 the huge stone access ramp was still in use in Logardan, and the monumental building was consolidated and enlarged, with thicker walls and auxiliary rooms. A large, regular stone-paved walkway was built all around the tip of the hill, giving access to regularly spaced gates equipped with stone stairways (fig. 5). All these features do suggest an extensive communal complex used for public practices.

Fig. 5 – Logardan: some architectural features of the Middle Uruk building of Level 4a (FArMQaD).

Fig. 5 – Logardan: some architectural features of the Middle Uruk building of Level 4a (FArMQaD).
  • 20 The transition (without any discontinuity) from the Early Uruk phase to the Middle Uruk one (shown (...)
  • 21 Compared to fig. 4 (relating to the previous phase), the coloured boxes in fig. 6, which indicate t (...)

16Another (very different) context of food-sharing was brought to light in this area (fig. 6).20 In the northern sector of what was previously the main hall, two huge (preserved up to 1.8 m high) dome-shaped cooking ovens were built. Then, two additional ovens of the same size were added to the first ones. This cooking area had two doors: one opening onto an outdoor area on the south-west side of the hall, and one to the north-east, opening onto the large, paved walkway around the tip of the site. A huge amount of BRBs (216 complete BRBs profiles and many thousands more fragments; table 2) were found in situ in these two spaces, while some upwards-turning spout jars were stored in the same room previously used for the same purpose. The abundance of BRBs is not surprising, since it is at this stage—at the beginning of the Middle Uruk (Eanna Level VIII at Uruk)—that BRBs started to be produced on a large scale: they were thick-walled, a little squatter, wider and above all much more numerous than the so-called “proto-BRBs,” which were never manufactured in very large quantities. Except for the jars in the secondary room, BRBs were the only ceramic shape in this whole sector. But as far as their chaîne opératoire is concerned, they were produced by very different and spatially distinct methods. BRBs located in front of the east access of the kitchen were produced by overlapping 3.5 cm thick coils with alternating junctions (Tradition A), while those to the south of the ovens, inside the ancient hall and in front of the western entrance, were made by overlapping 2.5 cm thick rounded coils with inwards-oriented junctions (the same technique already observed in the previous stage for the “proto”-BRBs—Tradition B) (fig. 6).21

Table 2 – Deconstructing a large quantity of BRBs: different methods of quantifying the BRBs used and collected during a single event in Level 4a at Logardan, around 3700 BCE.

Table 2 – Deconstructing a large quantity of BRBs: different methods of quantifying the BRBs used and collected during a single event in Level 4a at Logardan, around 3700 BCE.

Fig. 6 – Logardan: plan of the monumental building from the Early LC3/Middle Uruk Level 4a (on the left; FArMQaD), samples of spouted jars and BRBs with their distribution inside and outside the building (in the middle; FArMQaD), according to the distinctive chaînes opératoires used to produce the BRBs (A and B, expressions of two different underlying groups—on the right—J. S. Baldi).

Fig. 6 – Logardan: plan of the monumental building from the Early LC3/Middle Uruk Level 4a (on the left; FArMQaD), samples of spouted jars and BRBs with their distribution inside and outside the building (in the middle; FArMQaD), according to the distinctive chaînes opératoires used to produce the BRBs (A and B, expressions of two different underlying groups—on the right—J. S. Baldi).
  • 22 Here, the equation 1 technical tradition = 1 group of producers may appear to be too rigid or schem (...)
  • 23 In the early Middle Uruk phase, BRBs at Logardan were also produced according to another technique: (...)

17Although the use of the wheel-coiling (as rare as in the earlier level) was still attested in this period, compared to the previous phase, the collective meals occurred without any use of fine wheel-coiled tableware. This picture seems to suggest a practice with many more participants than before, to the extent that people involved in this food-consumption/distribution of ration event could not be confined to a single room. Overall, this redistribution clearly implied a large-scale practice, in which the use of BRBs alone seems to indicate a kind of normalisation, or ordinariness. Yet BRBs were produced in two very different ways, and in no case this was attributable to distinct classes of capacity. Therefore, these different chaînes opératoires were specific to two distinct groups of craftspeople,22 denoting a more complex picture than in the previous level.23 Everything seems to suggest a broad, relatively usual, and public food-redistribution event. However, control over the quantities of food to be allocated to the individuals took place from a kitchen shared by two groups, each characterised by a particular ceramic operational sequence, as well as by a location on a given side with respect to the cooking area, accessible through a specific door (fig. 6).

18A little later, during the late LC3 and LC4/mature Middle Uruk, Logardan was abandoned. In parallel, south-Mesopotamian settlers established an independent little Uruk village at Girdi Qala North, building a residential area separate from the local north-Mesopotamian communities (Baldi and Zingarello 2021; Baldi 2022). In this settlement, the contexts related to the processing and consumption of food, with extensive use of BRBs, were exclusively domestic. Then, from the end of the LC4/late Middle Uruk, the Qara Dagh-Chamchamal area, as the whole Trans-Tigridian region, no longer shows any trace of south-Mesopotamian Uruk presence. However, even outside the Uruk cultural area, public food distributions during the LC4 seem to have continued to take place following the same patterns observed in Logardan 4a in the LC3. In particular, only one category of coarse bowls was employed, in very large quantities. As for the spatial distribution of ceramic techniques, significant information comes from the LC4 Building XXIX (Temple C) at Arslantepe VII (Frangipane 2002; Fragnoli and Frangipane 2022), where the bowls found in situ were produced by several different techniques, just as at Logardan 4a. Thus, although the scale of these redistributive practices was much larger than before, it seems clear that there was more than one institution engaged in allocating meals. Later, the archaeological evidence is very scarce for the LC5/Late Uruk, namely the phase often considered to represent the economic peak for the Uruk cultural sphere (Frangipane 2010; Butterlin 2003). Consequently, the contexts observed at Logardan 4b–4a, during the Early and Middle Uruk, refer to a quite poorly documented and yet crucial phase to reconstruct the evolution of the protohistoric food-sharing and redistributive practices.

