Carinated pots and bowls with wide, steep flared rims became common in West Asia in the Iron Age. Moorey in his
Deve Hüyük catalogue attributes the style's origin to the Neo-Assyrian empire. They were made of pottery, metal, glass and even stone. While not uniquely Achaemenid, they serve as a good example of a kind of foodware that is often found at Achaemenid sites, and thus will prove useful both as an educational display and, of course, any time you need to eat at an event that's open to the public. Their international status should also make them more versatile for portrayals of people from elsewhere in West Asia in our time period.
I commissioned this bowl from
Pamela Cummings, the Harrisburg, PA-based artisan who also made my
water bottle last year. It's primarily meant as a personal bowl for barley, stew, porridge (I've recently become a big fan of pease porridge) and other spoon foods, but it could also serve as a small common bowl for nuts or dates. We designed it to be about the size of a cereal bowl, about 4-1/2 inches (11.4cm) across at the narrow carinated point, 6 inches (15.2cm) across at the rim, and 3 inches (7.6cm) deep on the outside. It's based on a number of finds, both metal and ceramic, from
Persepolis and
Deve Hüyük.
In construction, it closely matches the water bottle. Its walls are of medium thickness - thicker than china but thinner than, for instance, the heavier styles of American stoneware. Also like the bottle, it's made of a faintly speckled, greyish-brown clay with a matte glaze to resemble unglazed, burnished pottery, yet meet modern food safety standards. (If your local potter works in different types of clay, buff and terra cotta would also be acceptable colors.) The compact, deep shape and the rim make it convenient to hold, but it has enough of a flat base to sit on a table.
Also as before, I enjoyed working with Pamela on this project, and highly recommend her work. Her prices are also very reasonable for such important camp items.
