Food Processing in the Levant during the Middle Bronze Age: Fire Installations, Cooking Pots and Grinding Tools at Tell Mardikh-Ebla (Syria): Two Case-Studies

The excavations carried out since 1964 at Ebla-Tell Mardikh (North Inner Syria), have brought to light large sectors of the Old Syrian town dating to the Middle Bronze Age II (c. 1800-1600 BC). A large quarter of houses located in the Area B East, at the foot of the Acropolis in the South-Western sector of the Lower Town , and the Western Fort, built on the top of the rampart defending the town during the Middle Bronze Age, provided a large evidence of fire installations and contexts related to the food processing (cooking pots,grinding tools, and bio-archaeological remains). Within a more wide project of environmental cross-disciplinary researches, including archaeometry, bio-archaeology, palaeogeography, sedimentological and geological analyses, we will focus here the attention on the typology of fireplaces for cooking and/or heating, proposing a comparison between a public defensive complex and a group of private dwellings.