Sweet Waste: Medieval Sugar Production in the Mediterranean Viewed from the 2002 Excavations at Tawahin es-Sukkar, Safi, Jordan

Medieval sugar was a demanding industrial product, not simply a crop harvested from fields. Near the southern end of the Dead Sea, the refinery at Tawahin es-Sukkar turned cane into sugar through a succession of processes involving crushing, boiling, purification and specialised vessels. Richard E. Jones’s Sweet Waste reconstructs this work from the excavations undertaken at the site in 2002.

Broken sugar pots and other industrial residues are central to the investigation: waste that might once have been discarded reveals how production actually worked. Excavations also reached the neighbouring settlement of Khirbat Shaykh ‘Isa, helping place the refinery in its social and economic setting. Jones and a multidisciplinary team use this Jordanian evidence to examine sugar manufacture and the movement of its products around the medieval Mediterranean.