1,500-year-old kitchen knife set found in Hadrianopolis
Archaeologists have discovered a set of iron kitchen knives and a marble whetstone from Late Antiquity in Hadrianopolis, northern Turkey. Stratigraphic analysis dates them to the 5th or 6th century.The set was found in the kitchen section of a structure dubbed the Hammam Building Complex. They were in fragments at the time of discovery, broken into around 250 pieces. Archaeologists puzzled them back together in the conservation laboratory of Karabk University, restoring them to their original shapes. The knives are identical in type, but of graduated sizes, just like a modern knife set.Emphasizing the importance of the knives, [dig leader Ersin elikba, professor at Karabk Universitys Department of Archaeology,] stated: The fact that the knives were found in the same place indicates that the people living in the Hammam Building Complex were engaged in animal husbandry. Archaeological data had already shown that livestock activities were intensive in Hadrianopolis during antiquity, especially in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine periods. The discovery of these knives confirms that families involved in animal husbandry lived in the Hadrianopolis region in ancient times.(Animal husbandry or butchery? Obviously ones leads to the other in a general sense, but the evidence of meat processing at the location isnt evidence that the stock were raised for slaughter in that specific building complex. They could have bought the livestock the way butchers do today or sold their butchering services to people who brought in their own. That may be a translation issue or the team has indeed unearthed archaeological evidence of animal husbandry at the site but the articles are just focused on the knives because of how cool it is that they found a matched graduated set like youd find in any modern kitchen.)Pointing out that the knives are rare examples from a typological perspective, elikba continued: The fact that they were found as a set is also very important. We can say that they are significant archaeological finds both methodologically and in terms of providing important data about the social life here. In addition, a sharpening stone was found alongside the knives. This is also important for us because there is a quarry in the Eskipazar region, known from the Turkish-Islamic and especially the Ottoman period, that produces a stone called ksre stone. This stone was famously used during the Ottoman period for sharpening knives and cutting tools.The discovery of the knives and stone together is evidence that the same type of stone used to sharpen blades in the Ottoman era (between 1300 and 1922) was in active use in the region much earlier.
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