Dairy Queen. Churns and milk products in the Aegean Bronze Age

Abstract

This article assembles examples of an unusual vessel found in domestic contexts of the Early Bronze Age around the Aegean and in the Eastern Mediterranean. Identified as a “barrel vessel” by the excavators of Troy, Lesbos (Thermi), Lemnos (Poliochni), and various sites in the Chalkidike, the shape finds its best parallels in containers identified as churns in the Chalcolithic Levant, and related vessels from the Eneolithic Balkans. Levantine parallels also exist in miniature form, as in the Aegean at Troy, Thermi, and Poliochni, and appear as part of votive figures in the Near East. My interpretation of their use and development will consider how they compare to similar shapes in the archaeological record, especially in Aegean prehistory, and what possible transregional relationships they may express along with their specific function as household processing vessels for dairy products during the third millennium BC.

Cultured Milk

“…However, while some of these have yielded positive evidence in milk lipids, others, such as the Baden "milk jugs" of the third millennium, have not (Craig et al 2003). Other promising whole-mouthed, suspendable vessels that resemble ethnographically known churns, such as from sixth millennium BCE Anatolia (Morris 2014;Rosenstock, Hendy, and Schoop, forthcoming), the Butten of the Linear Ceramics culture (LBK), or the eponymous Globular Amphoras around 3000 BCE (Lochner 2012) have not yet been investigated for biomolecules. Moreover, lipid evidence for milk often comes from unspecialized vessel shapes.…”

“…Farther south, barrel-shaped ceramic vessels interpreted as suspendable butter churns 12 are attested in the fourth millennium BCE Baden culture, as well as the Ghassulien of the Levant (Cultrato 2013;Morris 2014). However, these vessels have not yet undergone systematic biomolecular investigation except for a nonsuspendable presumed churning vessel type from Anatolia that indeed yielded milk fats (Rosenstock, Hendy, and Schoop, forthcoming;Sauter, Puchinger, and Schoop 2003).…”