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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): 104 × 9 × 53mm
AcquisitionTransferred from Historic Scotland.
LocationView by Appointment
Object numberABDMS053568
About MeSite number: E34
Site name: Gallowgate Middle School
Context number: 107
Trench number: 2
Feature number: CT
Phase number 2
Catalogue number: 267 ('Aberdeen: An In-depth View of the City's Past')

1 bag containing a sherd of East Anglian cooking pot rim, sooted with very pronounced external rilling.

This blackened rim comes from a cooking pot which would have been used during the medieval period for preparing some meals including stews and gruel. Other methods would include cooking on a spit, in metal vessels 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 after use to make new vessels, and skins and spits do not leave any archaeological trace.