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East Anglian cooking pot
E34 East Anglian Cooking Pot
East Anglian cooking pot
East Anglian cooking pot

E34 East Anglian Cooking Pot

Date12th-13th Century
Object NameCooking Pot Rim
Mediumpottery
ClassificationsArchaeology Excavated
DimensionsOverall (Length x Width x Depth): 148 × 12 × 62mm
AcquisitionTransferred from Historic Scotland.
LocationView by Appointment
Object numberABDMS053566
About MeSite number: E34
Site name: Gallowgate Middle School
Context number: 104
Trench number: 2
Feature number: CT
Phase number2
Catalogue number: 265 ('Aberdeen: An In-depth View of the City's Past')

1 bag containing a sherd of East Anglian sooted pot rim. Sherd reconstructed from two pieces.

This blackened rim comes from a cooking pot which would have been used during the medieval period for preparing food, including stews and gruel. Cooking would also have been done in metal vessels, on a spit or in an animal skin (eg haggis).

Cooking pots are usually undecorated because they are utilitarian items, for use in the kitchen only. They are always sooted when they have been used, and are sometimes so heavily burnt that it is difficult to analyse the clay.

It is difficult to determine how much food was cooked in pottery vessels compared to metal ones, skins etc, because metal vessels were usually melted down when worn to make new vessels, and skins and spits do not leave any archaeological trace.