Culinary Traditions in the Borderlands of Judah and Edom during the Late Iron Age

Abstract

Cooking pots and culinary practices can be used as a sensitive proxy for social identities. Through an analysis of culinary traditions in the northeastern Negev—the borderland region between the Iron Age kingdoms of Judah and Edom—a complex narrative of social interaction between diverse social groups can be identified. This article demonstrates patterns of social and economic alliances, migration and intermarriage through spatial and temporal analyses of the distribution of cooking pot types. The resultant portrait is the outcome of opportunities afforded by the South Arabian trade network traversing the borderland region.

Keywords:

• Edom
• Judah
• Iron Age
• Identity
• Migration
• Cooking pots

Acknowledgments

This article builds on dissertation research conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles. As such, I would like to thank Aaron Burke, Benjamin Porter, Elizabeth Carter and William Schniedewind for the comments on various formative aspects of this work. I would also like to thank Nadia Ben-Marzouk, Jacob Damm, Danielle Candelora and Amy Karoll for their feedback. Early versions of this work were presented at the ASOR Annual Meeting in Boston (2017), and I am grateful for the responses received there. This work was likewise improved by the insights of three anonymous reviewers, though any errors remain my own.

Notes

1 I use the term 'Negev' here in its modern connotation. By the 'northeastern Negev', I refer to the Beer-sheba–Arad Valley.

2 The term ‘borderland’ in this article follows the definition promoted by Bradley Parker, where borderlands are understood as “regions around or between political or cultural entities where geographic, political, demographic, cultural, and economic circumstances or processes may interact to create borders or frontiers” (Parker 2006: 80). As such, an emphasis is placed on the dynamism of the regions and the potential for diverse forms of cross-cultural interaction, not overly dissimilar to Yifat Thareani’s use of the term “frontier” for the same region (Thareani 2017).

3 For example, Type CP4 encompasses a host of variances that are particularly noticeable in southern Transjordan. Within the ceramic typology created by Smith and Levy, for example, this type is represented by approximately a dozen different sub-categories that account for slight variances in the shape of the neck, ridges and other features (2014: 336–337).

4 The quantification and division of cooking pot types are discussed in further detail by Danielson (2020: 147–251).

5 A single exemplar of Type CP1 was identified at Tell el-Kheleifeh (Pratico 1993: Pl. 19: 6).

6 For example, Type CP3 accounts for more than 90% of the locally made cooking pots from the 7th century BCE contexts at Ashkelon on the southern Coastal Plain (Stager, Master and Schloen 2008: 86–87).

7 Note that the site of ʿEn Hazeva, significant for this discussion, remains only preliminarily published with little data regarding culinary ceramics (Cohen and Yisrael 1995).

8 The Lower Cretaceous shales need not be solely identified in relation to southern Transjordan as this petrographic group is also found in the regions of Makhtesh Gadol, Makhtesh Qatan and Makhtesh Ramon to the south and southeast of the northeastern Negev (Sneh et al. 1998; Freud 2014: 297–300).

9 This article uses the term ‘entanglement’ as a metaphor for the dynamic and interwoven interactions between different cultural groups and their material culture within culture-contact and borderland contexts (Dietler 2010: 27–53; Silliman 2016).

10 Note several additional examples of Type CP4 found in mixed Stratum VII–VI contexts at Tel ʿIra (Danielson 2020: 202–204).

11 Not displayed in these figures are the contexts labeled as ‘strata VI–III mixed’. These ambiguous contexts reveal patterns consistent with that of Stratum IV and III and are discussed in greater detail elsewhere (Danielson 2020: 197–202).

12 The cooking pot datasets of Tel Masos (Zimhoni 1983: 128), and Ḥorvat Radum (Freud 2007b: 318), also appear to present a degree of diversity, yet the sample size is too restricted for substantive conclusions.

13 Evidence for a slave trade through this region is preserved in the biblical text (e.g., Amos 1:6–12).