Learning from Earth-Oven Baking Experiments

Summary

Ethnohistoric and ethnographic accounts attest to the dietary importance of wild root foods (i.e., geophytes) and a diversity of earth-oven baking techniques among hunter-gatherer populations in south-central North America. Recovery of charred bulbs and tubers, as well as their microfossils, from ancient earth ovens and fire-cracked rock features illustrate that dependence on wild geophytes and earth-oven technology was widespread by the early Holocene and continued to the historic era. It is readily apparent, however, that observations and studies of living hunter-gatherer populations attest to far more variability in oven morphologies, baking times, and food types than has been identified archeologically. To better understand relationships between historical accounts and archaeological observations, we have conducted a series actualistic experiments, including baking geophytes for 20-40 hours in large ovens, with and without rock heating elements, and baking meats and geophytes in a variety of small earth ovens for 2-3 hours. Another important aspect of this kind of research is its potential contribution toward bridging persistent gaps between scientific and humanistic approaches to archaeology by calling attention to ancient food-way revolutions and related changes in behavioral systems that accompanied worldwide transitions from paleo to modern diets.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Some Like It Hot: Analytic Diversity and Complementarity in the Exploration of Past Cooking and Cuisine

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 13283