Invisible Technologies and the Container Revolution

This thesis evaluates the potential for fire-cracked rocks (FCRs) and organic cooking containers to be analysed and studied utilising methodologies previously used for archaeological ceramics. The development and spread of pottery technologies throughout the Holocene in the Old World represents a shift - both archaeologically and for the preservation potential of organic residue (OR) traces retained in the ceramic matrix. It has been possible to reveal the functions of these vessels by extracting and analysing lipids and small molecules. However, the cooking methods and food
processing techniques that existed prior to the use of ceramics are less well characterised. This thesis aims to elucidate some of these techniques through a combined methodological approach of actualistic experimentation and organic residue analysis. Firstly these ‘aceramic’ cooking methods were systematised through reading the ethnographic and archaeological literature, then an experimental project undertaken to quantify some of the material differences between types of organic cooking vessels and heating methods. The previous OR analysis undertaken on stone was then compiled, and several experimental cooking systems were tested to examine whether crucial
thermal biomarkers could be formed in stone. Finally six Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in northern Europe were sampled for FCRs, which were subject to lipid extraction and analysis. The results demonstrate that, not only is stone capable of retaining sufficient lipid quantities and producing anthropogenic biomarkers, but stone appears to differ in its thermal reaction to lipids. The results also suggest that organic cooking vessels made from animal materials possess different thermodynamic qualities to ceramics which favour sub-boiling temperatures. Finally the archaeological results from the northern European Mesolithic/Neolithic sites reveal several aceramic heating techniques (marine fat rendering/combustion, earth-oven technologies) and point to the multiplicity of cooking strategies among late foragers and early farmers, even where pottery
vessels were available.