Gurga Chaya excavations: Ubaid period, lentils, and social stratification

[Duncan Head]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/oct/11/lentils-origins-of-social-inequality

[Imperial Dave]

really nice article and who would have thought about lentils as a measure of social stratification  I did like the bit at the end where in a peculiar symmetry the modern population also eat a lot of lentils!

[Patrick Waterson]

Hmmm ... one private house is found to be stuffed with charred lentils and social inequality is immediately apparent?  The excavator does characterise the house as 'usual' and the concentration of lentils as 'unusual', but one can think of other reasons why the entrance to a dwelling should be so full of lentils that nobody could live in it.

"The lentils seem to have emanated from the entrance hall. The lower 30cm of the room fill is black with lentils; large parts are pretty much 100% lentil. From the entrance room the lentils have been spread to the adjacent rooms and beyond, probably after the building was abandoned ..."

It might make more sense to assume that an abandoned dwelling was being used for temporary storage (hence everything in the entrance hall) when something happened that incinerated the contents and ensured the building was not swept out and re-used.

[Duncan Head]

Hmmm ... one private house is found to be stuffed with charred lentils and social inequality is immediately apparent? 

Well, it is the Guardian ...

But to be fair, the growth of social inequality during the Ubaid was already established, and the idea of huge stockpiles of food in a private house just seems to be an interesting illustration of the tendency.

[Patrick Waterson]

Which is certainly one way of looking at it.  What makes me wonder is why the stockpile would be in the entrance, making it difficult if not impossible for the owner to enter and leave the house while at the same time tempting any passers-by to equalise the distribution of lentils with very little effort on their part.  Are we looking at a lentil-seller of old Gurga Chaya* or is there another explanation?  It puzzles me that the lentils are (apart from some leakers) all in the entrance hall rather than in one or more of the back rooms.  I would expect the latter from a stockpiler/hoarder.

*If he was a lentil-seller, his custom must have dropped off with remarkable rapidity for the lentils still to be there.