Of
all artifacts in archeology, bread might be the least likely to
survive. It is made after all to be consumed, to disintegrate in
liquids, to crumble. And yet... it does. Rarely, relative to other
products, and still more rarely as a coherent object. Still, bread
has been found from eras going back thousands of years, and in places
as different as Egypt, Sweden, Switzerland, Romania, France and
England. Already in 2002, the French review Civilizations was
able to dedicate an entire issue to "Bread, ovens and hearths of
the past", including several articles on bread and grains found
in archeology.
The
most famous preserved bread comes from Pompeii. where volcanic ash
left a "snapshot" of at least one bakery. Mercifully,
however, we do not have to depend on volcanic eruptions to preserve
such artifacts. A hot dry climate like Egypt's sometimes preserves
them naturally. Far more often, it is fire that does the job. In rare
cases, this fire is catastrophic and unexpected. But in tombs it has
often been set intentionally, as part of a ritual. The result is a
fitful but fascinating panorama of very different breads across
different times and regions.
NOTE: Images of these breads are not included here but can (with some exceptions) be found in the original articles and a number of the books cited.
Also, if this is an extensive post, it only surveys far more detailed material; readers of French with a serious interest in this subject may want to consult the original articles (linked below).
Terminology
Many
of the source texts here are written in French, a language which
(understandably) uses more precise terms for bread-baking. The
English word “crumb” corresponds to both the inside of a bread
(the French mie) and the crumbled fragments of a bread (the
French miette). In English, the holes which appear in bread
are no more than that: holes. To describe these as small or large,
one has to described the bread as “close-crumbed”,
“open-crumbed”, etc. In French, these are more precisely
described as “eyes” (yeux) or “alveoli” (alveoles),
and the presence of holes “alveolage” (a word sometimes now used
in English as well, though by specialists).
Speakers
of American English should also bear in mind that the English word
“corn” long referred to any grain. American “corn” – maize
– is not mentioned in any of what follows.
Beyond
linguistic differences, “bread” and “pastry” are problematic
terms when discussing prehistoric baked goods. Even today, bread is
not necessarily leavened and much prehistoric bread was not. Some
early bread in fact was basically cooked gruel. Nor has bread always
been made of wheat or even other grains, like barley, now familiar to
us. To be considered “bread”, however, a mass should typically
have been bound by some form of liquid and subsequently heated (which
may or may not be true of a “cake”, in its two different senses
as a mass of a substance and a sweet baked product). Further, since
much bread found in archeology has been burned, it may not look like
bread at all. Hansson:
Sometimes bread loaves are found in a relatively undamaged condition, whereby it is possible already during excavation to ascertain that they indeed constitute bread. But most often, the loaves are fragmented into small, black, charred pieces, where no edge, over - or underside survives to indicate any original morphology. Such pieces cannot with certainty be designated as bread, since they can as well constitute some other cereal -based dish or even a charred faecal concretion. This type of small, black, charred material is also easily passed-over during excavation, being often mistaken for charcoal.
In
the latter cases, declaring a find a “bread” can be a judgment
call. In practice, archaeologists tend to err on the side of caution
in this regard.
Some
early breads are distinguished as galettes, a French term with
several meanings, but here referring to a low crusty, typically
round, baked item. Today this would be most often be a cake, like the
famous galette des rois (for the Epiphany). But the
unleavened, friable breads made from something like millet (which
does not rise well) would also be considered galettes, as would some
other breads from older cultures; this distinction is mainly made in
France.
The word tourte sometimes refers to a kind of pie or tart, but in bread-baking refers to a slightly risen disk, usually roughly eight or nine inches across (the term is immensely variable), typically distinguished from a galette by being more leavened and "bread-like" (though not all breads described as tourtes have in fact been leavened). These are mentioned in Medieval baking regulations and even shown on some coats-of-arms. For prehistoric bread, of course, the term is used more approximately.
The word tourte sometimes refers to a kind of pie or tart, but in bread-baking refers to a slightly risen disk, usually roughly eight or nine inches across (the term is immensely variable), typically distinguished from a galette by being more leavened and "bread-like" (though not all breads described as tourtes have in fact been leavened). These are mentioned in Medieval baking regulations and even shown on some coats-of-arms. For prehistoric bread, of course, the term is used more approximately.