Discussion

Quantifying and deconstructing different “masses” of bowls

19The noticeable differences between the case studies here presented show a clear (and non-linear) evolution both in the ways food was consumed during feast occasions and in the procedures to manufacture the containers used during these events. The concept of mass production was a fundamental piece of a long-standing interpretative framework that was widely accepted. Mass production of bowls would have been, on the one hand, a catalyst for increasing craft specialisation. On the other hand, large clusters of bowls would be an indicator (as a result of the concentration of many people in specific places) of emergent urbanisation and early states (Brunfield and Earle 1987; Buccellati 1990; Wengrow 2001; Wright 2014). As such, there is nothing wrong with this system of inferences. However, the absence of any distinction on a terminological, conceptual, operational, or material-cultural Level between distinct large productions of containers risks confusing separate circumstances and processes. Basically, in this field, quantities matter and they should be defined as accurately as possible.

  • 24 On the complexity of the craft skills and apprenticeship required to master the wheel-coiling techn (...)

20First of all because, as suggested by the feasts documented during the late LC2/Early Uruk period at Logardan 4b or at Tell Feres Level 5, even very small quantities of bowls can indicate a high degree of complexity. In fact, although these meetings were intended for a few participants, they reveal complex ways of consuming food and beverages and, at the same time, the first adoption of a complex and specialised technique such as wheel-coiling.24 Furthermore, with regard to the differences between the clusters of CBs during the LC1 and of BRBs in the LC3, tables 1 and 2 offer a clear picture. However, the tables express disparate situations from a stratigraphic point of view and they have to be placed in context to make quantifications more understandable.

  • 25 According to the ceramic assemblage and radiocarbon determinations, Levels 9B and 9A are dated to t (...)

21At Tell Feres the vast majority of CBs come from two successive phases (corresponding respectively to Levels 9B and 9A) of a large communal building (fig. 2). This part of the excavation, which covers an area of about 250 sqm, yielded a huge amount of ceramics, including several almost intact CBs in primary deposition from the floors of each of the two phases: 78 from phase 9B and 86 from 9A. But, apart from these well-preserved specimens, all not-in situ fragments from pits and filling layers had a very high fragmentation rate, for a total of nearly 28,000 shards of bowls and almost 6,000 EVRs (rim fragments) of CBs. Still, this impressive bulk of pottery means just 532 EVEs. Furthermore, if one considers that those two levels lasted at least 150 years,25 the EVE count represents about 3.5 CBs per year (table 1). This is a mere statistical estimation for a part of the site, but this is definitely not a “mass” production.

  • 26 Both the ceramic assemblage and short-lived sample-based radiocarbon determination date the floor t (...)

22On the other hand, the case study of the BRBs from the redistribution context in Level 4a at Logardan records a single moment and event. The fragments of bowls collected do not come from a thick heterogeneous series of layers corresponding to the duration of different phases of the building, but they were all in situ on the same floor that extended both inside and outside the complex (fig. 6).26 This does not mean that the almost 2,900 fragments—corresponding to over 1,100 EVR and 443 EVE of BRBs—were all produced at once. On the other hand, although the context of Logardan 4a is a sort of “snapshot” of a specific event, this phase of the building certainly lasted for some time. Consequently, it is more likely that the fact that many hundreds of BRBs were in use at the same time was the result of abundant and long-lasting production, so that broken specimens were regularly replaced. In any case, the quantitative differences between accumulations of CBs and BRBs are blatant.

23These estimates seem to suggest that the CBs, probably used during repetitive but not very frequent feasts with a manageable number of participants, were not manufactured continuously. They were rather produced time by time, by large batches, both to replace broken specimens and, possibly, on the occasion of each feast. This kind of intermittent production by batches or series might be defined as “serial.” On the other hand, BRBs, used during seemingly more regular events with a large number of participants, were the result of a more constant manufacturing process on a much larger scale that could be properly defined as “mass” production.

24Whatever the case, the results of this simple mathematical approach, although related to specific cases, are not occasional or attributable to random variability. Rather, these quantitative observations reflect the modalities (in terms of frequency over time and number of participants) of food consumption or redistribution events in which CBs or BRBs were used.

Different feasts and “masses” of bowls, similar standardisations: searching for a nexus

  • 27 For a discussion of the concept of proto-urban phase from a territorial, architectural, organisatio (...)
  • 28 Butterlin 2013; 2018. Above all, see the analysis by D’Anna (2020) for the Arslantepe VIA phase.

