Oaks Ablaze: Stone Cauldrons of Appalachia
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- Опубликовано: 20 окт 2024
- In the mid-2000s a debate re-emerged over whether carved soapstone predated the invention of pottery in the Eastern Woodlands. This is an explanation of the arguments as they were set out at the time. Soapstone is hugely important to the most profound monumental culture of ancient North America, so if you're unfamiliar, look at my videos about monumentality and Poverty Point.
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Further Reading:
Truncer, James
2004 Steatite Vessel Age and Occurrence in Temperate Eastern North America, American Antiquity, 69:3, pp. 487-513
Sassaman, Kenneth E.
2006 Dating and Explaining Soapstone Vessels: A Comment on Truncer, American Antiquity, 71:1 , pp. 141-156
Truncer, James
2006 Taking Variation Seriously: The Case of Steatite Vessel Manufacture, American Antiquity, 71:1 pp. 157-163
Regardless of accurate dating of the use of soap stone, it is amazing that native American's were using it way back. The English started using it as faux porcelain in the 18th century. It would hold up to heat better than earthenware so teapots did not break from the boiling water. I actually have one 260 years old in good condition.
Sounds like an incredible piece.
As a person who only uses cast iron for frying, I can appreciate that the differences between soap stone and ceramic may have been a personal preferance of the cook. Love your videos, they always wake up my minds eye!
Very good topic and well explained. From what I've read, I don't see pottery as a technology that would replace soapstone outright. When I was researching my poverty point episode, I had read that even though pottery was available, soapstone would have been preferred for cooking because it withstands heat much better.
Also, how do you make a boiling pit? Does it get lined with clay to hold the water? If they were doing that, I'd think that pottery is a pretty logical next step especially if mobility is a concern.
Good clay for good pottery seldom comes right out of the ground.
It seems any clay can make a pot but it has several steps between digging and forming and firing.
Cooking pots especially so.
One of our (Chahta) origin stories for pottery runs like this:
Away long back, we carried water in tightly woven cane baskets. They did the job, but they always leaked a little, no matter how well made they were. One day, a man had an idea that he might could seal a basket with sticky clay, and it would hold water a little longer. So he coated the inside of an old basket with clay, and set it by a fire to dry out while he went about his day. Later on, someone else noticed the (very literally dirty) basket by the fire and thought "wow, that old basket is so dirty, there's no use in keeping it at all!" and they threw it on the fire. When the man came back to see if the clay had dried in the basket, the basket was all burnt up!--but the clay he had coated it with had kept the shape of the basket, was very hard, and felt much lighter than he expected. The man decided to see if it would keep its shape when wet, and amazingly it did!
That's not the only common pottery story we have by far, let alone out of the whole of the Southeast, but it's probably the most archaeologically interesting one. The pottery origin story I've heard the most (and the one that gets the most weight) is Grandmother Spider Brings the Sun. Pottery and basketry are both very closely associated with women in Southeastern traditions (though plenty of men could, did, and still do make baskets and pots), so I've always found it interesting that this particular story has a man at the center BUT the "discovery" of pottery is also portrayed as an accident. I've heard it postulated that one of the things the story passes down is that the man knew of pottery, and that it was made of clay that had been dried, but didn't actually know how to make it--if it hadn't been for the "accidental helper," his clay-filled basket would have ended up a muddy mess! That could be construed to possibly point to: pottery having fallen out of favour and being "rediscovered," pottery being known through trade and the mechanics being figured out through trial & error or accident, or pottery being spontaneously discovered by someone with very sharp critical thinking skills.
In any version of Grandmother Spider Brings the Sun I've heard, Grandmother Spider knows what will happen when she puts the hot coals in the clay pot (after having watched what happened to all the other animals who tried to bring coals back from the East) and is very intentional about fashioning the vessel to hold the fire.
Thanks again for your interesting post. I've read about later Native American cultures in the west that would bury acorns in a sand bar next to a creek. The water movement through the sand would leech out the tannins after a few weeks. The acorns could be left there submerged without sprouting for longer term storage.
This information comes from William Bryant Logan's book, Oak, The Frame of Civilization.
Neat! The west is an entirely different cultural animal. They're not the same people at all so I'm not surprised that the practices were different.
@@NathanaelFosaaen Thank you for your reply. Although the arrowheads and stone tool part of archeology has always been fascinating, it's great to see the gathering side of hunter-gatherer culture that has been preserved in the archeological record.
My ancestors in the Southeast used to do a similar thing: fill a cane basket with acorns and put it in a deep, cold pool in a flowing stream to leach the tannins/preserve until ready to dry, parch, and grind for meal. I've been told early acorns especially would be harvested and stashed in a basket under water until after the main hunting season (October-early December) so they could be processed either by elders who stayed in the village, or when most of the families came back at the end of the hunt.
