Assigning Context to Artifacts in Burned-Rock Middens

Author(s): Jeff D. Leach, C. Britt Bousman, David L. Nickels

Source: Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 201-203
Published by: Boston University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40024943
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201

News and Short Contributions

Assigning Context to Artifacts in

Burned-Rock Middens
JEFF D. LEACH
University of Leicester
Leicester,England

C. BRITT BOUSMAN
DAVID L. NICKELS
TexasState University-SanMarcos
San Marcos, Texas
Accumulations offire- crocked rock and carbon-stained sediment in
pits mark locations of past cooking and heating facilities around the
world. While the specificfunctions of thesefeatures may vary, the use
of stones as heating elements in earth ovens is common. After repeated
use, debris in the form offire- crackedstones, charcoal, ash, sediment,
carbonizedplant fragments, and other materials accumulates to form
low mounds known in the U.S. Southern Plains and the Southwest as
burned-rock middens. The middens may include artifacts, some introduced inadvertently with sediment used to form an earthen cap to seal
the pit oven. The sediment and included artifacts for this insulating
cap may be borrowedfrom other parts of the site. After the cooking is
complete, the earthen cap is peeled open and all materials redistributed by trampling and slope wash. Artifacts and other materials in
burned-rock middens, therefore, may not represent discrete events or
periods directly associated with use of the ovens.

Introduction
Large accumulations of fire-cracked rock known as
burned-rock middens dot the landscape in Central Texas
(Black 1997). These features appear as amorphous masses
of fire-crackedrock and carbon-stained sediment lacking
visible structure.When excavated,however, rock-linedpits
and intact central oven features surrounded by an amorphous secondary accumulation of burned rock and other
materialsarerevealed(Black 1997). Many of these mounds

reach several meters in height and as much as 20 to 30 m

in diameter as the result of repeated use as oven facilities
for extended periods of time.
Material recovered from burned rock middens includes
chipped stones, ground stone tools, mammal and reptile
bones, floral remains, snails, mussel shells, ornaments,
burials, ceramics, and other items. Archaeologists often rely on artifacts and other materials recovered from these
middens to answer researchquestions. Unfortunately, artifacts recovered from middens may not be in situ, in the
sense of being part of the activity at the midden, but were
introduced to the midden with sediment borrowed from
other parts of the site. This sediment formed a cap that
sealed the centraloven feature.When the oven was opened,
the earth cap and any artifactsit might contain were spread
away from the pit oven. Repeated use further inadvertently jumbled the intrusive artifactswith the oven deposits.

Ethnographic Examples of Burned-Rock

Midden Formation
No direct observations of people in CentralTexasusing
earth ovens exist, but accounts of cooking in pits using
rock heating elements are available from the American
Southwest and northern Mexico. For example, Castetter,
Bell, and Grove (1938: 28-29) describe cooking agave in
pits among the Mescalero and ChiricahuaApache:
Pits in which the crownswere bakedwere about ten to
twelvefeet in diameterand threeor four feet deep, lined
with largeflat rocks...Upon this, oak and juniperwood
wasplaced,andbeforethe sun cameup was set on fire.By
noon the firehaddied down, andon thesehot stoneswas
laid moist grass,such as bunchgrass...The largestmescal
crownwas selected... they threwit in andthrewthe other
crownsafterit... Afterthe mescalhad been coveredwith
the long leavesof beargrassandthe wholewith earthto a
depthsufficientto preventsteamfromescaping.
This account illustratesthe basic steps for cooking in an
earth oven. These include digging a pit, adding stones and

202

News and Short Contributions

Figure 1. In this badly backlit 1906 photograph an Apache woman and children are sealing an agave oven
with soil. The two children in the background appearto have collected soil from some distance from the
oven. This photograph by Edward S. Curtis is reproduced through the courtesy of Northwestern University Library.

fuel, and setting it on fire (Bell and Castetter 1941; Boas

1930; Chestnut 1902). Once the fire has burned down and
the stones are sufficiently heated, a layer of vegetation is
used to protect the food from the hot rocks. The plant layer also provides moisture during the cooking process. The
food to be cooked is arrangedon the plant layer, and a second plant layer is placed on top of the food to serve as a
thermal barrier.Finally, earth is used to seal the feature
(fig. i). Once the food is cooked, the oven is dismantled,
the food removed, and the process is repeated.

