Kiln's 'Ancestor' Found In Greece

BBC ^ | 10-20-2004

[blam]

Kiln's 'ancestor' found in Greece

The structures bridge the gap between kilns and stone hearths

Archaeologists have discovered the oldest clay "fireplaces" made by humans at a dig in southern Greece. The hearths are between 34,000 and 23,000 years old and were almost certainly used for cooking by prehistoric inhabitants of the area.

Researchers found remnants of wood ash and phytoliths - a type of plant cell - in these hearths and lab tests show the clay was burnt.

The study appears in the latest edition of the scholarly journal Antiquity.

The discovery helps to bridge the gap between the stone hearths built by earlier people and the clay kilns known to have been used 28,000-26,000 years ago at the site of Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic.

The clay hearths were excavated by a European-Israeli team at Klisoura Cave 1 located in a gorge in the north-western Peloponnese.

Animal bones

Over 70 hearths built using clay were unearthed in ground layers associated with a prehistoric culture known as the Aurignacian. Analysis reveals that the hearths were fired to between 400C and 600C.

The people who made the hearths probably brought clay from the floodplain in front of Klisoura cave and, after wetting it, puddled and shaped it in place.

The hearths are made of clay brought from a river floodplain

At Dolni Vestonice, archaeologists have found evidence of prehistoric hunter-gatherers using kilns to fire clay figurines.

The researchers also found burnt animal bones associated with the clay structures, which include the remains of fallow deer, hare, rock partridge and great bustard.

They also found burnt seeds from edible plants such as goosefoot and the fruit of knotgrass, although it was not possible to tell if these were deliberately cooked or if they were burnt in natural fires.

Until now, there had been precious little evidence of the transition from the stone hearths in the Middle Palaeolithic to the advanced technology used in Central Europe by 28,000 years ago.

[blam]

GGG Ping.

[Bluesguy]

Imagine that. Great bustard that long ago. Suppose they called it grey poopon?

[mikrofon]

Kiln's 'Ancestor' Found In Greece

Sorta like its "next of kiln"...

[truth_seeker]

Hunter-gatherers with fixed cooking locations?

[kimchi lover]

Kiln's 'Ancestor' Found In Greece Sorta like its "next of kiln"...

LOL...as a ceramic artist by trade, I love a good kiln joke! ;^)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam. I wonder what scholars will think in 20,000 years when they start finding those murals of card-playing dogs?

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[Drammach]

Are they sure it's not just an ancient cow-pie ?

I'm sure I've seen thousands of those in the sand hills of South Dakota..

[ApplegateRanch]

Nevermind the card playing dogs; think about all the funny, slumped over 3"-4" tall ceramic cones piled up behind the potter's studio.

The ones you watch in the kiln, to indicate whether it is at 'cone 5' yet,or is still only 'cone 4'.

I did "find" (and left in-situ) a few ball-mill balls at a mine & mill site in Wyoming this summer; and the bottoms of used assay crucibles behind the assayer's shack. That, other than the occasional arrowhead or petroglyph, is about as "ancient" as my artifact finds get.

Thanks, Blam from me, too.

I had visions of a domed kiln, or at least a raku-type pit kiln, from the headline, and something more in keeping with "ancient" Greek pottery, which isn't so "ancient" at all in this context.

[SunkenCiv]

Something much younger... the Bakery of Modestus, found in the Pompeii excavations, perhaps the oldest business for whom the owner's name is known? Anyway, very dry loaves of bread were found still sealed in the ovens.

[ApplegateRanch]

Hunter-gatherers with fixed cooking locations?

Why not? A lot of hunter/gatherers had a regular territory, hitting certain sites seasonally, year after year. Migratory doesn't necessarily mean always on the move aimlessly.

A few permanent fixtures at each location would save time over starting from scratch each year, and reinforce a sense of tradition and territory.

OTOH, if they true aimless wanderers, and the hearths were soley used to fire figurines at places they stopped long enough, they may have just made the hearth out of clay because it was easier or gave better results; and its lasting through the ages is just accidental. It is a little hard to know anything for sure at this late date.