Finally,
“pastry” may not be the most obvious word when seeing (in the
original articles) images of burned, shapeless masses. The most
obvious distinction here is some refinement – such as the use of
egg white or a more careful preparation – which results in a
marginally finer product than what has been identified as bread. The
addition of honey, too, is one distinguishing element, though some
additions, such as linseed or fruit, are also mentioned in regard to
items classified as “bread”.
NEOLITHIC
Max
Währen, considered a pioneer in the archeology of bread, outlines a
number of Neolithic
breads and pastries in an article on “Bread, pastry and religion in
Pre and Proto historic Europe”. He begins by writing that, in
Europe, bread-baking was
already known in Yugoslavia towards 4850/4700 B.C.E. and in
Switzerland
towards 4300 B.C.E. But the oldest perfectly preserved European bread
was found at Doanne, on Lake Bienne in Switzerland:
This bread dates from 3560 to 3530 B.C., it was made from finely ground flour and leavening, and shows a nice curvature.... Its form and its fabrication do not allow it to be distinguished from leavened bread which still exists in the Alps, notably in the Valais.
...[Made of] wheat finely ground, 5500 years ago: diameter, about 17 cm, height: 4.5, to 5 cm, weight, around 330 g.
(Images
of this and other breads can be seen in Währen's article.)
Währen
also identifies several Stone Age finds as "pastries" of
various sorts:
- barquettes (a kind of elongated oval pastry whose name means "little boats")
- Round tartlets, "made of finely ground wheat flour, with a very fine pastry base, sides 15 mm high and 2 mm thick (corresponding to our modern strawberry tarts)".
- "Tarts recalling our Alsatian tarts."
- Round "cuplets" of pastry, "made on strips of birch bark 4 cm long...these let the baking heat slowly and progressively spread, as is needed for pastries." These included honey poured in a hollow on the surface.
- "Oak bark was used for a lighter – because richer in egg white – pastry: it was known therefore exactly what sort of plate went with what sort of pastry." (Unfortunately, Währen says nothing more about the use of egg white here, which seems remarkably advanced for the period.)
- "The most astonishing of these pastries 5150 years old, we have called 'the Stone Age brioche'... [This was] the most refined cake known from prehistory, of a length of 92.3 mm , of a width of 73.3. mm, of a height of 52.2 mm and of a weight of 45.75 g. It had one side raised and the other flat. We had supposed that the dough must have been pressed into a cake mold. X-rays show irrefutably that a square mold... had been used and that the risen side was only formed afterward. Thus was discovered the oldest cake mold in the world."
Two
of these pastries (dated 3178 to 3118 B.C.E.) bore "heating
rocks": "The rock served not only to provide heat, but also
as a thermometer and to form a hollow." In one, the hollow
served as a receptacle for berries.
The
Lake Villages
Bread
found at other lake villages in Switzerland may also be among the
world's oldest, depending on which dating one accepts. These widely
described sites are typically identified as Neolithic, but in his
book on them Keller writes: “Although the actual determination of
the age of the lake dwellings is doubtful, yet we may say with
perfect certainty that they are more than 2,000 years old; and, with
a considerable amount of probability, that they reach back from 1,000
to 2,000 years before Christ.” By most (though not all) reckonings,
this would put them in the Bronze Age. To complicate matters, the
dating of the breads themselves is at best approximate.
At
Robenhausen, bread was made of either wheat or millet; the latter was
sometimes flavored with grains of wheat and linseed. The total
weight of the bread found was eight pounds, said to correspond to
forty pounds of freshly baked bread. Barley was found, but no barley
bread, which was however found at Wangen. Keller describes the bread
there:
The form of these cakes is somewhat round, and about an inch or an inch and a half high— one small specimen, nearly perfect, is about four or five inches in diameter. The dough did not consist of meal, but of grains of corn, more or less crushed. In some specimens the halves of grains of barley are plainly discernible. The under side of these cakes is sometimes flat, sometimes concave, and there appears no doubt that the mass of dough was baked by being laid on hot stones, and covered over with glowing ashes.