25In a nutshell, the evolution of food-sharing and redistributive practices seems quite clear (fig. 7). In the LC1, fairly restricted banquets were held in the central halls of major tripartite buildings using a single type of vessel, the crude CBs, serially produced according to one technique. Therefore, each of these feastings seems to have brought together individuals belonging to the same social group or lineage. The same clues about the social homogeneity of the guests also characterise the late LC2 meetings. At that time, some sharing of food in specific bipartite buildings seems to have been quite exclusive, with an even smaller number of participants using coarse bowls, but also small fine wheel-coiled cups (finished for the first time on the potter’s wheel). The social-kinship homogeneity of the participants no longer seems to have existed in the LC3, when a single ceramic shape—namely BRBs—were, once again, used for food distributions. These events did occur, on a much larger scale, in prominent buildings equipped with ovens and open courtyards to accommodate a much higher number of attendees. Moreover, as suggested by the multiplicity of techniques documented for the production of BRBs, the people involved in these redistributions probably belonged to different kinship groups and economic networks (fig. 7). In other words, it seems that in post-Ubaid times, these food-sharing events, arguably crucial in strengthening social and economic ties, were for a long time organised by distinct social or kinship entities as means of celebration within the perimeter of each of these groups. It was only from a properly proto-urban phase onwards, in the LC3,27 that substantial changes occurred, suggesting a concentration of control and distribution of foodstuffs by supra-lineage institutions. The latter seem to have been catering to the community as a whole or to its broader components, although it does not seem that absolute centralisation was ever achieved even in the context of later distributions, during the LC5/Late Uruk phase (fig. 7).28

Fig. 7 – Chronological and evolutionary framework of the communal food-sharing and redistribution traditions with associated production patterns of the bowls used during these events between the 5th and 4th millennia BCE in northern and southern Mesopotamia.

Fig. 7 – Chronological and evolutionary framework of the communal food-sharing and redistribution traditions with associated production patterns of the bowls used during these events between the 5th and 4th millennia BCE in northern and southern Mesopotamia.
  • 29 See Baldi 2013c. This observation does not seek to imagine a possible increasingly “ritual” nature (...)

26When placing the Early and Middle Uruk contexts from Logardan 4b–4a into this timeline, what is surprising is the complete evolutional parallelism and synchronism of communal food consumption occasions between the north-Mesopotamian world and the southern Uruk cultural sphere (fig. 7). The similarities are so pronounced as to suggest a simultaneous and concomitant development from common Ubaid premises. All the food-sharing practices taken into account seem to have the same organisation in space, both concerning the spatial distribution of the ceramic chaînes opératoires, the use of tri- or bipartite buildings, and the use of facilities such as ovens from the LC3 onwards. Moreover, both in northern Mesopotamia and the Uruk sphere, these food consumption practices had the same relationship to the production of the ceramic vessels that were used. These events did involve serial gestures, as food consumption or redistribution of rations. The seriality of the production methods appears closely connected with the repetitiveness of gestures in the modalities of use.29 However, any kind of preconception in favour of a sort of teleological or linear evolution between repetitive, serial, and mass productions is completely disproved. Likewise, any alleged proportional nexus between more and more frequent manufacturing patterns and increasing standardisation and specialisation is by no means demonstrable.

  • 30 The number of CBs and BRBs specimens used to calculate the morphometric indexes in fig. 8 is not ho (...)
  • 31 In the framework of a non-mechanised technical system, the notion of intensity is not exactly about (...)

27In fact, the calculation of the coefficients of variation (CVs) with regard to various indicators (wall thickness, height, rim diameter, and capacity) shows that the serially (i.e. discontinuously, by batches) produced LC1 CBs from Tell Feres 9B–9A were as standardised as the mass produced (i.e. regularly manufactured in greater numbers) BRBs from Logardan 4a (fig. 8).30 This does not utterly call into question the standardisation hypothesis, namely the assumption that a higher rate of production generate more uniformity (Costin 1991; Costin and Hagstrum 1995; Benco 1988). Anyway, this confirms a principle that has already been widely observed in ethnological studies and tested experimentally, namely that, when a certain degree of repetitive gestures is reached, quite small scale productions are sufficient to develop motor habits enabling potters to manufacture highly standardized series of vessels (Longacre 1999; Roux 2003; Roux and Karasik 2018). In essence, this means that, although “repetition makes perfection,” the degree of standardisation is not a function of the frequency and abundance of the production, but rather of its intensity,31 namely the production rate.

Fig. 8 – Different coefficients of variability (CVs) as indicators of morphometric standardisation of CBs from Tell Feres Levels 9B–9A (left) and BRBs from Logardan Level 4a (right). For the BRBs, the CVs are indicated for both chaînes opératoires (A and B) documented in the context of food redistribution from Logardan’s Level 4a.

Fig. 8 – Different coefficients of variability (CVs) as indicators of morphometric standardisation of CBs from Tell Feres Levels 9B–9A (left) and BRBs from Logardan Level 4a (right). For the BRBs, the CVs are indicated for both chaînes opératoires (A and B) documented in the context of food redistribution from Logardan’s Level 4a.
  • 32 The fact that CBs were produced intermittently and in batches seems to be the only possibility that (...)

