Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Reggio Emilia
Protected Italian vinegar made only from cooked grape must, fermented and aged in a battery of wooden barrels for at least 12 years: sweet, sharp and syrupy.
Built structures · Place · Cellars, caves and ripening rooms
Kanka underground cellar (7th–8th century)
An excavated Kanka cellar in Uzbekistan records a 7th–8th-century below-ground storage form, with a small chamber, wall niches and stepped passage.
History
Kubaev and Yusupova describe two underground storage chambers found at Kanka and assign the ceramics from the first cellar to the 7th–8th centuries CE. Their discussion places the cells within a longer tradition of below-floor storage, but this entry documents only the excavated Kanka example.
How it is built
Materials
- Pakhsa (rammed earth blocks) — Used to line the access passage in the first excavated cellar.
- Ceramic vessels — Two jugs and additional vessel fragments were recovered from the first chamber.
- At Kanka, an ancient settlement in the Tashkent oasis, archaeologists recorded two underground storage spaces beneath a building. Kanka lies in present-day Akkurgan district, Tashkent Region, about 70 km southwest of Tashkent on the old Akhangaran channel. The excavators date the first cellar’s pottery to the 7th–8th centuries CE; the site’s later building phases are separate and should not be mistaken for the cellar’s date.
- The first chamber is nearly rectangular, 124 by 85 cm and about 125 cm high. Its total length with the entry passage is 3.05 m. The narrow passage descends through five worn steps, widens toward the chamber and is lined with large pakhsa blocks. Two recessed niches are recorded in the chamber walls. These measurements describe this excavated example, not a standard design.
- Two jugs and fragments of other vessels were recovered from the chamber. The researchers interpret the two nearby underground spaces as storage: the smaller as intended for liquids and the larger as a store for other products. The excavated finds do not establish specific foods, preservation recipes, temperature performance or continuous use. The first cellar’s ceramics provide the 7th–8th-century date; the second space has a different plan and should not be merged into a single imagined room.
- This is a built cellar below a structure, not an Iranian yakhchāl icehouse. The Kanka study compares regional underground stores with other historic cooling and storage forms, including Iranian yakhchāls, but the Kanka chambers’ reported role is storage of liquids and other goods. The article supplies an excavation photograph and plan; this page does not claim a complete reconstruction of the original building above it.
Places
Kanka archaeological settlement
Historical attestation · Locality evidenceThe article gives coordinates and administrative district. This is the find spot of the excavated cellar, not a claim about the present distribution of the cellar type.
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Sources
Turkic Studies Journal, 6(2), 57–73Archaeology · Form · Use · Materials · Geography · Dating
Archaeological research on the Kanka fortress city: between nomads and farmersThe excavation report locates Kanka in Akkurgan district, Tashkent Region, on the old Akhangaran channel, about 70 km southwest of Tashkent.
Two underground storage chambers were found; the first is 3.05 m including passage, with a 124 x 85 cm chamber 125 cm high, a 1.92 m entry passage and five worn steps.
The passage is lined with pakhsa blocks; two wall niches were described, and two jugs plus other vessel fragments were recovered in the first chamber.
The first cellar’s ceramics are dated to the 7th–8th centuries CE; the authors interpret the smaller cellar as for liquids and the larger as for other products.