A
cake of poppy seed was also found at Robenhausen, though the seeds
may have been pressed for their oil.
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe has also yielded a
number of specimens of early bread, as documented by Monah.
At Postyrskoe in the Ukraine, the restored remains of half a tourte showed it had an oval form, being 7.8 cm at its widest point and 17.3 cm long, varying from 1 to 2.2 cm in thickness. It had been crudely made but from wheat and well-ground millet flour. “The tourte was compact, proving that no fermentation agents were used,” and seems to have been cooked without direct contact with the fire (something one might take for granted when ovens were common, but that was less obvious in earlier times).
This may have been similar to one found in the North Caucasus from the first century C.E.
The oldest archaeological bread mentioned in Romania comes from Calu.
In a 1941 report, Radu Vulpe writes that it was a burnt piece of
millet bread: “On a hearth was found a piece of millet tourte,
burned; the millet seeds could well be made out in the dough.” This
has also been described as a sort of “pre-bread”, the millet
being incompletely ground. It was similar to clay models of breads
which have been found in southwest Europe continually from the Copper
(Chalcolithic) Age all the way up to the Middle Ages. Similar models
have been found from the Middle Ages from Bessarabia and from near
Moscow (the latter showing well-risen breads).
These
of course have the advantage of showing what these loaves looked
like, even if they are not actually bread themselves.
France
A
group of French scholars of bread and carpology
have written a paper (originally included in the Civilisations issue) on “Studies of French archaeological
'bread/galettes” which surveys finds of bread across different eras
in France; they are Sylvie Lannoy,
Philippe Marinval,
Alain Buleon, Hubert Chiron,
Philippe Mejanelle, Serge Pin, Joselyne Rech, and Alain Tchapla. The
oldest bread they cite (possibly a galette)
comes from a Neolithic site at Nice. It is known from compact
fragments with little alveolage.
They
also cite Aimé Bocquet,
who has described a number of bread/galettes from the late Neolithic
found in the Isère, made
in two slightly different ways. In one, dough two to three
centimeters thick was put directly on a hot stone; hot coals may also
have been placed on top. The result was roughly circular bread 8-10
cm across, lightly cracked on top. In the other, a disk of dough was
shaped in a flat basket, the latter heated on a schist plaque. These
breads, thicker than the first and slightly larger, show the marks of
the basket.
England
In
a late Neolithic layer in Jersey, a piece of burnt dough a square
decimeter in size had been cooked on a large granite stone and was
still stuck to it. It is said to have been remarkably thin for the
period and was possibly made of wheat and barley. (Lannoy et al)
UPDATE 9/8/2015 - Thank you to Dr. Emilie Sibbesson for this item, from 1999:
UPDATE 9/8/2015 - Thank you to Dr. Emilie Sibbesson for this item, from 1999:
Small pieces of burnt bread, discovered in a pit at Yarnton in Oxfordshire, UK, have been dated and found to be 5,500 years old. This makes the Neolithic bread the oldest ever found in Britain...
When Dr Mark Robinson from the Oxford University Museum examined them through a microscope, he could clearly see partially crushed grains of barley.
The material was analysed at the Oxford University Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit and at Rafter Radiocarbon Laboratory, New Zealand.
From the amount of radioactive carbon in the sample, it is estimated that the bread was baked between 3,620 - 3,350 BC."Oldest bread in Britain", BBC News
Egypt
Ancient
Egyptian bread was typically made of emmer wheat, though a cake using
wheat and barley was found at El Omari. El Omari and El Badari are
two of the major sites where bread has been found in Egypt. Brunton
and Caton-Thompson, reporting on the Badarians, write of the bread:
"the masses are porous, showing that probably the use of yeast
was known. The material is not very homogeneous." Samuel notes
that in Egyptian bread in general the flour and water appear not to
have been evenly mixed. "There would be no point in kneading
emmer dough for long, since the purpose of kneading is to develop
gluten into an elastic mass which creates a nicely risen, spongy
loaf."
Interested in the history of the food of Paris?
Visit the Paris Food History site.
COPPER/BRONZE
AGES
Egypt
Later
Egyptian bread was often made in molds, many of which have been found
in tombs. Some were found at Tel el Amarna, dated to around 1340 B.C.