28CBs were produced in series, from time to time, in not very large quantities, for events with a manageable number of attendees. But each time, in each site, they were made according to one chaîne opératoire, that is, by a small number of artisans belonging to a single social or kinship group. This meant that a few individuals regularly were making batches of bowls, with a relatively high production rate, which explains CBs’ very low morphometric indexes (fig. 8).32 On the other hand, as for the BRBs, the amount of work necessary to produce them involved a larger number of craftspeople, as several chaînes opératoires are documented in all the redistribution contexts from the LC3 onwards. However, compared to CBs, BRBs were produced unceasingly and on a much larger scale. Essentially, by increasing both the quantity of finished products and the number of producers, the result remains a high production rate, with very significant standardisation indexes (fig. 8).

29Neither CBs nor BRBs were specialised as specific separate products, meaning that nobody produced only CBs or BRBs (Baldi 2022). The people who carried out serial or mass productions did so according their traditional techniques, which they also used to manufacture the rest of their assemblages. The very low CVs they achieved depend on highly intense productions determined, on the one hand, by the number of producers (one, or various groups) and, on the other hand, by a smaller or larger consumer base. Therefore, BRBs were mass-produced precisely because they were produced constantly, for everyone, not for a few, not for a specific social group, or for specific occasions, but for ordinary redistributions that applied to the bulk of the population.

Conclusions: steak-houses and bakeries?

30Although, from late prehistory onwards, the abundance of different types of bowls from food consumption contexts has often led to the assumption that they were “mass-produced,” this definition is rarely justified. In fact, a purely mathematical and stratigraphic approach makes it possible to identify distinct patterns of accumulation of bowls (and distinct rates of production) over time, whether this involved small quantities over long periods of time or large amounts produced on a regular basis. The first case is that of CBs, which were serially produced, that is to say in batches, from time to time, on the occasion of gatherings with a moderate number of participants. The second case is typical of BRBs, which were actually mass-produced, routinely and on a much larger scale. Furthermore, the technical analysis and spatial distribution of the chaînes opératoires through which the bowls were made at primary food distribution contexts of Tell Feres, Logardan, and contemporary sites, show how these food-sharing events evolved between the middle of the 5th and the 4th millennium BCE. What emerges is a totally analogous and simultaneous development of communal food-sharing practices between northern Mesopotamia and the southern Uruk cultural sphere. As for the applicability of the definition of “mass production,” this implies that—in the North as in the Uruk world—it is only from the LC3 onwards that it is correct to use this expression. Indeed, the notion of mass-production does not fit the LC1 feasts and CBs, that were manufactures and used within the context of a single socio-economic or kinship group. It is rather suitable for the BRBs (or V-shaped bowls from Arslantepe VII), produced and used within the organisational framework of proto-urban institutions, which distributed food to the bulk of the community. BRBs were no longer items made for occasional (albeit repetitive) gatherings, and certainly not for elite banquets, such as those held in Logardan 4b and Tell Feres 5, during the late LC2/Early Uruk period, which even included the use of very elegant wheel-coiled cups. Starting from the LC3, BRBs and associated bowls were actually mass-produced because they were intended for popular events, which brought together masses of people.

  • 33 Goulder 2010; Potts 2009. Although some residue analyses also suggest other possible uses (see Perr (...)
  • 34 In these ovens, 8 BRBs have been found still in situ, in sets of two with one specimen upside down (...)
  • 35 Safar 1981. At Eridu the building is tripartite, but one wing is completely taken up by an enormous (...)
  • 36 Delougaz et al. 1942: pl. VI-V. At Khafaja it is possible to observe the evolution from a tripartit (...)
  • 37 Unless, as proposed by M. Zingarello (personal communication), the food cooked in the BRBs was not (...)

31However, this organisational and evolutional parallelism between the Uruk and north-Mesopotamian worlds does not mean that the communal food-sharing and distribution events were based on the same foods. Indeed, since the middle of the 5th millennium BCE, all north-Mesopotamian banquets were characterised by significant amounts of animal waste and bones. This is especially the case, starting from the LC3, in all the contexts contemporary to Logardan 4a, such as Tepe Gawra VIIIA (Rothman 2002) or Tell Brak TW18, where the excavators even speak of a “roadside steak-house” (McMahon 2007; Oates et al. 2007) On the other hand, animal waste is virtually absent in Logardan and any other Uruk contexts. This might suggest that, in addition to the consumption of drinks (perhaps beer?) stored in jars (such as those in the side room of the Logardan 4b and 4a complex), Uruk BRBs were actually used (as their primary function and despite their countless secondary utilities) to bake leavened breads.33 This issue has been widely debated, also on the basis of comparative evidence from Early Kingdom Egypt (Chazan and Lehner 1990), where the thick-walled bedja bowls were used as portable ovens (Jacquet-Gordon 1981). Yet, the thinner-walled BRB were probably heated, then filled with dough and placed in an oven for baking. The fact the huge ovens34 from Logardan 4a (fig. 9) were not tannours (i.e. facilities adapted for baking flat breads), but rather large domed cooker compartments suitable for keeping the internal heat, could represent a clue in favour of interpreting BRBs as mass bread moulds. Another clue in this sense is offered by the spatial layout of the sector where the redistribution took place in Logardan 4a (fig. 9). As a matter of fact, starting from the LC3/Middle Uruk, large quantities of BRBs or later mass-produced containers were associated with areas displaying the same features: large buildings with elaborate accesses, tri- or bipartite plans, and a courtyard or a space housing one or more large ovens, from which food was redistributed without involving animal waste. This is the pattern that can be observed at Eridu35 in the Middle Uruk, as well as in the Diyala valley at Khafaja,36 between the Jemdet Nasr period and the beginning of Early Dynastic I. But in order to be able to suggest that the context bought to light in Logardan 4a is one of the oldest bakeries known in Mesopotamia, many analyses of the biochemical residues from BRBs will be needed.37

