Identifying Stone Boiling Cooking at Featureless Sites

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The process of stone boiling involves heating rocks in or near a fire until they have reached an optimal temperature and then transferring them into a water-tight vessel, container, or pit containing liquid, thus cooking foods via wet heat. Unlike the direct heating of a ceramic vessel over a fire, the stone-boiling container is not placed on a heating element, so water alone is the heat transfer medium that cooks foods from all sides by means of agitation. Wet-cooking expanded the range of edible plant foods available to ancient peoples by increasing the availability and digestibility of starches beyond what may be achieved by roasting or baking. Archaeological evidence of stone boiling can be challenging to identify because often the only diagnostic residue that remains is fire-cracked rock (FCR). FCR created during experimental stone boiling typically display discernible fracturing pattern signatures and use-alteration modifications. As a case study of the signatures of stone boiling in the archaeological record at featureless sites, this paper discusses the archaeological evidence at a Late Archaic hunter-gatherer site on Grand Island, Michigan. At Site 913, FCR was recovered in midden accumulations primarily as a result of the stone-boiling technique, perhaps for nut oil rendering.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52234