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Radaf (stones) on the floor of a type two tabun in northern Jordan, 2012. Photograph by Jennie Ebeling.
Source publication
The tabun is a clay oven that was common in rural areas in the southern Levant in the 20th century AD; linguistic and literary sources, ethnographic information and archaeological remains offer insights into the manufacture and use of this female-gendered baking installation. Despite its earliest attestation in the writings of medieval Palestinian...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... or mosaic pieces called radaf (type one) (Arraf 2006: 209;Avitsur 1988: 153;Bauer 1903: 105;Benzinger 1907: 64, figs 24-25;Dalman 1987: 74-75) or directly on the clay floor of the installation (type two) (McQuitty 1984: 261;Wetzstein 1882: 467). The floor of a type two tabun may also be covered with radaf (Dalman 1987: 79;Ebeling 2014a;2014b) (Fig. 2). A few explanations are given for the use of radaf: it separated the baked bread from the dirt below (Dalman 1987: 76), retained heat (Arraf 2006: 209) or was desirable for the texture it gave the baked bread (Ebeling 2014b). The use of radaf is reported with other oven types, such as the Iranian furn (Wulff 1967: 294). When baking in ...
Context 2
... can also be built outdoors, as seen in an early 20th-century photograph taken in Jericho ( Fig. 9). An outdoor tabun in a contemporary village in northern Jordan was used by a woman in the dry season and for baking demonstrations for tourists ( Fig. 2), while another tabun located in a tabun house nearby was used in the rainy season ( personal ...
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RIASSUNTO L'obiettivo del presente lavoro è riassumere e riconsiderare, brevemente, le tecniche e le dinamiche legate alla panificazione e all'impatto che queste potevano avere nella sfera sociale delle comunità antiche. Al fine di perseguire tale obiettivo, si rivela fondamentale l'osservazione di alcuni contesti etnografici come quello della citt...
Citations
... These can be considered as the result of everyday human activities. Plant remains and animal dung were common fuel sources during the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Southern Levant and beyond 35,66,67 , and the accumulation of ash due to food processing, heating, and other domestic and industrial activities have been documented in many other ancient sites in the southern Levant (e.g. 68 ). ...
Among the unresolved questions about pre-Roman metallurgical industries are the extent and severity of the pollution they produced and the potential harm inflicted on the societies associated with them. Research on this topic has resulted in conflicting conclusions. Based on measurements of heavy metal enrichment in soils, archaeological sediments, plants and skeletal remains, interpretations have varied between catastrophic, global (intercontinental) effects to a restricted impact relevant only to those directly working at the furnaces. In the current study we focus on Timna Valley in the Southern Arabah (southern Israel). Based on high-resolution pXRF geochemical surveys of two smelting camps from different periods, accompanied by test excavations, we demonstrate that (1) mapping elemental concentrations in soil is an effective tool for identifying and characterizing various activity areas in archaeological sites, such as metal production, livestock penning and domestic and industrial waste disposal; (2) in Timna, the intra-site organization of production and scale of metallurgical activities changed substantially between the Early Bronze Age and the Iron Age; (3) the heavy metal enrichment (Cu/Pb) of soil due to smelting is spatially discrete, concentrated only in areas directly associated with these activities; and (4) this enrichment aligns with the spatial distribution of metallurgical waste, suggesting that lead emission to the atmosphere was minimal and that the documented heavy metals are not bioavailable. Our results, combined with a comprehensive survey of previously published data, support the minimalist interpretation of the polluting effects of metallurgical activities on ancient societies, at least for pre-Roman copper production industries.
Supplementary Information
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-024-80939-5.
... Ethnographic studies of tandir ovens suggest that they were generally used for the making of bread but could be used for a multitude of other activities, such as boiling, roasting, or parching (Gur-Arieh et al. 2013;Gur-Arieh 2018, p. 69). They have been used for thousands of years, discovered at sites dating to the Neolithic period throughout the Near East, Central Asia, and the Southern Caucasus (Canaan 1962;Forbes 1966;Weinstein 1973;Bottéro 1985;Emberling and McDonald 2001;Mulder-Heymans 2002;Lyons and D'andrea 2003;Parker and Uzel 2007;Parker 2011;Smogorzewska 2012;Balossi-Restelli and Mori 2014;Ebeling and Rogel 2015). Deposits in the oven were ash and charcoal-rich, containing carbonised cereals (Hordeum, Triticum spelta, Triticum aestivum/durum/turgidum, and Panicum miliaceum), and small quantities of chaff and fruit seeds (Citrullus lanatus), which relate directly to the fuelling of the oven (wood charcoal) and food preparation (cereal grains). ...