Fig. 9 – Logardan: two of the four large food ovens in Level 4a (top left; FArMQaD), plan of the monumental building from the Early LC3/Middle Uruk Level 4a (on the right; FArMQaD), samples of spouted jars and BRBs with their distribution inside and outside the building, according to the distinctive chaînes opératoires used to produce the BRBs (A and B, expressions of two different underlying groups). In the bottom left, different examples of baking leavened or unleavened bread in tannours or domed ovens (J. S. Baldi), where only some are compatible with the evidence from Logardan 4a.

Fig. 9 – Logardan: two of the four large food ovens in Level 4a (top left; FArMQaD), plan of the monumental building from the Early LC3/Middle Uruk Level 4a (on the right; FArMQaD), samples of spouted jars and BRBs with their distribution inside and outside the building, according to the distinctive chaînes opératoires used to produce the BRBs (A and B, expressions of two different underlying groups). In the bottom left, different examples of baking leavened or unleavened bread in tannours or domed ovens (J. S. Baldi), where only some are compatible with the evidence from Logardan 4a.
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Notes

1 For a summary of the analyses and hypotheses (and sometimes preconceived ideas) on the distinctive typological nature and manufacturing techniques of these bowls, see Helwing 2014.

2 This multifunctionality seems to be confirmed by organic residue analyses on a few BRBs specimens from the Euphrates Valley, that did not yield results with conclusive evidence for them to be bread moulds (Sanjurjo-Sánchez, Kaal and Montero Fenollós 2018). Similarly, analyses on some specimens from Shakhi Kora (Sirwan/Diyala Valley) suggest the (perhaps secondary?) use of BRBs to also contain meat and dairy products (Perruchini et al. 2023). Organic residue analyses on BRBs fragments from Logardan Level 4a are ongoing at the CNRS UMR7264 CEPAM laboratory in Nice, France.

3 Although the specific uses of BRBs may be the subject of ongoing debate based on analyses of chemical residues (and the inherent limits of this type of analysis), the fundamental issue here is not their use for consuming a specific type of food, but rather the organisation of consumption and production patterns; Frangipane 2010.

4 Some recent remarkable studies focus on aspects purely related to craft organisation during these periods (Fragnoli and Liberotti 2019; Fragnoli and Frangipane 2022). The identification of large-scale bowl production methods based on data about craft technologies, facilities and workshops from various sites is also currently underway by myself as part of the FACT_WORK programme (ANR-22-CE27-0003) funded by the ANR (French National Research Agency) and will be published soon in a future article.

5 According to the EVR counting, each rim (or series of rim fragments after they have been reattached) is considered as one vessel (Orton et al. 1993: 171–172).

6 The EVE is obtained by dividing the sum of the circumference portions of all the rims by 360 (Orton et al. 1993: 178–179).

7 Clearly, all the ceramic materials considered here were in primary deposition and come from floors and well stratified, in situ feast contexts.

8 On a purely methodological and practical level, the schematic reconstruction of the manufacturing sequence presented here is based on the chaîne opératoire approach (Roux, 2019a, 2019b; Baldi, 2012e, 2013, 2016a, 2020, 2021; Montero Fenollós and Sanjurjo-Sánchez 2021). Basically, through autoptic, magnifying glass or Dino-Lite microscope observations, as well as an analysis of both the composition and the shaping macro- and micro-traces, the aim was to reconstruct the sequence of distinctive operations characterizing each step of the manufacturing process (selection and preparation of the fabrics, fashioning, surface treatment, decoration and firing). Of course, what is here summarised with regard to some types of bowls is just a part of a study that covers the whole of ceramic materials from the sites taken into account.

9 In fact, the chaînes opératoires do express the technical identities of different craft communities of learning and practice (Wenger 1998; Iserlis 2009; Wendrich 2012). Consequently, if each chaîne opératoire expresses the material trace of a specific group of producers, the spatial distribution of the operational sequences may allow us to recognise possible patterns of use of the bowls within a given space (Gomart 2014).

10 In the case studies taken into consideration, the degree of fragmentation of the assemblage made it possible to reconstruct all these measurements. However, at least the CV of the mouth diameter represents a particularly sensitive value for standardisation and can be calculated even in less favourable conditions. The volume of the containers was estimated dividing manually the profile drawings of vessels into geometric figures whose volumes were calculated separately by means of mathematical formulae (Velasco Felipe and Celdrán Beltrán 2019). Despite the inaccuracies inherent in this method of calculation due to the irregularities of the pots, this approach has proven to be statistically reliable (Rodriguez and Hastorf 2013).

