International audienceOrganic residue analysis was carried out on kitchen wares from a Medieval household at Paphos (Cyprus) in the framework of the POMEDOR Project, which aims to gain insight into food practices in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Medieval period. The samples were selected from a household assemblage which included nearly two hundred table, cooking and storage vessels, and provided a rare insight into everyday life in Frankish-period Paphos. Both glazed and unglazed vessels were chosen for this first step towards the study of foodways at the site: 4 glazed vessels (3 pans/baking dishes and 1 cooking pot) and 7 unglazed vessels (3 cooking pots, 1 jug and 3 pans/baking dishes). Samples were analysed using gas chromatography – mass spectrometry, following different extraction methods to identify the residues preserved. The preliminary study confirmed that glazed ceramics absorb residues. Animal products were identified in the unglazed pots and in glazed pans/baking dishes. Only one unglazed pan shows residues of possible wine or its derivatives, that may have been used to flavor the foodstuff cooked

A program of petrographic analysis of Mamluk-period Hand-Made Geometrically Painted Ware (HMGP), supplemented by hand-made plain vessels and cooking pots, was undertaken as an offshoot of a wider study of the hand-made pottery industries of the 12th–16th centuries in Bil?d al-Sh?m. The aims of the wider project were to establish a chronological framework for the development of HMGP, and to examine issues of production and distribution and their socio-economic implications. Methodological and practical considerations restricted the research area to northern Israel, with control groups from Jerusalem and Hisban. The petrographic analysis of 152 vessels identified three major petrographic groups, and eight minor ones. The results suggest that hand-made plain wares and HMGP were manufactured by multiple industries; that HMGP itself cannot be viewed as a single industry, or even as having a uniform production mode; and that both plain and decorated hand-made pottery are often products of a specialized craft, with regional and likely intra-regional distribution. Appendix 1 (Separate PDF): List of samples and their archaeological details, with petrographic attribution

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