Ceramic food bowl by Pamela Cummings

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.

Ceramic water bottle by Pamela Cummings

Over the years, I've come to see pottery as a somewhat neglected area of reenactment gear.  We focus on war to a great extent, but you can't present a realistic image of ancient peoples without also showing how they lived day-to-day, and in that sense, the objects of day-to-day life are just as important as weapons.  Indeed, the majority of individuals would have used weapons rarely if at all, while everyone would have used wares for eating and drinking on a daily basis.

For some years, I've wanted a ceramic water container to replace the leather ones I used at Marathon 2011 and 2015.  Ceramic bottles and canteens are much better-documented than the molded leather ones, and a simple wheel-thrown jug is of comparable price or even less expensive than a commercially-made leather costrel.  (Not to mention, waxed leather can be damaged if left out in the sun - ceramic won't be.)  A water container of a convenient size for carrying is essential, so it's my view that that's the logical place to start your pottery collection.  You need to drink, of course; why duck into a tent to sneak a sip out of a plastic bottle when you could be drinking out of an authentic container in public?

There is some reproduction pottery on the market for Classical reenactors, but as usual, for material specific to the Persian empire, you'll need to go custom most of the time.  I commissioned this bottle from Pamela Cummings of Harrisburg, whom I met at the 2018 Crafts in the Meadow fair at Tyler Park last October.  Pam was a pleasure to work with, and very understanding and accommodating as we worked out the design, delivery and payment.

Pam based the bottle on several finds from Persepolis, found in that ever-useful repository of information, Oriental Institute Publications 69.  I requested it in a 12-ounce capacity, the same as a can of soda.  We consciously deviated from the originals in two ways:  1)  they were made of brown clay with several partial washes of various dull colors, but to simplify things, this reproduction doesn't have additional colors, and 2)  the originals, as with almost all Achaemenid pottery, were unglazed, whereas Pam applied a clear matte glaze, both to make hers waterfast and more comfortable to drink out of (people often find that unglazed pottery is rough against the lips).  While it may look glossy in my photographs, in person it has a more mild sheen and could perhaps pass for being lightly burnished, which is also a technique known in Achaemenid pottery.

Pam normally includes a small initial stamp on her works.  Understanding that some reenactors don't want this on their gear, she offered to leave it off.  Personally, I think that if a trademark isn't large and distracting, it's not a problem - no one thinks we're eating and drinking out of actual ancient museum pieces anyway - and I see it as a segue to discussing how we go about obtaining our items and the fact that these ancient arts are still very much alive.

A bottle like this can be stopped with a tapered cork from the hardware store, and cork is a fairly ancient material - the oak species it comes from is native to the Western Mediterranean - though I'm not sure exactly how widespread it was in our period.  I suspect a waxed wood stopper would be more authentic for an item coming from the Iranian plateau.