The distribution and development of the tripot - cooking pots in West Anatolian Early Bronze Age

The aim of this study is to put forward the occurence and the development of the tripod cooking pots as well as to determine their place in the prehistory of Western Anatolia. In this context, basically the material from the stratigraphical excavations, beside, from sounding sondages and surface surveys have been analysed. The material in question have been analysed in terms of ware and typological as well as examined its development and distrubution. And thus, based on the cooking pots and sometimes other cooking implements -such as lids, andirons e.g.- and based also on the ethnographical researches in some cases it has been interpreted the cooking traditions of Western Anatolia during the Early Bronze Age. Tripod cooking pots are one of the important Early Bronze Age form groups in Western Anatolia. They contrubutes not only to reconstructing the early cooking traditions, they also can be counted among the key forms groups in order to compare the Early Bronze Age stratigraphies of the sites. While these pots are common in coasts as from the beginnings of the Early Bronze Age, they occur for the first time in inland western Anatolia in Late Early Bronze Age II. In coastal western Anatolia, relating to occurence of ovens, tripod cooking pots almost disappeared and globular cooking pots replaced them at the beginning of the Late Early Bronze III. However, the use of tripods in cooking have been continuied in several types and variety, even they are stil in use in present.