Tom Davie, an artist from Oklahoma, has repackaged food into transparent glass bottles. It looks surprisingly revolting. Perhaps it is only highlighting how disgusting processed foods are, but there is a frisson between the form of the bottle and the understood contents. This kind of art is fairly typical of remix culture, but it still makes me wonder…
…would what have looked absolutely disgusting and inappropriate in this pot, for example? I’m not a ceramicist and I have a tendency toward pragmatism that can be hard to suppress. I took it for granted that vessels, being useful things, would be used for miscellaneous foods. Sure, some vessels could ONLY be used for corn, or wine, or some such–we can tell that through paleobotany and isotopic analyses. But what if something is put in them that is wildly inappropriate? Amphorae full of…goat meat? Willow pattern teapots filled with creamed corn?
I guess it’s asking a bit much of archaeological interpretation to try to think about things that were NOT put into pots.
Colleen Morgan 