[Sca-cooks] Fwd: Cooking Pots

[Philippa Alderton]

Finally contacted Paul Buell, in regards to the Cook
Pots, and thought the information might be of interest
to the List.

Phlip


--- "Paul D. Buell"

> Three-legged cooking vessels are age-old in China
> with the same being made
> in clay long before bronze working arrived (and
> pottery is very early in
> China). And it is ding, but that can be four-legged
> too. Huns, etc., also
> used bronze pots for cooking and some were three
> legged, but not always.
> Chinese vessels were special in having hollow legs,
> allowing layered
> cooking, with the rice, apparently, at the bottom,
> or maybe the reverse. The
> Central Asian vessels did not, as far as I remember.
> Also, many of the
> Chinese vessels are ritual, the Hun and later
> Central Asian ones were for
> cooking soup on an everyday basis.
>
> As for possible contacts: the Tripolye culture
> (second millennium) has such
> three-legged pots and also shows evidence of early
> contacts with China in
> other areas too. Can't remember if the legs were
> hollow, but the pottery
> looks Chinese. Its millet is East Asian.
>
> Hun and other nomadic groups were all over Europe
> and large bronze pots are
> characteristic of their cultural leavings, some
> looking very much like
> bronzes from quite close to China. Germanic groups
> imitated the Hun pots, in
> fact  most "Hun" at Chalons in 451 were Germans.
>
> The problem with seeking too actively for the roots
> of all of this, however,
> is that the idea of a pot is ubiquitous and as soon
> as bronze working came
> along I suspect that large cooking pots, three and
> four legged, were
> probably simultaneous inventions everywhere. Of
> course, the decorations on
> pots can indicate more distant influences, e.g., the
> Hun pots.
>
> If the Etruscans had a particular kind of pot then
> one should look to the
> Aegean for roots since that seems to have been from
> whence most Etruscan
> culture came.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Paul D. Buell
>


=====
Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....

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