Post by UKarchaeology on Apr 2, 2016 21:34:32 GMT
One fragment of the non-stick frying pans with internal red-slip coating.
Italian archaeologists have found a site near Naples where the precursors of non-stick pans were produced more than 2,000 years ago.
The finding confirms that non-stick frying pans, an essential tool in any modern kitchen, were used in the Roman Empire.
The cookware was known as “Cumanae testae” or “Cumanae patellae,” (pans from the city of Cumae) and was mentioned in the first-century Roman cookbook De Re Coquinaria as the most suitable pans for making chicken stews.
However, the pans from Cumae remained a mystery until 1975, when Giuseppe Pucci, archaeologist and professor of history of Greek and Roman art, attempted an identification.
Pucci proposed that a pottery commonly known as Pompeian Red Ware which featured a heavy red-slip coating in the inside, was the “Cumanae testae” from historical sources.
Now Marco Giglio, Giovanni Borriello and Stefano Iavarone, archaeologists at the University of Naples “L’Orientale,” have found evidence in Cumae to support Pucci’s identification.
“We found a dump site filled with internal red-slip cookware fragments. The dumping was used by a pottery factory. This shows for the first time the Cumanae patellae were indeed produced in this city,” Giglio told Discovery News.
Full story: news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/ancient-non-stick-frying-pan-factory-found-in-italy-160328.htm