These days, those who bother to process acorns usually fill a bucket with acorns and cold water (changing the water every day until the tannins are leached) and then often freeze shelled acorns with a little water until it's convenient to take them out and process them.
@@Mockingbird_Taloa Thanks for sharing some of your history.
Ancient Americas brought me to your channel.
Subscribed!
Ancient Americas is doing great work. I endorse the hell out of that content.
Weren’t acorns cold leached en mass, in streams and creeks?
Water and/or bone soup/stew would be on the fire all day, I think. The most durable, even-heating pot wins
I’m a nomadic primitive skills/living enthusiast who has a special interest in processes, tools, ethnobotanical relationships, and more. While I spend winters in the Southwest; exploring the 4 corners sites and museums, i visited Cahokia and Angel mounds, this year, as well as Southern Illinois. The selection and types of tools at Cahokia were impressive. The detailed pictures I took, will hopefully allow me replicate them for my everyday and demonstration use.
I really appreciate your work; now that I found your channel. If you ever need a free hand on an excavation, I’m a nomad and be happy to help if I’m in the region, just for knowledge. I’d just require a place to park my minimalist rig.
Did you go to Jackson Falls and walk about in the valley? There were a few large stones, as in (estimating) 2x the size of a 7' ft tall, 300 lb man's casket, right off the main trail. To my mind's eye, they looked to be a large effigy of a fish.
@@JesusIsKingAndSavior I didn’t. Where is it located?
@@Wildernut Search it with Swanee National. It's worth the visit. Not a long combination of trails. Highly suggestion. Watch inner rock valley lines. It was definitely a village / festival site
@@JesusIsKingAndSavior cool. Thx.
I’ll be in the area again this Spring. I’ll check it out.
@@Wildernut Cheers. We got time. Imagine a whole society that knows of these things. A new America - with the strength of the old.
There is an outcrop of soapstone in Northern California. Color ranging from white to green to red. Varying hardness also. Theres a cemetary in Strawberry Valley that has pitted soapstone walls around some of the plots. I was told that the red is high in asbestos is there any truth to this?
Very informative! Thank you for explaining it, especially with two different perspectives. Great video!!
Fun fact, during WW1 National Geographic had an articles about preparing food for war shortages. One was about processing acorns into food. It never caught on though.
I love this channel so much.
another fascinating video, thanks!
There is a big difference in the tannin levels in Red Oaks than White Oaks. White Oaks have much lower tannin levels than Red Oaks. White Oak acorns are also much higher in sugar levels. This is why White Oaks root within days of falling.
I'm guessing they and chestnuts were seasonal for that reason. Processed red oak acorns would keep.
I just got back from a week camping in Boone National Forest in Eastern Kentucky. I was thinking about your videos the entire time because of the constant and unmistakable rain of acorns at this time of year in the oak forests where I pitched my hammock.....It was definitely, definitely acorn time last week.....I'd sit with my dog in one of the many rock shelters in the area and just imagine a group of Archaic or Woodland women gathering, boiling, and processing this huge seasonal resource.
@Eastern fence Lizard Yep, for the first couple days.
@Eastern fence Lizard I know what you mean. After we checked out the gorge area for a couple days, we worked our way down through the Nat'l Forest side roads and found trails back to dispersed camping areas....nothing around, just lumpy green carpet on Google Earth...We could always follow the sound of water downhill and find caves and shelters with nothing but a deer path nearby. I was sitting there looking at all the damn acorns one day last week and thinking how all the natural potholes in the rock from the waterfall would be the perfect place to process food. The water could be diverted in and out of these rock pools with clay and stones and boiled with hot rocks to leach out the acorns....Rinse, and repeat....The ladies keep the fires going, the kids and dogs chase squirrels...and I believe its also duck season for the guys, ya know?
@Eastern fence Lizard How's Shawnee National Forest? I'm in Ohio and I was looking at maybe checking out Hoosier in Indiana and seeing what the "Garden of the Gods" is like there, in southern Illinois.
@@rickb1973 Send me a comment if you are looking at Hoosier National still.
@@JesusIsKingAndSavior Yep, definitely...once were not up to our butts in snow anymore!
Thanks for the video! Are you coming back to Alaska next year? What are digging up?
Great lighting!
New subscriber 👋
I am soo stoked right now! Clearly the best in your field!!!👏👏👏Bravo👏👏👏🎉
I'd love to perform field technician work with you. I'm in Tulsa, and I'd love you to come and take a look at a large hill next to the Arkansas river here in Tulsa...right beside Riverside Drive. Egyptian evidence all up and down this area..
