ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how changes in pottery types in Palestine over the course of the 6th to 10th centuries attest to the impact of the early Islamic agricultural revolution. Since pottery was used by all sectors of the population, ceramic types may provide a means of identifying the participants and agents of change in this revolution. Food choices express identity through the choices individuals and social groups make regarding what they eat and how they prepare it. Twenty-five years ago Andrew Watson documented evidence of an agricultural revolution that accompanied the Muslim conquests, in which a broad spectrum of new crops was introduced throughout the Muslim world using innovative irrigation and cultivation technologies. Many of the new crops that were introduced throughout the Islamic world originated in India and were cultivated in parts of Persia and Mesopotamia before the Muslim conquest.
