Dairy products, wine, and beyond: foodways and culinary practices in the Bronze Age South Caucasus

What is it about?

The Kura-Araxes culture is named after the two main rivers of the South Caucasus, the Kura and the Araxes, which flow into the Caspian Sea. This prehistoric cultural tradition expanded to become the most widespread cultural phenomenon in Southwest Asia by the early to mid-3rd millennium BCE. It developed within small-scale, household-based communities, in sharp contrast to the contemporaneous urban trajectories of early state and hierarchical societies of Mesopotamia. We explored Kura-Araxes foodways and culinary practices by applying technological, morphological, use-wear, and biomolecular analyses to 52 ceramic vessels from the Kura-Araxes settlement of Qaraçinar (Azerbaijan), dated to ca. 2800–2600 BCE, and integrating these results with botanical and faunal data. Pottery was one of the most distinctive expressions of the Kura-Araxes tradition and a key marker of its expansion. It played a crucial role in processes of social integration and in the cultural reproduction of Kura-Araxes communities across space and time.

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Photo by أخٌ‌في‌الله on Unsplash

Photo by أخٌ‌في‌الله on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The cuisine was remarkably diverse. Exceptionally well-preserved organic residues in pottery provided robust biomolecular evidence for the preparation and consumption of fruit and grape products, plant oils and waxes, conifer resins, dairy products, and other ruminant fats. We also identified markers of thermal processing, consistent with repeated cooking activities. These findings demonstrate the prominent role of dairy products and ruminant fats in Kura-Araxes dietary and culinary practices, including the transformation of milk into secondary products. The results also shed new light on the role and significance of grape-based beverages and their modes of consumption within Kura-Araxes communities. Wine may have been consumed, sometimes flavored with conifer resins. Grapes and other fruit products were not only identified in drinking/serving vessels but also in numerous cooking pots as well as in some large storage jars, suggesting multiple culinary purposes, such as flavoring or sweetening dishes, and possibly acting as catalysts in biochemical processes like cheesemaking. In addition, Pine resin may have been used both as flavoring agents and as preservatives for food and drink. The identification of millet-based food or drink in Kura-Araxes pottery at Qaraçinar suggests long-distance connections with eastern regions, as millet was cultivated in Central Asia during this period but had not previously been documented so early and so far to the west. Furthermore, this research reveals for the first time a functional distinction between pottery types: Monochrome wares appear to have been used mainly for cooking, whereas Red-Black Burnished vessels were likely dedicated to the consumption of raw dairy products and fruit- or grape-based beverages, including wine. Together, these findings provide new insights into the daily life and culinary traditions of the Kura-Araxes communities. The diversity of the cuisine was accessible to all, as the society was characterized by low levels of social stratification.

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