This paper presents the results of an archaeobotanical analysis of plant macro-remains recovered during excavations of a rural tepe site at Qaratepe, Azerbaijan, occupied during the Sasanian and Islamic periods between the 2nd and 13th centuries ad. The material derives from a 4 year Oxford University expedition which occurred between 2015 and 2018, ‘The Archaeological Exploration of Barda Project (AEB)’, established to investigate the provincial structure of the eastern Caucasus region in the Late Antique and early Islamic periods. Traditionally, archaeological practice in Azerbaijan has not embraced environmental archaeological techniques and despite the region’s importance to the understanding of early agriculture and the diffusion of crop species during the Islamic period, little archaeobotanical research has been conducted there to date. This assemblage therefore forms a rare and unique contribution to the field of archaeobotany in the Late Antique and Islamic periods in Azerbaijan and provides the first archaeobotanical evidence of crop husbandry at a rural settlement during these periods. In total, 8,676 carbonised plant remains representing a minimum of 60 species were recorded from 80 samples analysed, providing important insights into plant utilisation in Azerbaijan (Full taxonomic list available in on-line supplementary material (ESM)). Archaeobotanical evidence has revealed the range of crops cultivated and consumed at the site between the 2nd and 13th centuries. Results demonstrate that naked wheat (Triticum aestivum/durum/turgidum), barley (Hordeum vulgare), and broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) were the primarily cultivated crops between the 2nd and 6th centuries, key crops that have been present in the Southern Caucasus for several millennia. The study has also identified the cultivation of rice (Oryza sativa), watermelon (Citrullus lanatus), and melon (Melo sativa) in the 13th century, indicating a change in agricultural production in the Islamic period and the introduction of several new cultivars and agricultural adaptions.
... The 'Small-Lined fire installation' (SL) is known in the literature as ṭabūn and is usually uncritically associated with domestic baking (Ebeling and Rogel 2015). It is rounded and lined with mud, built on floors, with an internal diameter is of 40-80 cm, and its remains vary between 0.3 and 1 m in height. ...
... McQuitty, 1984: 259;Rova, 2014: 121;Smogorzewska, 2012: 242;van der Steen, 1991: 135), these studies thus suggest a technological stasis for hundreds and even thousands of years. In contrast, Ebeling and Rogel (2015) criticize this method and call for a historical approach. A number of research works indeed find typological shifts in ancient installations over time (Balossi Restelli, 2015;Parker and Uzel, 2007;van der Steen, 1991). ...
... The Small-Lined (SL) FI is known in archaeological literature as ṭabūn. Through analogies to modern communities, scholars often associate it with domestic baking (Ebeling and Rogel, 2015). Similar to the former type, it is rounded and made of mud. ...
Ovens, hearths and furnaces were used by early Islamic societies for baking, cooking, and the production of various artefacts. The archaeological evidence from one research area in central Israel, from the seventh–eleventh centuries, accordingly presents a variety of fire installations. This paper offers an interpretation of their function through the analyses of terminology in contemporary texts, ethno-archaeological data, and spatial relations in the archaeological record. The paper suggests that domestic baking and cooking left almost no remains in the archaeological context. Instead, fire installations in the research area were almost exclusively related to crafts.
... Examples displayed in museums and owned by private collectors vary in form and decoration, suggesting chronological and/or regional differences. I attempted to create a chronological typology by examining rotary querns as part of a larger study of traditional bread production in Jordan in fall 2012 (Ebeling 2014a(Ebeling , 2014bEbeling and Rogel 2015). Unfortunately, this was impossible due to the lack of archaeological contexts for the approximately fifty examples I examined on display in Jordanian museums, in the collection of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, and in the houses and gardens of private collectors in Amman. ...
This paper explores the place of the rotary quern in contemporary Middle Eastern culture and some of the issues involved in using unprovenanced, and thus undated, ground stone artefacts to illustrate women’s daily life activities in the recent past. Grinding stones have specific cultural meanings in the present and are valued, regardless of their date and provenance, as symbols of traditional women’s work that resonate with local audiences and tourists. Since archaeologists working in the southern Levant have generally overlooked these artefacts as a topic of serious study, there exists no typology; as a result, their value as artefacts that can inform about daily life from the Roman period through the nineteenth century in the region is currently limited. However, rotary querns persist in illustrations of traditional daily life activities and represent a way of life that is rapidly disappearing.
... The word "t ab un" (transcribed also as "tabun", pl. "tawabin"), with its variants ("taboon", "taboun", "tabouna"), has a likely Arabic root and finds its first attestation in Palestine in the 10 th century AD [55]. The relatively recent archaeological attestation suggests that the introduction of the tabun oven in the Palestinian area occurred sometime after the Arab conquest [55]. ...