Looking forward to some binge watching on your channel ⛰🌎🤩
Lots of labor to make acorns but also produces tannin which you pointed out you can use to get fish.
Incredible stone bowls, it sounds like there are too few specimens to know much. Did you say how many have heating evidence on them?
soapstone is the ultimate carving stone...almost anyone can pick it up and with time, another piece of stone, and fingernails, make something pleasing or useful, or both
Data analysis is both a science and an art (skill).
Another method for prepping Acorn mast on the West Coast was sinking acorns into river(stream), for periods of time, collectively, in netting made by those Natives, then pulled out to be processed further, requiring less cooking time, removed tannins flavor issues to some degree. Underwater the mast just needed to be submerged, held onto place by weights or so would not wash away, to be recovered and utilized later, at what timing sequence was needed to decide when cach was recovered for use. Different Acorns would mean different techniques or time underwater, due to Species of Acorn.
Being submerged lessened problems of secondary issues of Acorn use associatrd with longer cooking times, beat other Acorn gatherers by sinking them in water the Acorns are washed while also losing tannins in Treatment; thereby, killing Insect pests of the Acorns when forcibly submerged.
I am fairly new to scholarly research and I am having a very hard time finding any surviving examples of atlatls found east of Kentucky. Are there surviving examples and I am just missing something or do we simply not have any?
That's a question for the AR.atlatl channel. His channel is featured on my page, and he also has an instagram of the same name.
So the people might have been using soapstone as a kind of aesthetic symbol besides its worth as something that wouldn't explode in high heat?
Right. It's so costly in terms of effort to get one from the mountains that they didn't have to be "pretty" by our standards. Just having one at all meant something to the user, but it definitely WAS used in cooking. That's why I like the cast iron analogy.
Another way to process acorns is soak the meal in running water. That flushed out tannin. A favored way was to rake up acorn mast with the leaves, and pole them up in a shaded place till late winter. The shells get soft, and the acorn is just stating to sprout. They can be washed and roasted for a sweet.
I also know sites that keep going past 14 feet and completely habituated.
So many Swedish made wood stoves I"ve seen in Canada are "sleeved" with soapstone tiles about an inch thick. Obviously, for changing heat, (and heat retention) soapstone (if you can find it) is an incredible material.
Hey Nathan. Near an Indian petroglyph site, I found a rock clearly re-shaped to something roughly the size and shape of a bicycle seat. The object
Is made of sand stone. I would love to send you a picture and get your thoughts.
Your state has an archaeology society for these kinds of questions.
We have alot of soapstone artifacts here in the UK and europe, the vikings liked them. You cannot date a soap stone artifact on the basis that its an older stone technology than pottery.
You don't need to boil acorns or acorn mash to remove the tannins. Soaking will work just fine. Boiling is faster, but a lot of California natives just soaked them instead. A few groups actually stored whole acorns in sacks in springs for a significant portion of the year and that was effective enough that the tannins were removed from the intact acorns.
That's interesting! because within the southeast, ethnography indicates that boiling was THE WAY. Nobody mentions a stillwater method for removing tannins (that I've read). It might be an environmental thing, or it might be an isochrestic that's just really deeply ingrained.
And this might be why Californians are so crazy (I am from California so i can say that 😂).
@@NathanaelFosaaen Chahta sia--I've always been told sprouted acorns and pit/mud-stored would be boiled, but most often acorns were put in a basket and either sunk in a deep cold pool to booth keep for a longer period and leach tannins or in a quick-flowing stream for a few days before they were parched and ground. Not sure when soaking became the dominant method, but I have always been told and have read in community cookbooks boiling was too labour intensive to bother with bc how many boilings it takes to leach the tannins is hit-or-miss. Anyone I've met who has processed acorns has told me they soaked them and then either parched or frozen them.
@Mason Kicinski out of curiosity, do you know of any indigenous out sausage tradition? Like hypothetically you could stuff a deer intestine with meat and fat and herbs. No reason that some groups in the Americas couldn't have done it other than maybe taboos.
@@Mockingbird_Taloa A friend of mine puts bags of ground/crushed acorns in the water storage tank of his toilet (obviously he doesn't use any of those chemical things in there). He leaves them in for around a week or so, checking on them periodically. The combined soaking and periodic water changes due to flushing and refilling the tank does a great job of leaching the tannins out.
(and for anyone who thinks this is weird, the storage tank on the toilet is one of the largest sources of clean water in your house, if you're not adding chemicals to it, in case of emergency. This used to be taught in California as part of what to keep in mind in case of a bad earthquake)
Thank you.