E., where Samuel "determined that funerary bread was made mostly
from emmer wheat, occasionally flavored with figs, dates or
coriander." (Highfield)
She
also notes that "in several ancient bread samples, heavily
channeled [concentric] starch granules make up part of the crumb...
[indicating] that malt was part an ingredient of these bread
loaves... If malt was used for bread, it may have been necessary or
desirable to heat it artificially." This is of interest
particularly because of the long association of bread with brewing.
Almost
all samples of Egyptian bread dated to between c. 3000 and c. 1085
B.C.E had whole grains on the surface but also "inorganic
contaminants" such as sand and other grit.
These articles came from soil itself and from the flint-tooth sickle harvesting tools in eighteenth Dynasty tomb paintings. Wind-blown sand may also have been incorporated during winnowing.
Additionally, another contribution was made by abrasions from the surfaces of querns and saddle-stones... There are also illustrations of stone ovens with bread baked on the outside where the surface of the bread might have been further adulterated by sand and granules of stone.
(Miller)
Leek,
who studied these breads from a dental perspective, noted that such
particles were also found within the crumb of the bread, probably
accounting for the "heavy wear observed on Egyptian teeth."
Samuel adds that chunks as large as several millimeters across have
been found in these breads.
France
At
a Copper age site near Montpelier, a number of fragments, none larger
than 4.5 cm, have been found, from an unknown whole and show traces
of barley and bread wheat, but seem more likely to have come from
gruel than bread. A larger fragment probably came from a
circular object estimated to have the following dimensions: maximum
length: 6.7 cm; maximum width: 4.4 cm; maximum thickness: 2.3 cm;
thickness of edge: 1.4 cm. It has a smooth side, probably the bottom, and a slightly raised side, producing a lens-like profile. The grain
has not so far been identified, but was well ground, the flour being
regular; the crumb was closed. Marks on the surface suggest that it
was either wrapped in a cloth or shaped in a basket.
The
best find in France from the Bronze Age has been lost; it was found
in the Var in the Fifties or Sixties. It was roughly circular and
between 15 to 20 cm in diameter. The top had been garnished with four
cotyledons (like embryonic leaves) from acorns, which had been
lightly pressed into the dough. (This is an extremely rare mention of
a purely decorative touch.)
A
"galette" found in the Jura from the Late Bronze Age was
found in the base of a biconic jar and probably resulted from the
accidental cooking (during a fire) of barley being prepared for beer.
The find is interesting however in highlighting the relation between
the two products; had the the disk (about 10 cm across) been made
with ground flour insteadly of coarsely broken grains, it might well
have been taken for a bread.
Marinval
had found some remains of breads/galettes in several regions – the
Seine-Maritime, Lot and Charente-Maritime – at the time of the
joint article on French bread, but these finds had not yet been
analyzed.
Carbonized
blocks were found at a site from the end of the Bronze Age at
Longueuil-Ste-Marie in the Oise, between 5 and 8 cm at their greatest
lengths, with thicknesses of 2.5 and 3 cm, and no particular shape.
But they have very large holes in the crumb, as large as 5 mm,
indicating:
a good fermentation of the dough... [corresponding] very probably to a risen bread. This results, not only from a relatively well-sifted flour, but also from the use of particular flours.... It can only be a question of cereals with gluten: soft wheat (Triticum aestivum) or spelt (Triticum spelta).
Further, to obtain so well-risen a product, one must particularly well master fermentation techniques... [This] indicates an undeniable savoir-faire.
The fact that a thick product was baked all the way through also suggests
that it was cooked in an oven or at least a bell. The blocks also
show imprints of carbonized vegetal fragments, possibly added for
flavor. Overall, "it would seem that the inhabitants... already
showed proof of a surprising mastery in bread-making."
Romania
In Romania, a loaf of bread was found at Sucidava-Celei from the start of the Bronze Age, a burnt lump 20 square centimeters wide and 1.5 thick. An examination showed mainly rye in the crumb, but also traces of curly dock and linseed, the latter both believed to be accidentally added. The hole structure of the crumb suggests that it was moderately leavened.