... "tawabin"), with its variants ("taboon", "taboun", "tabouna"), has a likely Arabic root and finds its first attestation in Palestine in the 10 th century AD [55]. The relatively recent archaeological attestation suggests that the introduction of the tabun oven in the Palestinian area occurred sometime after the Arab conquest [55]. In Palestine and Jordan, in fact, the word tabun (or taboun) is referred to the traditional wood-fired oven used in that area although its shape is different from that of tannur being wider than tall, similar to an "igloo" [52]. ...
... Although it is clear from ethnographic and archaeological parallels (e.g., Ebeling and Rogel 2015;Gur-Arieh et al. 2013;Portillo et al. 2017;Parker and Üzel 2007;Samuel 2001: 197) that the ovens' main use was for bread baking (by applying the bread on their inner wall), some scholars have hypothesized that they could have also been used for roasting meat or cooking in pots placed at their bottom (e.g., Ben-Shlomo et al. 2008: 235) or on their opening at the top (Bottéro 2001). Ben-Shlomo et al. (2008), rightly pointed out that the opening of many Iron Age ovens would have been too large for the size of their contemporaneous cooking pots, and that the installations walls were probably not strong enough to support the weight of a full pot. ...
While it is debated when exactly humans began regularly to cook their food (Sandgathe and Berna 2017), it is clear that once they did, they never looked back. Cooking raw food improves its nutrient values by enabling more complete digestion, it kills bacteria, and it sometimes helps to preserve the food. But above all, cooking makes many food products taste much better. The combination of such practical benefits, which are essential for our wellbeing, with the communal and social aspects of eating, are what makes cooking and cuisine so central in the culture of many societies worldwide. Yet, although archaeologists are aware of the important role of cooking in the overall assemblage that defines different human cultures, comprehensive study of archaeological cooking installations is still not commonly practiced in excavations of Levantine protohistoric and historic sites (Ebeling and Rogel 2015: 343–44). Such comprehensive studies of cooking technologies, fuel materials, and their spatial and chronological development over time, have the potential to provide invaluable information on topics such as human interaction with the environment, subsistence practice, intercultural transformation, and cultural affiliation, to mention just a few.
... In Palestine and Jordan, finally, a different kind of oven is used, with an "igloo" shape, wider than 348 tall, with an upper opening [52]. This oven is used in a very different way from the classic vertical 349 one, because instead of slapping onto the inner walls, the loaves are placed on the oven floor, next to 350 the embers, usually on a layer of hot pebbles [39,41,[53][54][55]. During baking, the top opening of the 351 oven is closed with a metal lid. ...
... The word "tābūn" (transcribed also as "tabun", pl. 411 "tawabin"), with its variants ("taboon", "taboun", "tabouna"), has a likely Arabic root and finds its 412 first attestation in Palestine in the 10th century AD [55]. The relatively recent archaeological 413 attestation suggests that the introduction of the tabun oven in the Palestinian area occurred sometime 414 after the Arab conquest [55]. ...
... 411 "tawabin"), with its variants ("taboon", "taboun", "tabouna"), has a likely Arabic root and finds its 412 first attestation in Palestine in the 10th century AD [55]. The relatively recent archaeological 413 attestation suggests that the introduction of the tabun oven in the Palestinian area occurred sometime 414 after the Arab conquest [55]. In Palestine and Jordan, in fact, the word tabun (or taboun) is referred 415 to the traditional wood-fired oven used in that area, although its shape is different from that of tannur 416 being wider than tall, similar to an "igloo" [52]. ...
The “flat” breads include a multitude of bread types different from each other but always relatively thin, from a few millimeters to a few centimeters. These breads, whose origin is very ancient, fit well in the context of a subsistence economy: i) can be obtained from cereals alternative to wheat, such as pseudocereals or legumes, allowing the use of sustainable local productions from marginal lands; ii) do not necessarily require an oven to be baked; iii) can serve as dish, as well as spoon/fork; iv) can be dehydrated by a second baking, preventing molding and extending the shelf life; v) are transported with little encumbrance. These strength points make flat breads very popular, traditionally in Near East and Central Asia, but also in some Mediterranean areas, in the Arabian peninsula and in the Indian subcontinent. By a multidisciplinary approach, this review gives an insight of the variety of traditional flat breads from the Fertile Crescent and related regions, classifying them on the basis of their productive process. Morevoer, the baking systems adopted to prepare flat breads are reviewed, such as vertical ovens (tannur and tabun) and griddles (saj), whose structure, origin, history, and denominations are described in detail. This overview shows that these breads have survived until today due to their versatility. In fact, flat breads can be produced both in the same way as they were made thousands of years ago, and in modern fully automatic industrial lines, allowing tradition to meet innovation.