Hi very interesting thank you for the video👍 It gets me one step closer to figuring out what I found ....I believe I found some vessel broken pieces 3pieces all together description : (sandish looking ,color of actual sand flesh ( brownish orange grain)with few lil white rocks attach to the specimen ..looks like early clay or ceramic ..some wavy engraving lines some straight line round so probably a ancient bowl or cup here on Vancouver Island .. in the woods close to the ocean .I won't mentioned where exactly but they have beautiful colors and carved wavy lines hard to believe the paint stayd within the vessel all those years whatever age it is ..I have been searching for native artifacts here in Nanaimo but the museum don't show any (Snuneymuxw) etc. native vessel so my research are hard to find answers .. does anyone else found some on Vancouver Island ? I also found other artifacts but where could I take them for evaluations ?
I like to act like an archaeologist.
What types of sites do you target?
I know where lots of different camps, graves, and caves that are being over built.
I would love to help out if you are ever in Texas.
Interesting , thanks for the vid . From the picture of the cauldrons, at least those four , they seem pretty utilitarian , unfinished outsides with the original chisel marks and oddly or quickly shaped , soapstone should have been easily finished . I would of thought they would be high status items , maybe they didn't last long ? What is the general capacity of most cauldrons and what's the difference between large bowls and cauldrons ?
Ancient North Americans never behave the way you'd expect them to. Keeping the outsides rough makes the vessel absorb heat better, so it might have been deliberate. Those pieces in particular are from a cache in Mississippi, and we're pretty sure they were on their way to Poverty Point when they were cached.
I was just using the word Cauldron to be fanciful. They're usually bowl-ish sized. Bigger than a cereal bowl, but nothing massive.
@@NathanaelFosaaen thanks , makes sense . And is it known where that soapstone was quarried from ? How far it traveled ?
Ken said at a conference a few years ago that it had been sourced to quarries in South Carolina and Georgia, but I have no idea what his justification for that claim was. If he's right then they most likely were brought down the Savannah and Santee rivers from Appalachia, and then around Florida into the gulf one way or another.
@@NathanaelFosaaen WOW !! Thanks again for sharing
Do the pines in that region not produce edible cone seeds?
No, but water from the trees, tannin, dried sap, inner bark, pine needles (medicinal tea) and so on are all used. If cooked, inner bark is also used for flour, but it needs to be treated or is toxic. Some, sugar and yellow pine are not eaten.
Chestnuts were a major food source in the Eastern hardwood forests, weren't they? Gone now, but plentiful before the 20th century.
Hickory and acorn were the big ones. Hickory especially provides the most calories per working hour.
@@NathanaelFosaaen New England, native Chestnuts would have been common closer to the coast, but not the hills.
Is Soap stone even safe for cooking?
Of course. It was also used in ancient Scandinavia.
@@NathanaelFosaaen I was told recantly that this stuff was potentially toxic so I had no idea.
Doe's this channel tie into the giant skeletons unearthed at possibly these sites you talk about, that have been wrote about in the past.
If the ground is frozen then you can thaw it out with concrete worker's heating blankets.
No time for that.
Im curious how well those fake sandstone versions worked..
The Ancient Alien woo must get very annoying.
Its not as bad as the atlantis idiots. They wont even accept the fact santorini fits the description perfectly.
I LOVE ancient aliens! Comic gold every episode.
@@christianbuczko1481 Santorini isn't beyond the Pillars of Herakles.
@@Oddball5.0 they were most likely there at the entrance to the outer ring. That was a small break in the outer caldera wall, and could easily produce a few rock pillars, but that was destroyed in the catacysim. Now, ive heard people at both ends of the med arguing about its location, and neither possibilty actually has rock pillars. So the obvious conclusion is, NOBODY knows where they were and therefore any conclusion about the cities location based on that is frankly bullshit. The fact santorini fits the archetecture PERFECTLY, and no where else on the planet comes close to matching the colours of rocks they were said to use EXCEPT at santorini. Then the fact NOBODY mentions what happened at santorini, there are no legends about the disaster except 1 possibilty, whi just happens to match it perfectly. And the location being so close to greece and other developed regions makes that ridiculously unlikely they would have forgotten about santorini, it would be legend. The day some god made an island, or most of it vanish, the day mega tsunami wiped out crete, and every other island nation that existed. The day millions died..
Thats what the story of atlantis remembers.
Afterwards the survivors changed culture, language changed, beliefs were all about sea creatures and gods, they were terrified of the power they saw, do you really think such an event was just forgotten??
And a side note, they were likely the legendary sea peoples of biblical fame who suddenly invaded the surrounding areas, and the event was likely the cause or catalyst for the exodus events. Those later stories were recorded far around the region, but nobody mentions that little island, they only recorded what they saw, the aftermath.
I like massages. Unless it involves data -
Obviously made by aliens. Gotem