Nowadays, the dishes on the tables of many Chinese families are rich and diverse, and the carriers such as pots, bowls, and pots used to serve dishes and rice also show a variety of forms and colors. In our daily life, the common table utensils are mostly made of stainless steel, ceramics or plastic, and families that do not have too high requirements for tableware usually choose stainless steel and plastic materials, while people with aesthetic pursuits usually choose ceramic utensils, because the shaping and color of ceramics are more diverse than the first two products.
In fact, stainless steel and plastic are modern products, in the distant ancient people used ceramic dishes for meals, so the study of ceramic utensils in the field of archaeology can spy on the eating habits of the ancients. According to reports, a research report on the analysis of ceramic cookware was recently published in Scientific Reports.
The report notes that researchers such as Milani Miller from the University of Otago in New Zealand and Helan Wilton from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom formed an archaeological team to repeatedly study the unglazed ceramic pot for a year.
Archaeologists used the same ceramic pot to cook the same ingredient repeatedly, and finally analyzed the composition of the ceramic pot and found that there were three ingredients in it that helped archaeologists study the ingredients and cooking methods used in the last cooking. So how do researchers conduct their research? How will such discoveries help future archaeological research?
What research did the researchers do on ceramic pots?
The team of archaeologists from three countries cooked the same ingredients in the same ceramic pot every week, and after repeating this process for about a year, the researchers radically changed the ingredients in the last cooking, and then poured out the food to study the situation inside the ceramic pot. The researchers found food residue at the bottom of the pot, food left on the wall of the pot, and fat absorbed in the wall of the pot.
In order to explore whether the last meal of the ceramic pot had a greater impact on the ceramic pot or the influence of the previous cooking on the ceramic pot, the researchers conducted a chemical analysis of all the food residues in the pot with carbon and nitrogen isotopes, and the analysis results showed that the burned and remaining residue in the ceramic pot was almost exactly the same as the residue left in the last cooking, which showed that even if a ceramic pot was used for several years, its last use would give the ceramic pot a conclusion about what had been cooked.
Of course, the ceramic pot can still detect the ingredients left over from the previous cooking process, but these ingredients will continue to be lost with the increase in the number of cookings, so the ingredients cooked last time often play a conclusive role in the role of the ceramic pot.
Why do you want to do such an in-depth study of an ordinary ceramic pot?
China has a long history of ceramics, and ancient ceramics spread to Western countries through the Maritime and Overland Silk Roads, so the discovery may reveal some historical details. Whether it is the ancient East or the ancient West, two or three thousand years ago or even more distant ancient people ate almost all of them with ceramic tableware and cooking utensils, and some high-ranking officials and nobles demanded the burial of some ceramics as a burial after their deaths, so future generations can get historical clues and details from these ceramics.
How will the discovery help future archaeological research?
Due to the special production process and raw materials of ceramics, the ingredients will form a thin layer of residue inside the cookware during the cooking process. This layer of residue is generally undetectable and can only be identified by professional chemical composition analysis. It is also the presence of this thin layer of residue that gives archaeologists the opportunity to understand what ingredients were used in the last cooking process of a ceramic pot.
People's eating habits in each region will change due to natural environment, economy, culture and other factors, and some areas will even change periodically, so if ceramic tableware or cooking utensils can be excavated in ancient ruins and tombs, and then their internal composition is analyzed, it is possible to know what food they ate in that period and what kind of way they liked to cook ingredients.
This method can not only detect the last cooking, but also assess the life of ceramic utensils. But in general, not many people pay attention to the longevity of commonly used ceramics, unless it is an ancient artifact or an extremely valuable collection.