Quantifying Earth Oven Fire-Cracked Rock: A View from the Langtry Rock Midden

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Eagle Nest Canyon, Texas: Papers in Honor of Jack and Wilmuth Skiles" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper highlights quantification data from the author’s thesis, including the methodology of 33 archaeological excavations in the Edwards Plateau and Lower Pecos Canyonlands in which fire-cracked rock (FCR) quantification attempts were made. My excavations at Langtry Rock Midden (41VV168) were conducted to provide a well-documented FCR quantification dataset for comparative study. LRM is an earth oven facility on the Canyon Edge overlooking Eagle Nest Canyon. Radiocarbon dates place main midden accumulation during the Late Archaic and Late Prehistoric, BP 1650–1019. I used Rock Sort, an FCR quantification routine developed by the Ancient Southwest Texas Project, to document the LRM deposits and compare FCR data with those from other Eagle Nest Canyon sites. Rock Sort is a consistent FCR measurement methodology that permits a rigorous approach derived from prior experiments and studies. It incorporates the three pillars of quantification: size-class sorting, counting, and weighing to calculate volume, density, and mass, as well as FCR morphology to estimate how many earth ovens were constructed at the burned rock midden (BRM).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Archaeology of Eagle Nest Canyon, Texas: Papers in Honor of Jack and Wilmuth Skiles   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39437.0