Focaccia has been a staple of Italian meals since ancient Rome, but new research suggests the flatbread’s origins date back to the Neolithic. According to some archaeologists, Mesopotamian communities date back to between 7,000 and 5,000 B.C. perhaps even started baking large loaves of bread, thousands of miles away from their modern Roman associations.
The new findings were published in the journal on November 5 Scientific reports and focus on evidence recovered from the Fertile Crescent in what is now Syria and Turkey. Collaborators from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) in Spain, the Turkish universities of Istanbul and Koç, as well as the University of La Sapienza in Rome, examined 13 ceramic fragments excavated at Mezraa Teleilat, Akarçay Tepe and Tell Sabi Abyad. The team believes that these pieces originally belonged to peeling containers: large, oval, low-walled baking molds made of coarse clay.
Using a combination of tools such as stereomicroscopy and chemical analysis, researchers discovered signs of use-wear, as well as compounds from phytoliths (plant silicon residues) and other organic materials. According to the study authors, the markings that were “roughly made, repetitive, and uniformly distributed over the entire interior surface of the vessel” also indicate common designs seen in baking molds.
Some fragments even contain microscopic traces of animal fat and vegetable spices, the breakdown of which involves exposure to baking temperatures as high as 420 degrees Celsius (788 degrees Fahrenheit). According to the announcement of the study from UAB, archaeologists believe this all amounts to “clear evidence” supporting the cap shells in the making of ancient flatbreads such as focaccia.
The variation in organic materials found in the 13 fragments also led researchers to conclude that Neolithic communities experimented with multiple different recipes for baking bread in these shell troughs. Given that each barrel could hold focaccia loaves weighing up to 2.5 kg, scientists suspect that these loaves were probably eaten communally.
“Our study provides a vivid picture of communities using the grains they grew to prepare bread and ‘focaccias’, enriched with different ingredients and consumed in groups,” said Sergio Taranto, lead author of the study and doctoral researcher at UAB.
Related: [Leftovers of a 2,000-year-old curry discovered on stone cooking tools.]
Taranto added that further dating of the fragments leads archaeologists to believe that “this late Neolithic culinary tradition developed over about six centuries and was practiced across much of the Near East” before such practices spread elsewhere such as Italy , migrated.
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