IRON
AGE
France
The
filling of a silo in the Loiret, from the end of the First Iron Age,
included an oval bread/galette, 5-6 cm long and about 3 cm high (no
further information).
At
Chastel in the Lot-et-Garonne, two small samples were found, 3-3.5 cm
at their longest and between 5 and 7 mm thick. The crumb shows no
alveolage at all, both being dense and compact, made of coarsely
ground grain. One sample seems to have been folded over on itself.
The grains tentatively can be identified as wheat, barley, or, more
surprisingly for this era, rye.
Germany
Währen
cites, as the "the oldest bread having a shape", a roughly
triangular bread, indented at the broad end, from 900-600 B.C.E.,
found in Kreis de Stade in Germany. A small metal offering was found
in the bread whose shape, he says, "recalls the attribute of the
Indo-European god of lightning" (meaning Thor and his hammer?).
Another
researcher, Metzler, found a galette from around 713 B.C.E. in a wood
going through the Swamp of Ipweg, near Kreis de Wesermarch. Währen:
According to the first hypothesis, this was an oval bread cut with a kind of knife-saw. In examining this object, we arrived at the conclusion that the dough necessary for cooking a round galette 15 cm in diameter was cut a little above the half, that the cuts had been pressed with a flat piece of wood and it was only then that at least a half loaf was baked.
However,
this bread was primarily made up of beeswax, with only traces of spelt, barley and millet, apparently being "a substitute bread,
intended to replace the real bread" and intended as an offering.
"This must be, in Europe, the most ancient offering in the form
of bread, whose intent was profane." Yet it was baked
(apparently): "As the divided part was not too strongly pressed,
....[it] formed a finer crust and became agreeably crusty."
Währen
cites two breads from Celtic tombs. One from around 125 B.C.E., found
at Kreis de Bernkastel-Wittlich, is in the shape of a ring and looks
like a crude doughnut. This is "the only pre and protohistoric
example discovered in Europe so far." The other, from around
150-125 B.C.E., from the same area, is described as being of a "ball
shape" but looks somewhat more elongated.
England
The
breads found at Glastonbury are some of the most famous of the
archaeological breads:
Some very hard rock buns were found at Glastonbury Lake Village in Somerset, England dating from the first century B.C. This unleavened bread contained hulled barley, wheat, wild oat, chess and orache. ,,,,Similarly, the well preserved Iron age bog burial of Lindow man’ from Cheshire, England produced the remains of an unleavened ‘bannock’... made of wheat and barley when his stomach contents were examined.
(Smith)
ROMAN
TIMES
With
the Romans, documentary accounts of bread begin to be common,
including that made by the Romans living in Gaul; that is, the
Gallo-Romans. But this is also a rich period for bread in archeology.
Pompeii
Vesuvius
created a “snapshot” of Rome itself in 79 C. E. when it buried
Pompeii and Herculaneum. Numerous works discuss the bakeries and
breads found in these cities. Images of one from Pompeii is
especially common: a low, slightly risen disk about eight inches
across and roughly an inch and a half thick, divided into eight even
sections, one of which bears the baker's rectangular stamp. The loaf,
completely carbonized by the eruption, looks as if it were made of
stone. In 1771 Winckelmann mentioned somewhat different loaves from
Herculaneum, but cut in a similar way:
There are two whole loaves to be seen, both of the same form and size, that is, a palm and two inches in diameter, and five inches in thickness. Both have eight dents in the upper crust; that is to say, they were first divided by cross lines into four parts, and then subdivided into eight, by four other cross lines. There appears a division of the same kind on two loaves, in one of the pictures found at Herculaneum.
In
1853, Clarke published this description of some from Pompeii:
Their loaves appear to have been very often baked in moulds, several of which have been found: these may possibly be artoptae, and the loaves thus baked artopticii. Several of these loaves have been found entire. They are flat, and about eight inches in diameter. One in the Neapolitan Museum has a stamp on the top:—
SILIGO . CRANII
E . CICER
This has been interpreted to mean that cicer (vetch) was mixed with the flour.
