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Antiquity Vol 79 No 304 June 2005

Sharp increase in cook-stone use in the Chihuahuan Desert during periods of agricultural intensification

Jeff D. Leach

With few exceptions, fragments of thermally altered and fire-cracked stones can be found littered upon ancient landforms throughout the world. With deep origins in prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies, these fist-sized and larger stones almost always mark the location of past cooking activities. As agriculture and new technologies such as pottery came upon the scene, the frequency and utility of cooking with heated stones is seen by many to have diminished, thus marking a departure from hunter-gatherer or 'Archaic' life ways. Here, 289 radiocarbon assays from 135 separate cook-stone (Thoms 2003) features recorded in the basin-and-range region of the semi-arid lowlands of the Chihuahuan Desert (Figure 1) of the American Southwest indicate a steady use of cook-stone beginning around 4500 BP with a sharp increase in feature size and frequency around 1250/1300 BP (Figure 2). This sharp increase coincided with the appearance of the first settled villages (Whalen 1994) and evidence of cultivated crops such as maize, beans, and squash in the region. The continuation of this hunter-gatherer cooking technology well into the transition of agricultural-based economies (Hard et al. 1996) reveals the inherit utility of the technology and the continued importance of wild food resources in this marginal agricultural region.

Figure 1

Figure 1. Agave lechuguilla growing in the lowlands of the Chihuahuan Desert near present-day El Paso, Texas.
Figure 2

Figure 2. A total of 289 radiocarbon assays from 135 cook-stone features excavated in the basin-and-range lowlands of the northern Chihuahuan Desert (near present-day El Paso, Texas). Several of the features yielded multiple radiocarbon samples. In these cases, the midpoint of the calibrated range (2 sigma) of each date was calculated and all the midpoints averaged for the feature. The y axis represents the total weight of cook-stone still present in the base of the feature during time of excavation. Only those stones that were part of the basal heating element were calculated. Data were compiled from published and unpublished sources from projects spanning over two decades of research.

Cook-stone features are a common occurrence in the arid regions of the American Southwest and often the preferred means for rendering carbohydrate-rich foods such as agave, sotol and cholla buds eatable. Cook-stones retain heat from fast burning wood charcoal and, once arranged in the bottom of hand-dug pits called earth ovens, can cook plant tissue over long periods of time (20 to 60 hours). This thermal pit-processing renders the plant tissue less toxic and more nutritious.

Figure 1 shows a steady occurrence of smaller cook-stone features being generated until 1250/1300 BP. Many of these features, which usually only contained a few kilograms of cook-stone, where located out in the desert floor, well away from the alluvial fans along the mountains that would later be preferred settlement locations for agriculturalist. The small amount of cook-stone recovered from these earlier features would be inadequate heating elements for cooking many of the plants in the area. There exact function, other than possibly extending the use life of fast burning wood charcoal to cook animal tissue or parch seeds, remains unknown.

As the 1250/1300 BP 'transition' to the appearance of the first settled villages and cultivated crops approached, the size of the cook-stone heating elements increased, suggesting a changing role for cook-stone and the possibility for larger packages of processed food. The increased size of the heating elements are consistent with those noted for historic Southwestern groups who pit-baked agave and sotol in earth ovens lined with cook-stone (Castetter & Bell 1938). The majority of these larger ovens are located on the alluvial fans in close proximity to the village settlements.

These data demonstrate the important role of cook-stone technology in the transition from foraging-based economies to those more reliant on cultigens. While cultivated crops were finding there way into the more arid regions of the Southwest, the development and persistence of a broad-spectrum diet is clearly evidenced by the presence of cook-stone facilities in the region. The presence and increased utilisation of cook-stone technology during periods of increasing agricultural dependence may best be viewed as a 'buffering strategy' during periods of low crop productivity or even failure (Leach & Bradfute 2004).

References

  • THOMS, ALSTON V. 2003. Cook-Stone Technology in North America: Evolutionary Changes in Domestic Fire Structures during the Holocene, in Marie-Chantal Frere-Sautot (ed.) Colloque et Experimention: Le Feu Domestique et Ses Structures au Neolithic aux Auges des Metaux: 87-96. Collection Prehistories No. 9. France: Editions Monique Mergoil.
  • WHALEN, M.E. 1994. Turquoise Ridge and Late Prehistoric Residential Mobility in the Desert Mogollon Region. Salt Lake City, NV: University of Utah Press.
  • HARD, R.J., R.P. MAULDIN & G.R. RAYMOND. 1996. Mano Size, Stable Carbon Isotope Rations, and Macrobotanical Remains as Multiple lines of Evidence of Maize Dependence on the American Southwest. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 3: 253-318.
  • CASTETTER, E.F., W.H. BELL & A.R. GROVE. 1938. The Early Utilization and the Distribution of Agave in the American Southwest. University of New Mexico Bulletin, Biological Series Vol 5, No 4. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico.
  • LEACH, J.D. & T.W. BRADFUTE. 2004. Cultural response to demographic and environmental stress during the Classic Mimbres Period (AD 1000-1130/40), Southern New Mexico: the cook-stone evidence. Antiquity 78: http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/leach/.


Jeff D. Leach: The Cook-Stone Lab, PO Box 678, Pima, Arizona 85543, USA & School of Archaeology & Ancient History, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK. (Email: jeff@cookstonetechnology.com).

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