11 Overall, CBs represent between 55 and 80% of LC1 north-Mesopotamian assemblages (Abu Jayyab 2019).

12 Unfortunately, in archaeological literature, the quantitative data available on CBs is often very generic (such as the percentage they represent in various sites during the levels corresponding to the LC1, but almost never distinguishing between the different levels and contexts). However, their association with communal food consumption events does not seem to be based on a mere assumption. The concentration of CBs in the central halls of the main tripartite buildings (i.e. the largest and most central ones, often characterised by special decorations and architectural features) has been highlighted by several scholars (Helwing 2003; Baldi 2012a, 2012c; Kennedy 2012 and associated relevant bibliography; Abu Jayyab 2019). Furthermore, all studies focusing on the distribution of ceramic materials coming from in situ contexts (mainly from floors) have shown that, although they represent a predominant percentage of the middle 5th millennium ceramic assemblages, CBs and associated types (such as the so-called Wide Flower Pots) were quite infrequent in outdoor spaces, in the side wings of buildings, in bipartite constructions, or in ordinary houses (Helwing 2003; Rothman 2002; Kennedy 2012). The only other type of space in which large quantities of CBs have been documented are small secondary rooms (associated with the main tripartite buildings) where CBs were not used but rather stored (Rothman 2002: 78, fig. 5.3; Baldi 2012c).

13 See Arzt 2001: fig. 2.14, 2.15, 2.16 for Tell Ziyada; Helwing 2003: 71–75 and fig. 2, 3a, 3b, and Esin 1998: fig. 1 for Değirmentepe; Hauptmann 1982 and Gülçur 2000 for Norşuntepe; Kennedy 2012 for Kenan Tepe; Rothman 2002 for Tepe Gawra; Meijer 1988: pl. 23a–b, 24b for Hammam et-Turkman; Baldi 2003c and Baldi and Vallet 2018 for Tell Feres.

14 Actually, however summary, some observations made by the excavators on the manufacturing methods of the CBs collected at Norşuntepe (Gülçur 2000), Tell Ziyada (Arzt 2001) and Hammam et-Turkman (Akkermans 1988c) are entirely consistent with the pattern of quantity and distribution of the chaînes opératoires observed at Kenan Tepe and Tell Feres.

15 This interpretation does not imply any undue logical leap assuming an overlap between the people who produced and used the CBs. Indeed, identical or similar chaînes opératoires for manufacturing pottery and CBs (such as the hollowing-out a lump tradition documented at Tell Feres) have been observed in various regions of northern Mesopotamia. Furthermore, no site was homogeneous in terms of chaînes opératoires, suggesting that no village was inhabited by a single kinship group (Russo 2022). Actually, in the cases that have been studied from this point of view, the villages seem to have consisted of several distinct blocks (clusters of houses, granaries, secondary buildings, and workspaces), each of which was characterised by one distinctive chaîne opératoire (Baldi and Vallet 2018). The communal building, where CBs were used and stored, was the major tripartite structure of the main block (Esin 1998; Rothman 2002) where meetings were held using bowls manufactured according to the chaîne opératoire of the group occupying that dominant block. This scenario fits well with a long tradition of studies on the role of lineages or large households in late prehistoric Mesopotamia (Ur 2014; Butterlin 2009, 2018).

16 Although the introduction of the rotary kinetic energy required new and specific skills, the bowls were wheel-coiled and the use of the potter’s wheel was limited to finishing their surfaces (Baldi and Roux 2016). Since the bowls from the edifice in Tell Feres Level 5 were built using the same coiling technique (based on the superposition of coils with the same shape, size, junctions, and arrangement), both the coiled and the wheel-coiled containers were expressions of (two variants of) one “technical tradition.” Without wishing to go into overly technical aspects here, a technical tradition is primarily defined by by the sequence of gestures rooted in the cognitively deepest and most characteristic motor habit. Technical gestures or behaviours are all the more distinctive and deeply rooted in terms of learning the more they intervene early on the conception and implementation of an operational sequence. Consequently, pots made by coiling may belong to separate traditions if their coils are of markedly different thickness, if they have sections requiring different shaping (rounded vs. flattened), or if the methods of laying the coils involve radically divergent gestures (with joints stretched inwards or outwards, etc.). For the same reason, a “superficial” finishing of the walls on the potter’s wheel, which takes place at the end of the manufacturing process and does not involve any change in the gestures required to build a pot, cannot define a specific technical tradition (Livingstone-Smith 2007; Roux 2019a, 2019b; Russo 2022; Baldi 2020, 2021).

17 Baldi and Zingarello 2021. Although Logardan is located in northern-central Mesopotamia, from a material-cultural point of view the contexts here presented are the expression of an entirely south-Mesopotamian Uruk milieu. Actually, despite the huge archaeological literature on BRBs, we actually do not have much data on food distribution in the Uruk cultural sphere, especially for such an ancient phase, for which there are no extensive excavations in southern Mesopotamia.

18 Incidentally, a large number of both the coarse “proto”-BRBs (22) and elegant beaded-rim bowls (15) were found together along the east wall of the room. This could suggest that these containers were stored on a side shelf, while only some were actually used during meals.

19 Due to the entirely South Mesopotamian cultural nature of the assemblage from these levels at Logardan, the Uruk chronology is here adopted. However, this phase corresponds to the beginning of LC3 in Northern Mesopotamia.