One of
the striking notes, in fact, about bread in Pompeii is the likelihood
that cicer – chick pea – flour was used for some breads. Monnier
mentions it as well in this description from 1886:
The very loaves have survived. In the bakery of which I speak several were found with the stamps upon them, siligjo grani (wheat flour), or e cicera (of bean flour) — a wise precaution against the bad faith of the dealers. Still more recently, in the latest excavations, Signor Fiorelli came across an oven so hermetically sealed that there was not a particle of ashes in it, and there were eighty-one loaves, a little sad, to be sure, but whole, hard, and black, found in the order in which they had been placed on the 23d of November, 79.....
Most of the loaves weigh about a pound; the heaviest twelve hundred and four grains. They are round, depressed in the centre, raised on the edges, and divided into eight lobes. Loaves are still made in Sicily exactly like them.
If
sand was not found in this bread, powdered stone sometimes was, from
the mills used. (But this was not particular to Rome; later stone
mills would also leave traces in the flour).
At
Herculaneum, one bread bore a stamp stating that it was "made by
Celer, the slave of Quintus Granius Verus". There was nothing
unusual about bread being made by slaves, but it is curious that the
work of this one was individually marked. Since it seems unlikely
there was any desire to promote his reputation, this was probably a
quality control measure.
Germany
Währen
describes two baked items found in a second century cremation tomb at
Saffig, in Kreis de Main-Koblenz. One is a bread (found in fragments)
with a hollow filling the center which might have been used for food
offerings. (As sketched, it resembles a small pizza with a thick
outer crust.) The other is described as a fruit tartlet, though
Währen cites no traces of
any fruit. It is 9-10 cm in diameter, 2-3 cm high, with a thickness
varying from 3.3 to 10.9 mm. (The surviving piece is now open in the
middle.)
Gallo-Roman
France
:
The Gallo-Roman period is the best documented thanks to discoveries made in the cremation tombs of the Principate. As it happens, it was common to depose breads on funerary piles in Italy... as in Gaul.... We have reviewed eight Gallo-Roman necropoles in which were noted remains of breads/galettes.
(Lannoy, et al)
In
the Aveyron, at la Vayssière,
one tomb held a fairly large fragment of a nearly circular galette,
about 9 cm across. It was made of fine flour (grain unknown), but did
not appear to have been leavened and had a regular but close crumb,
with a smooth, generally regular crust. The dough had been folded in
on itself. (The crematory remains included (per Marinval) mainly
bread wheat, but also traces of barley and broad bean, as well as a
walnut, apples and hazelnuts; it is not clear however if these relate
to the bread, beyond perhaps the likelihood that it was made with
bread wheat.)
At
Vallades, in the Drome, a small loaf was found almost intact
(exploded but readily reassembled). Slightly oval (9.1 by 8.3 cm),
with a maximum thickness of 4.5 cm., it was flat on the bottom and
slightly raised on top. The fact that the sides were practically
vertical suggests it had been made in a mold. "The crust is
smooth and regular. The flour is fine.... The crumb is regular with
openings of a moderate size; 1.9 mm."
Remnants
of galettes were also found near a plate and low bowl or cup and a
pitcher, and had probably been burned at the same time as the
deceased. There are indications these were made with sarrasin wheat
which, if it was known in Brittany and Belgium since the Iron Age,
has otherwise not been found in this time in the south; nor is it
definitely identified here.
A
particularly rich find comes from a large household in Amiens dating
from the second century (excavated by T. Ben Redjeb), at a site
referred to as the "Jacobins". Ten breads, as well as a
broken mill and a domestic oven, have been found at the same site.
Three
of the breads have been studied. Two are circular, about 10 cm across
and 5 cm thick. The crust is clearly different from the crumb, which
shows a very fine alveolage, as regular as modern commercial loaves; today the French call this pattern "bee's nest"; that is,
honeycomb. These also bear the marks of fingers and palms, though how
is uncertain.
The
third is more irregular in form, about 12 cm across and 6-7 cm thick
at its thickest. Its alveolage is exceptionally large, reaching
diameters of 10-13 mm. Such an aerated crumb is still unusual today
and can only be obtained with a super-hydrated dough. It probably
also was allowed to rise longer than the other two samples. It was
probably made from well-sifted bread wheat or spelt, but analysis
also shows the (again early) presence of rye. Further the loaf bears
the clear mark of a cloth, possibly placed on it as it rose.
