Ars coquinaria: a study of early Roman cooking wares and their uses

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Cooking ware is important for studying how people around the Early Roman Empire cooked and ate. As utilitarian ware, it did not change drastically for several centuries. It was not considered important for studying until the 1920s and has since slowly developed influenced by anthropology, science, and technology. The cooking ware from England, Greece, and the Levant region, has been studied and placed into different forms with regards to the bottom of the vessel, the shape, and the material. The bottoms of the vessels indicate whether an oven or hearth was used in cooking and help explain the diets, regional food, and recipes of each region. The sites of Usk and Exeter had flat based cooking vessels, while the eastern Mediterranean sites had a combination of both flat and round-bottomed vessels, thus indicating the differences and similarities in diet and cooking methods throughout the entire Roman Empire.