[ApplegateRanch]

That is a lovely shot; thanks.

very dry loaves of bread were found still sealed in the ovens.

Now I know where they got the idea and recipe for C-Ration biscuits.

"Please pass the chisel and butter...."

[elli1]

Interesting. I preface by saying that I know zilch about pottery-making. The ''lip'' structure on the side of the saucer puzzles me. Can anyone explain the significance of it? Also, the article mentions that analysis reveals that the ''kilns'' were fired to between 400-600 C. Is this a significant achievement? (As opposed to how hot? a regular old campfire gets.) Does anyone have any ideas how these were used to fire pottery, exactly? Or can direct me to a good article about archaic clay arts? IOW, anyone have an owner's manual on how to use these darned things or can speculate from a basis of familiarity with pottery making?

[SunkenCiv]

Not sure about the lip. Click the image for the page:

One of the pages on that site mentions a book, "Cro-Magnon Man by T.Prideaux", and Amazon has two editions, one of which is actually Cher's biography (including the cover picture), apparently. I reported it, but it's amusing. Here's the quote:

It would be another 15,000 years or so before other men, living in what is now Japan, learned to turn clay into pots; yet, as the evidence from Dolni Vestonice attests, ceramics had already been invented. When the kiln hut was first investigated in 1951, its sooty floor was littered with fragments of ceramic figurines. There were animal heads-bears, foxes, lions. In one particularly beautiful lion head there is a hole simulating a wound, perhaps intended to help some hunter inflict a similar wound on a real lion. The floor was also cluttered with hundreds of clay pellets bearing the fingerprints of the prehistoric artisan; he probably pinched them off his lump of unbaked clay when he first began to knead and shape it to his desire. And there were limbs broken from little animal and human figures. They may have cracked off in the baking, or when the ancient ceramist tossed aside a work that failed to please him.

James Shreeve discusses this kiln and overall site on pp 276-286 of this one:

---

The Neandertal Enigma: Solving the Mystery of Modern Human Origins by James Shreeve

---

The kiln(s) were used for 6000 years at the site, and the ceramic figurines were deliberately shattered by overheating, apparently for some ritual purpose, not tossed aside because they failed to please. :')

[SunkenCiv]

I wonder if they had some system like that to track kiln temperature. Or whether they just hucked some saliva in there...

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[Redcloak]

Depending on weather conditions, this may not have been so much a "fixed site" as a seasonal hunting camp. Some hunter/gatherers would follow game around a set range and use several campsites. Others, such as the Indians in California, lived in permanent villages and hunted and gathered from the surrounding area. ("Humaliwo", or as it's known today "Malibu", was one such Indian village.)

[eleni121]

Bump for later.

[ApplegateRanch]

I would imagine that they had to rely on color & glow of the hot clay, much as a blacksmith or welder had to rely on the color of the metal.

I remember watching (and now wish I had a recording of it!) a multi-week segment of The Woodwright's Shop on PBS, where he went through the entire process of brick making, from digging & working the clay, up to & including the building, fueling, stacking, & firing of the kiln, then sorting & grading the finished brick. It also included explanations of how the firing was controlled, and of why bricks from different parts of the kiln were suited for one use, and not others.

They may have had a similar empirical system, and graded the product afterwards, with the best stuff surviving, and a lot of the rest recycled back into the clay. I forget the term for doing that, but we were taught to always add pulverized, previously fired clay back into new clay before working it.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[SunkenCiv]

Interesting. It's easy to forget how complicated things really are, not only to learn to do, but to discover in the first place. And nowadays, learning how to make bricks in order to build one's own house isn't very often done. :')

The local historian in my hometown (they're newcomers, only lived there 32 years) was showing me some local sites of brickmaking using an old plat map. When a nice bit of clay was found, it would be mined and baked, and exhausted pretty fast. My cousin (who's also been researching) told me about some others. One old brick house outside of town a couple of miles was made from brick mined on the property, presumably because the usable lumber had already been logged off. :')

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