A
bread found at Cabasse, in the Var, is both remarkably well-preserved
and remarkably sophisticated compared to other breads found in tombs.
Bérard's report on the excavation notes it as follows: "Small
bread (0 m. 140 x 0 m. 110. Thick. 0 m. 032 : upper part with two
deep grooves: entirely calcified.)" It is a very modern looking
bread, in American terms about 5.5 inches by 4.3 inches across, an
inch and a quarter thick, with two slashes on the surface roughly
dividing it into thirds. These look very much like the kind of slashes - grignes - seen on many French breads today; these are decorative, but also allow gas to escape, preventing the bread from bursting. Neither Lannoy et al nor Bérard describe it
further, but the regularity and the distinctive form of the bread
suggest it was made by a professional baker (whether in a city or in
a household). Grignes became popular in France in the nineteenth century as yeast was used more often, resulting in a stronger fermentation. It is tempting (if entirely unproven) to think this loaf then was leavened with yeast (which Pliny documented among the Gauls) rather than sourdough.
EARLY
MEDIEVAL
Sweden
In
Sweden, “pre-history” refers to a period corresponding to the
historical – that is, Medieval – period elsewhere. Hansson: “The
majority of surviving Swedish prehistoric bread can be dated to the
later part of the Early Medieval Period (which in Sweden incorporates
the Migration Period (400 -550 AD), the Vendel Period (550 -800 AD)
and the Viking Age (800 -1050 AD).”
Loaves
from these periods were made not only from cereals, but, microscopic
analysis shows, flour too from peas, vetches, flax, gold of pleasure
and fieldweeds. The flour was typically finely sieved and the bread
unleavened. Traces of Scots pine found in bread were once thought to
have been used in the bread itself, but now appear to have resulted from
contamination, either during baking or during the cremation.
Hansson
for the most part describes these breads collectively, not
individually as do certain other authors.
The
first pre-historic Swedish breads to be analyzed were those found at
the start of the twentieth century in cremation graves at Ljunga and
at a fortified farm at Boberget (both in Östergötland). Eastern
central Sweden has been rich in finds, while one at Västbyn (in
Jämtland) is the northernmost found. (It has been suggested that
blood was used in the latter, along with hulled barley.)
Two
sites were on islands in Lake Mälaren, once a gulf of the Baltic
Sea. One was Helgö, the other Birka (both near Stockholm). Loaves
from the migration-viking period at Helgö “were found in a
longhouse and in a sunken-floor hut. This bread had a somewhat older
dating than the loaves from the prototown of Birka.” Those at the
latter were found in cremation graves dated c. 750-975 C.E. “Here
c. 1000 graves were excavated during the end of the 19th century. Of
these, c. 500 proved to hold cremation burials, and c. 10 % of the
cremation graves contained bread loaves.” More breads were found
on the same island (Björkö) in graves which probably belonged to
independent farmers in the same period.
In Birka, in those cases where it was possible to make a secure classification based on the morphology, we observed a predominance of circular bread with a diameter of less than 5 cm and a thickness of c. 0,5 cm (25 cases in total). With regard to such small dimensions perhaps the term « bun » or « miniature bread » is more accurate than merely « bread ». There are however also other forms, for instance, an oval shape, an indented « clover-leaf » shape, and one small curved piece of bread which was earlier interpreted as a figure -of -eight, but now seems more possibly ring-formed. Rare examples occur of larger loaves, up to a diameter of 17-18 cm. A loaf from the fortified farm of Boberget was semi-spherical, the only early medieval Swedish loaf with this form.
Many
of the grave-breads at Birka were provided with iron strings for
hanging them (which suggests that they had holes in them, like one of
the most popular forms of modern Swedish flat bread). Since other
materials might have been used and metal was then expensive in Nordic
countries, Hansson sees in this fact an emphasis of bread's symbolic
value.