20 The transition (without any discontinuity) from the Early Uruk phase to the Middle Uruk one (shown in dark grey and light grey, respectively, in figs. 4 and 6) did not involve any changes to the walls of the oldest portion of the building (which was rearranged with the construction of new structures inside it), but rather the addition of a section to the east. The advent of new doorways is indicative of a substantial shift in the manner in which built spaces were utilised.

21 Compared to fig. 4 (relating to the previous phase), the coloured boxes in fig. 6, which indicate the distribution of BRBs manufactured according to the different chaînes opératoires, do not coincide with the walls of the building. In fact, in Logardan Level 4a, each of the two distribution areas of the BRBs technical traditions extended both inside a sector of the edifice and outside the door giving access to that specific sector.

22 Here, the equation 1 technical tradition = 1 group of producers may appear to be too rigid or schematic. In reality, this is not the case. Rather, it is a result agreed upon by countless ethnological and experimental research studies in the anthropology of techniques around the world (see for instance Patton 2008; Stark 1998b; Stark et al. 2008). Obviously, any craftsperson has (to an extent proportional to their Level of experience) the ability to adapt their technique to respond to specific questions or overcome specific problems. But when in the midst of their manufacturing work, no craftsperson adopts two or more different techniques, using instead the one they have learned within their social group (Wenger 1998, 2010; Wendrich 2012). Even technical innovations, which establish radical discontinuities in the ways of doing something, are grafted onto previous traditions. None of this, however, allows us to define a priori the nature of the social group of which a technical tradition is an expression (nuclear or extended family, lineage or non-kinship clan, political group or working community, ethnolinguistic or religious entity, etc.—see for instance Gosselain 2002; 2018; Livingstone-Smith 2007). For this reason, anthropologically generic expressions such as “distinct groups of producers” are used here. But since these were people who manufactured and used the same objects, dealt with them in the same way, and were part of the same Uruk community from southern Mesopotamia, the “distinct groups of producers” were most likely households within the same society.

23 In the early Middle Uruk phase, BRBs at Logardan were also produced according to another technique: moulded in a concave support (Baldi 2016d). However, no specimens manufactured using this method have been found in this area.

24 On the complexity of the craft skills and apprenticeship required to master the wheel-coiling technique, see Baldi and Roux 2016; Baldi 2022.

25 According to the ceramic assemblage and radiocarbon determinations, Levels 9B and 9A are dated to the first half of the LC1. At Tell Feres, the LC1 also extends into Levels 8 and 7, when the area on which stood the communal building was occupied first by a pottery workshop and then by a series of large granaries. Based on both the ceramic and radiocarbon chronology, Levels 9B and 9A may have lasted, at most, from 4700 to 4400 BCE (Baldi and Vallet 2018). But here it was decided to calculate the EVE of CBs per year based on the minimum duration of Levels 9B and 9A, in order to obtain the highest possible number of CBs per year.

26 Both the ceramic assemblage and short-lived sample-based radiocarbon determination date the floor to shortly after 3700 BCE (Vallet 2019: 132). Furthermore, the whole complex was abandoned right afterwards, and the filling layers covering the Middle Uruk context date to the second half of the 3rd millennium, around 2400 BCE.

27 For a discussion of the concept of proto-urban phase from a territorial, architectural, organisational and material-cultural point of view, as well as for its identification starting from the LC3, see for instance Rothman 2002; Frangipane 2010, 2022; Balossi Restelli 2019; Butterlin 2003, 2009; Baldi 2022.

28 Butterlin 2013; 2018. Above all, see the analysis by D’Anna (2020) for the Arslantepe VIA phase.

29 See Baldi 2013c. This observation does not seek to imagine a possible increasingly “ritual” nature of large-scale food consumption occasions. This is not an impossible eventuality, but it certainly cannot be demonstrated through the approach developed here. The point is rather to observe, quite trivially, that (since we are always dealing with individual consumption practices) there is a proportionality between the repetitiveness and frequency of eating events and the regularity and intensity of bowl production. When occasions for food sharing became actually collective and frequent, bowls were also produced on a substantially constant basis.

30 The number of CBs and BRBs specimens used to calculate the morphometric indexes in fig. 8 is not homogeneous, but in all cases the quantities are consistent. The CBs taken into account are the well-preserved samples from Levels 9B (78 bowls) and 9A (86 bowls) of Tell Feres, while the BRBs are those with an intact or totally repairable profile (216 samples) from Logardan 4a. It is also worth noting that the BRBs from the latter context were the result of two operational sequences technically very different from each other. Nevertheless, they have very similar CVs. This confirms that the forming technique does not affect ceramic variability (Benco 1988).

31 In the framework of a non-mechanised technical system, the notion of intensity is not exactly about the production rate (i.e. the quantity of products made in a given period of time), but rather about the degree of human labour required to produce a given amount of products (Borth 1945).

32 The fact that CBs were produced intermittently and in batches seems to be the only possibility that can justify both their abundance (albeit less than that of BRBs), their technical characteristics, and their high degree of standardisation. If they had been manufactured on a substantially continuous basis, the accumulation of CBs would correspond to very small quantities for each annual season. Even considering that, at each site, CBs seem to belong to a single technical tradition and were therefore made by a single group of potters, this does not enough for high averages to be achieved. In fact, considering the data in table 1, no potter could ever produce containers with a high CV by making only 3 or 4 pieces per year. For highly standardising rates to be attained, a critical Level of repetition of gestures must be reached (Longacre 1999; Gandon, Coyle and Bootsma 2014), which in this case is only compatible with the production of fairly large quantities of bowls—batches, in fact—even if on a discontinuous basis.

