Cooking pot from Tel Beth
Shean
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Families dedicated a good amount of time and
floor space to storage. Ceramic storage jars or
clay bins were used to store foodstuffs or liquids
by sealing them to trap in carbon dioxide and thus
prevent spoilage. Under the dry environment
conditions of the southern Levant, it was necessary
to store more than was needed between harvests.
With poor harvests coming as frequently as one year
in every four, farmers always had to keep a reserve
of seed stock on hand.
Fermentation, oil extraction and drying were
all ways of converting food into more stable, and
hence, storable products. Feeding harvested crops
to livestock was a means of "storage on the hoof"
-- the animals converted the fodder into meat or
milk.
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