Barrel-shaped vessels in context: a long-range model of dairy production in Eastern and Central Mediterranean during the Late Fourth and Early Third Millennia BC

The paper aims at investigating an unusual pottery category which occurs in the Late Chalcolithic of Southern Levant, as well as in Western Anatolia, Northern Aegean and Sicily between the early Fourth and middle Third Millennium BC. In the archaeological literature of eastern Mediterranean prehistory cylindrical barrel-shaped vessels are interpreted as “churns”, because they closely resemble skin-bottles used by modern pastoral nomads in rural Anatolia for converting milk into products such as butter or light cheese. The archaeological investigations and the results of complementary chemical analyses to detect organic residues, involve some ethnographic evidence, in order to define use and function of such uncommon pottery assemblage, which represents one of the most important element of dairy production.