The ‘Assyrian mill’. A case study on food processing technology and innovation in the Near East during the Neo-Assyrian period (c. 900–600 BC)

Abstract

Assyrian mills are innovative grinding tools that were introduced during the Neo-Assyrian period (c. 900–600 BC) in northern Mesopotamia, and which continued to be attested throughout the Neo-Babylonian, Achaemenid and Hellenistic periods. This paper focuses on the Assyrian mills’ morphological characteristics and archaeological contexts, as well as their geographic and chronological distributions, in order to cast light on the possible reasons behind their spread and final demise. Despite being characteristic of the Neo-Assyrian period, these devices did not spread uniformly across the Neo-Assyrian Empire. It will be argued, therefore, that their spread should be seen as being mainly connected with agricultural policies implemented by the Assyrians in some areas of their empire. Following the Neo-Assyrian period, the use of Assyrian mills drastically dropped: one of the possible reasons behind their final demise is the introduction of the Olynthus mill, a competitive grinding device which became predominant during the Hellenistic period.

Keywords:

• Neo-Assyrian Empire
• Assyrian mills
• food processing tools
• stone tools
• ancient technology

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the scholars who kindly shared unpublished excavation data regarding Assyrian mills: Guy Bunnens, Virginia Herrmann, Elisabeth Katzy, Timothy Matney, Lutz Martin, Alexander Sollee and Yifat Thareani. Our thanks also go to Karen Radner, Janoscha Kreppner and David Eitam for their inputs and precious suggestions, and to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. Finally, we are grateful to Poppy Tushingham for proof-reading the text.

Supplementary material

Supplementary material for this article can be accessed here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00758914.2021.2002021.

Notes

1 Note that in Bombardieri (2010b; tables 1–5), excavation areas A1–A3, located in the north-west corner of the outer wall surrounding Fort Shalmaneser, are labelled ‘Ada 1’ and ‘Ada 3’ respectively, as these were the former names given to these excavation areas. For the plan of the excavation area A1 (former ‘Ada 1’), see Fiorina et al. (2005: fig. 1).

2 The database is accessible at http://www3.uakron.edu/ziyaret/. We would like to thank Timothy Matney for giving us permission to use the information reported here.

3 We would like to thank Elisabeth Katzy for providing access to the basalt tools of Tell Halaf held in the Vorderasiatisches Museum of Berlin.

4 The 2006–2010 short excavation reports are available online at http://www.grabung-halaf.de/index.php?l=eng. We want to thank Elisabeth Katzy, Lutz Martin and Alexander Sollee for sharing the information here reported.

5 We would like to thank Virginia Herrmann and David Schloen for sharing the information regarding the grooved handstones from Zincirli reported here.

6 We would like to thank Yifat Thareani for sharing information about the grooved handstone from Tel Dan and granting permission to include it in this work.

7 We would like to thank Janoscha Kreppner for pointing out this reference.