Furthermore, loaves were often placed within the grave urn or just beside it, the most important location in the grave. Bread deposits often coincide in the Birka graves with Thor´s hammer rings also made of iron, sometimes with metal pendants. These are usually associated with ideas of fertility and resurrection. Prehistoric bread probably had a similar symbolic function following a very widely established tradition
UPDATE 11/28/2015: In a separate paper, Hansson gives more details on the grains used. "In Swedish prehistoric bread, barley (Hordeum sp.) was the most common cereal, followed by oats (Avena sp.)" A small percentage of "speltoid wheats, einkorn, emmer wheat and spelt wheat" was also used.
LATER
FINDS
Ironically,
the later the date, the less bread is found in archeology (how much bread have you kept from your own past?). Lannoy et al
cite a Medieval lakeside site in the Isère
which included remnants of breads/galettes which, however, have never
been described. Währen
mentions a kind of substitute bread from the thirteenth century in
central Europe, made as a fine pastry, but gives no further details.
Otherwise,
the latest find of this sort may be that said to come from “the
medieval village of Dolhesti” in Romania, but dated to the
seventeenth century; it is round and flattened at the center, which
shows fingerprints. Though it has a rather porous crumb, it resembles
a type of bread known from Romanian period tapestries and named
lipie, which typically is not very leavened.
UPDATE 1-18-14 Dr. Debby Banham (Cambridge) notes a find of eleventh century Anglo-Saxon breads: "most Anglo-Saxon bread was undoubtedly baked on the hearthstones. In either case, it was made in small round loaves, whether of wheat or barley meal... Such loaves have recently been found in a house destroyed by fire in the eleventh century at Ipswitch (Keith Wade, pers. comm.)"
UPDATE 1-18-14 Dr. Debby Banham (Cambridge) notes a find of eleventh century Anglo-Saxon breads: "most Anglo-Saxon bread was undoubtedly baked on the hearthstones. In either case, it was made in small round loaves, whether of wheat or barley meal... Such loaves have recently been found in a house destroyed by fire in the eleventh century at Ipswitch (Keith Wade, pers. comm.)"
OVERVIEW
Breads
are only found fitfully in archeology, yet this (certainly
incomplete) inventory shows what varied information and evidence they
can provide. Though leavening and fine grinding of flour were more
common in later centuries, both are found in the earliest bread cited
here. (Archaeologists rarely distinguish between leavening by sour dough and leavening by yeast, unfortunately.) Bread was cooked under or on stones and/or under coals for some time before
anything like an oven appeared. Several cultures used molds to shape
but also sometimes to bake the bread.
Already
too, in periods which precede the written record, some sought
refinement in baked goods, even using different techniques for
different results. One result, early on, was some form of pastry,
however primitive. Wheat was used in prehistoric times, but barley and millet
were once more common; a wide range of other materials too have been
used for bread. Far more often than not, breads were round, if
sometimes imperfectly so. Long breads existed – as other evidence
shows – but not commonly enough to have survived thus far.
Otherwise, an eccentric variety of shapes has been found from over the
centuries.
FOR
FURTHER INFORMATION:
If you are interested in bread history, you might enjoy a new translation of Le Grand d'Aussy's classic chapters on bread, as well as those on pastry and sweets:
If you are interested in bread history, you might enjoy a new translation of Le Grand d'Aussy's classic chapters on bread, as well as those on pastry and sweets:
- In print: Breads, Pastry and Sweets in Old Regime France
- As an ebook: Breads, Pastry and Sweets in Old Regime France
- In Kindle format: Breads, Pastry and Sweets in Old Regime France
"Pain,fours et foyers des temps passés/Breads, ovens and hearths of the past", Civilisations, No 49 2002
NOTE:
Not included in above on-line edition; free access available through Jstor
"Loaf of bread From Deir el-Bahari, Thebes, Egypt New Kingdom, around 1500 BC", The British Museum: Explore/Highlights
"Unleavened bread upon a circular palm leaf dish", New Kingdom, Thebes, British Museum: Images
Debby Banham, Food and Drink in Anglo-Saxon England 2004
Hansson, Anne-Marie, "Bread in Birka and on Bjorko", Laborative Arkeologi 1996
Hansson, Anne-Marie, "Bread in Birka and on Bjorko", Laborative Arkeologi 1996
