Burned Rock Complexes, Baked Clay Objects, Steatite, and Ceramics: Evolutionary Implications for Plains/Eastern Woodlands Cooking Technologies

Abstract

Burned rock complexes (BRC) have a broad geographic distribution. However, they are not a fully understood class of cultural feature. Dated to Early/Middle Woodland times by some Plains researchers, BRC also have been attributed to Late Archaic cultures in the Eastern Woodlands (e.g., Kentucky Shell Mound Archaic). Archaeologists have documented important Late Archaic/Middle Woodland cooking technologies other than BRC as well. These technological improvements include baked clay objects, steatite cooking slabs, and fiber-and mineral-tempered ceramics. Comparing various contextual, functional, and physical characteristics for these cooking tools results in an improved understanding of the advantages conferred by each. Such an understanding will shed light on the varying circumstances under which prehistoric groups utilized cooking technologies. The overall goal of this article is to develop models which account for the full range of variation in late prehistoric economies of the Central Plains and Eastern Woodlands. [T]echnological change is the result of social demands on labor (Sassaman, 1993:4). Technological evolution is the vera causa of social evolution, and technological evolution boils down to the harnessing of energy (Kehoe, 1998:130 paraphrasing L. A. White's The Evolution of Culture, 1959:19-26).

The Paleoanthropology and Archaeology of Big-Game Hunting

“…This discovery of fire, probably the greatest ever made by man, excepting language, dates from before the dawn of history. Darwin (1890a:48-49) Then, beginning perhaps a mere 20,000 or so years ago, toward the end of the Pleistocene, and in many different parts of the inhabited world -both glacial and non-glacial -came a real inflection point in the rate of food-related intensification, with the addition in rapid succession of many new food types and many new practices and technologies for processing these foods, such as baking, grinding, pounding, steaming, parching, leaching, fermenting, and technologies that permitted boiling and stewing, first using skin, basketry, or gut bags that could be heated indirectly with hot rocks, and then using ceramic containers that could be placed directly over the fire (e.g., Benison 1999;Holt and Formicola 2008;Jones 2009:177-178;Manne et al 2005;Nakazawa et al 2009;Stahl 1989;Thoms 2009;Wandsnider 1997;Wollstonecroft et al 2008). The impact of these comparatively recent innovations in food-processing technologies is indirectly reflected in the dramatic changes that have occurred over the Late Pleistocene and Holocene in tooth size and craniofacial structure (e.g., Brace et al 1987;Lieberman et al 2004).…”