Start Date
27-5-2026 10:00 AM
End Date
27-5-2026 10:15 AM
Description
Nuances of ancient life choices do not leave traces that can be excavated and quantified. Even with written language, not all thoughts made it to tablet, and not all tablets survive. What archaeologists can see from millennia past are points of intense change, sometimes resulting from crisis. People cope with crisis through traditions and rituals designed to help them transition through the upheaval and loss into a new future when happiness can be found. Around 1350BCE the people of Tell Bazi (Syria) faced annihilation likely from the Hittites who left a swath of ravaged towns and displaced populations in their movement south. The Tell Bazi families knew crisis coming, but there was no place of refuge. They waited and reached out to their ancestors and deities for protection and hope for survival. We see this in the houses through evidence of an ancestor-based ritual called kispum in which the people shared food and drink with their ancestors. Held for each new moon, ancestors and deities were fed portions of the family meal and beer in household spaces as well as the temple. This sharing of food and drink kept the ancestors in active relationship with the people, and when necessary, ancestors could intercede on behalf of their descendants. In short, the dead could stand between the living and other forces. Here I explore the use of food and drink in kispum as the families of thirteenth-century BCE Tell Bazi offered commensality to their past with hope for a future.
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Included in
The Taste of Resilience in Bread, Beer and Ashes at Tell Bazi (Syria)
Nuances of ancient life choices do not leave traces that can be excavated and quantified. Even with written language, not all thoughts made it to tablet, and not all tablets survive. What archaeologists can see from millennia past are points of intense change, sometimes resulting from crisis. People cope with crisis through traditions and rituals designed to help them transition through the upheaval and loss into a new future when happiness can be found. Around 1350BCE the people of Tell Bazi (Syria) faced annihilation likely from the Hittites who left a swath of ravaged towns and displaced populations in their movement south. The Tell Bazi families knew crisis coming, but there was no place of refuge. They waited and reached out to their ancestors and deities for protection and hope for survival. We see this in the houses through evidence of an ancestor-based ritual called kispum in which the people shared food and drink with their ancestors. Held for each new moon, ancestors and deities were fed portions of the family meal and beer in household spaces as well as the temple. This sharing of food and drink kept the ancestors in active relationship with the people, and when necessary, ancestors could intercede on behalf of their descendants. In short, the dead could stand between the living and other forces. Here I explore the use of food and drink in kispum as the families of thirteenth-century BCE Tell Bazi offered commensality to their past with hope for a future.