Earth Oven Experiments

The earthen cap is the last critical step in the construction of the oven and is intended to serve as a thermal seal
allowing the food to cook. The amount of earth required
to properly seal an oven is not well documented in the
ethnographic literature. Experiments (Leach et al. 1998),
however, suggest that a moderate size oven, just a meter in
diameter, requires almost half a cubic meter of material
(490 kg of sandy loam) to adequately seal the oven. The
process of borrowing earth to cover ovens has important
implications for the understandingof formation processes.
If earth was regularlyused to cap ovens, it is possible that
the collection of earth would have incorporated artifacts
from elsewhere on the site that are unrelated to the oven.
If the charredand fragmented stone in a midden is the

residue from numerous firings, many earthen caps may

have been constructed to cover the feature. In the experimental oven (Leach et al. 1998), it was necessaryto borrow earth to seal the oven properly for its first use; the soil
excavatedto createthe pit was not enough by itself. In subsequent firings, it was possible to reuse earth but each time
an earthen cap was dismantled the earth was widely scattered. The soil is dispersed over time as the result of sheet
wash. With each additional use of the oven, fresh sediment
is needed. As a consequence, there is a cycle of earth moving and subsequent dispersal that may result in the unintentional transport of artifactsfrom other parts of the site
to the area of the oven.

Discussion
We do not suggest that all artifactsor ecofacts recovered
from these middens are derived from earth or sediments
excavated on the sites. Determining which materialshave
been introduced by the process of transporting borrowed
sediments, and which materialsareproperlypart of the feature and inform us about its use, remains an essential goal.
As a start,we assume that the artifactualcontent of burnedrock middens will almost always reflect both everydayactivities associated with the use of the oven, and activities
that have very little to do with preparingor cooking foods
in earth.

/Vol.30, 2005 203

Journalof'FieldArchaeology

During the use-life of an oven the discarded material

around it will be trampled, scattered,and disturbed during
subsequent firings. As this deposit accumulates,its unconsolidated and poorly sorted structureis subject to erosion,
which may remove the smaller fractions of sediment, artifacts, and stones. As the midden deposit thickens, it will
constitute a stratigraphicunit with a complicated history of
formation. It will record the depositional history of the
oven, but it will also record artifact mixing through borrowed sediment, possibly reversed stratigraphy,and certainly a mixture of different components from the site, if
multiple components exist.

Conclusions
It is important to appreciatethat burned-rockmiddens
may often, if not always, contain unrelated artifacts
brought in from elsewhere on the site as the result of the
construction of caps using borrowed earth.The earthis obtained from portions of the site we call the "borrow zone."
If earliercomponents exist at sites with burned-rock middens, artifactsmay be incorporatedin the midden. Thus artifacts recovered from the midden, including radiocarbon
assaysfrom carbonized plant remains, could produce misleading results, especiallyif the associated artifactsare used
to date the midden. The re-use of earth from earlier components to cover earth ovens could result in yet another
problem, namely artifactsthat are functionally unrelatedto
these ovens. A complete understanding of these features is
not possible until the formation processes related to them
have been examined in detail.

JeffD. Leachis a Ph.D. candidateat LeicesterUniversity,

UnitedKingdom.Mailing address:SchoolofArchaeologyand
Ancient History,Universityof Leicester,UniversityRoad,
LeicesterLEI 7RH, UnitedKingdom.E-mail:
com
jejf@cookstonetechnology.
C. Britt Bousmanis assistantprofessorofAnthropologyand
Directorof the Centerfor ArchaeologicalStudiesat Texas
State University-SanMarcos.
David L. Nickelsis a researchscientistat the Centerfor
ArchaeologicalStudiesat TexasState University-SanMarcos.
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