... Area B1 brought to light mostly finds and features dated to the Late Bronze Age, interpreted as a public building and cultic place, including two ovens of the so-called tabun type (Ebeling and Rogel, 2015). The stratigraphy here was shallow (50 cm), as it was constructed directly above the bedrock and was not sealed by sediments from any later activity. ...
Human settlement activities have caused changes in soil chemical properties that might remain preserved in the soil archive for a very long time. These traces might be close to irreversible on the timescale of known civilizations. Our study explores the potential of an extensive mapping of the multi-elemental composition of soil and buried sediments by a portable XRF spectrometer, using the Tel Burna site in the southern Levant as a case study. The tell, dating from the 3rd to the 1st millennium BCE, is known as a Bronze Age Canaanite settlement, and later in the Iron Age as a stronghold on the historic border between the Kingdom of Judah and Philistia. We compared the results of our geochemical survey conducted on the surface layer of contemporary soil with the data acquired by the same method from the archaeological stratigraphy exposed during excavations of the site. We found that handheld XRF spectrometry can reveal archaeologically meaningful patterns of the multi-elemental composition of soils and sediments in the horizontal plane, as well as in vertical profiles. Such patterns correspond to areas and loci of ancient settlement activities, dated to millennia ago. This methodology, if used critically, provides a rapid and cost-effective analysis of soil chemical composition that can significantly enhance our understanding of archaeological sites in arid environments.
... The accumulation of biomass ashes due to food processing, floor maintenance, heating and metallurgical activities were also recorded in many other ancient settlement sites in the Near East (Shahack-Gross et al., 2009;Regev et al., 2015). Firewood followed by livestock dung were the most frequently used fuels in the Bronze and Iron Ages in the region (Gur-Arieh et al., 2014;Ebeling and Rogel, 2015) and the theory that biomass ashes were produced on the tell summit and surrounding terraces was supported by the excavation of several Late Bronze (13th century BCE, Shai et al., 2015) and one Iron Age (7th century BCE, unpublished data) mudconstructed ovens of the tabun type, used for food processing. Such ovens are regularly found in residential areas in the Middle East (see Ebeling and Rogel, 2015 for the definition of the heating and cooking installations in the region). ...
... Firewood followed by livestock dung were the most frequently used fuels in the Bronze and Iron Ages in the region (Gur-Arieh et al., 2014;Ebeling and Rogel, 2015) and the theory that biomass ashes were produced on the tell summit and surrounding terraces was supported by the excavation of several Late Bronze (13th century BCE, Shai et al., 2015) and one Iron Age (7th century BCE, unpublished data) mudconstructed ovens of the tabun type, used for food processing. Such ovens are regularly found in residential areas in the Middle East (see Ebeling and Rogel, 2015 for the definition of the heating and cooking installations in the region). At the study site, the typical colour of archaeological soils with high biomass ashes deposition on the tell summit and surrounding terraces with marks of human settlement activities was ashy grey. ...
Human settlement activities are connected with the accumulation of nutrients in archaeological soils. We address the question of whether the large-scale mapping of the elemental composition of the topsoil in contemporary rangeland can be used for the detection of ancient settlement activities.
Using portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF), we mapped the elemental composition of contemporary soils over an area of 67 ha in and around the Bronze and Iron Age settlement of Tel Burna (identified as probably corresponding with biblical Libnah).
Ancient settlement activities substantially increased concentrations of nutrients (P, K, S, Zn and Cu) in the contemporary topsoil owing to the deposition of biomass ashes and organic wastes. Increased concentrations of elements were detected 2500 years after the site was abandoned and we can therefore suppose that changes in the elemental composition of the soil caused by ancient settlement activities are irreversible on a timescale in which human societies operate. Ancient settlement activities increased concentrations of nutrients in contemporary soil to the same level as recent intensive fertiliser application on an adjacent arable field used for vegetable production. Concentrations of nutrients higher than those on the tell summit were recorded only in recent cattle resting areas with intensive deposition of cattle faeces. Changes in the elemental composition of the soil caused by ancient settlement activities consequently result in differential nutrient availability for contemporary vegetation, affecting ecosystem functions for thousands of years. Using pXRF, large-scale mapping of the elemental composition of the topsoil layer at archaeological sites can help to identify the extent and provide basic information on the character of past human activities in the affected landscape units.