33 Goulder 2010; Potts 2009. Although some residue analyses also suggest other possible uses (see Perruchini et al. 2023 at Shakhi Kora). In this regard, use-wear analyses on BRBs would be very helpful in the future.

34 In these ovens, 8 BRBs have been found still in situ, in sets of two with one specimen upside down on top of the other to close each other.

35 Safar 1981. At Eridu the building is tripartite, but one wing is completely taken up by an enormous food oven.

36 Delougaz et al. 1942: pl. VI-V. At Khafaja it is possible to observe the evolution from a tripartite plan (but with an extremely narrow wing) during the “Protoliterate” phase (Jemdet Nasr), to a bipartite plan that was reconstructed up to the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE.

37 Unless, as proposed by M. Zingarello (personal communication), the food cooked in the BRBs was not bread, but rather bappir cakes, from which beer was then produced.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Fig. 1 – Geographical location of the sites mentioned in the text, with colour indication of the presence of large quantities of different varieties of CBs (on the left, in blue), or accumulations of BRBs (on the right, in red).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/paleorient/docannexe/image/5834/img-1.jpg
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Titre Table 1 – Deconstructing a large quantity of CBs: different methods of quantifying the CBs used and collected in Levels 9B and 9A of the Large Building at Tell Feres during the second quarter of the 5th millennium BCE.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/paleorient/docannexe/image/5834/img-2.jpg
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Titre Fig. 2 – Large LC1 community building of Level 9B–9A at Tell Feres (French Archaeological Mission at Tell Feres al-Sharqi) and experimental session of hollowing-out a lump of clay (J. S. Baldi), the shaping technique that characterises all the CBs used and collected inside the communal building.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/paleorient/docannexe/image/5834/img-3.jpg
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Titre Fig. 3 – Experimental session and distinctive features of the wheel-coiling (on the left; J. S. Baldi), the technique used to shape the fine bowls collected inside the bipartite buttressed late LC2 building of Tell Feres Level 5 (on the right; French Archaeological Mission at Tell Feres al-Sharqi).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/paleorient/docannexe/image/5834/img-4.jpg
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Titre Fig. 4 – Logardan: plan of the monumental building from the Late LC2/Early Uruk Level 4b (on the left; FArMQaD), samples of spouted jars, proto-BRBs and fine wheel-coiled bowls with their distribution inside the building (in the middle; FArMQaD), and distinctive features of the shaping technique used to produce the bowls (on the right; J. S. Baldi).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/paleorient/docannexe/image/5834/img-5.jpg
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Titre Fig. 5 – Logardan: some architectural features of the Middle Uruk building of Level 4a (FArMQaD).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/paleorient/docannexe/image/5834/img-6.jpg
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Titre Table 2 – Deconstructing a large quantity of BRBs: different methods of quantifying the BRBs used and collected during a single event in Level 4a at Logardan, around 3700 BCE.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/paleorient/docannexe/image/5834/img-7.jpg
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Titre Fig. 6 – Logardan: plan of the monumental building from the Early LC3/Middle Uruk Level 4a (on the left; FArMQaD), samples of spouted jars and BRBs with their distribution inside and outside the building (in the middle; FArMQaD), according to the distinctive chaînes opératoires used to produce the BRBs (A and B, expressions of two different underlying groups—on the right—J. S. Baldi).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/paleorient/docannexe/image/5834/img-8.jpg
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Titre Fig. 7 – Chronological and evolutionary framework of the communal food-sharing and redistribution traditions with associated production patterns of the bowls used during these events between the 5th and 4th millennia BCE in northern and southern Mesopotamia.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/paleorient/docannexe/image/5834/img-9.jpg
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Titre Fig. 8 – Different coefficients of variability (CVs) as indicators of morphometric standardisation of CBs from Tell Feres Levels 9B–9A (left) and BRBs from Logardan Level 4a (right). For the BRBs, the CVs are indicated for both chaînes opératoires (A and B) documented in the context of food redistribution from Logardan’s Level 4a.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/paleorient/docannexe/image/5834/img-10.jpg
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Titre Fig. 9 – Logardan: two of the four large food ovens in Level 4a (top left; FArMQaD), plan of the monumental building from the Early LC3/Middle Uruk Level 4a (on the right; FArMQaD), samples of spouted jars and BRBs with their distribution inside and outside the building, according to the distinctive chaînes opératoires used to produce the BRBs (A and B, expressions of two different underlying groups). In the bottom left, different examples of baking leavened or unleavened bread in tannours or domed ovens (J. S. Baldi), where only some are compatible with the evidence from Logardan 4a.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/paleorient/docannexe/image/5834/img-11.jpg
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Johnny Samuele Baldi, « So Many Bowls… but in Which Sense? »Paléorient, 51 | 2025, 119-142.

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Johnny Samuele Baldi, « So Many Bowls… but in Which Sense? »Paléorient [En ligne], 51 | 2025, mis en ligne le 25 novembre 2025, consulté le 17 avril 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/paleorient/5834 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15apn

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Johnny Samuele Baldi

CNRS, UMR 5133 Archéorient, Lyon – France

js.baldi@mom.fr

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