The Eneolithic Bread Oven and Loaf of Bread

Abstract

At the Oxford Symposium on National and Regional Styles of Cookery, 19 and 20 September, 1981, Maria Johnson presented a paper on 'North Balkan Food, Past and Present'. Part of this dealt with the exploitation of the cereals cultivated by the earliest European farmers, and the methods they evolved for transforming the harvested grain into forms suitable for daily consumption. She also read out, as a postscript to this part of her paper, a note of exceptional interest, which we reproduce here with the author's own illustrations. 

Maria Johnson has asked us to make clear, in publishing her note, that it will be for the archaeologist who made the discoveries to publish his findings in full, when he is able to do so; and that in acquainting us briefly with their nature and likely implications she seeks only to herald. not to anticipate, the full story and the expert opinions based on it, which - we all hope - will be published before long. 

We preface the note by explaining that the term 'eneolithic' (or aneolithic) is derived from the Latin aeneus, of copper, of bronze, and the Greek lithos, stone. The eneolithic period is part of the North Balkan copper age the transitional period from late stone to copper, characterised by finds of stone implements together with early copper artifacts.