cooking clan of the cave bear style

8/4/2019 Cooking Clan of the Cave Bear Style

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Cooking Clan of the Cave Bear Style!Boiling water in a skin pot over a fire (or not...)

Ayla was slicing pieces of yam to put into a skin pot that wasboiling over a cooking fire. Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel (page 140)

While looking for a project to explore for an archaeology course atSimon Fraser University (Arch 372, taught by Michael Wilson) Irecalled that I had read somewhere that cooking could be done ina hide container over a fire. When I called my sister in Hope,British Columbia, to inquire if I could use her land to build a fireon, she informed me that I had probably read this in Clan of the

Cave Bear. I bought a copy and fortuitously flipped directly to theabove quote on page 140. Inquiries to knowledgeable personsfailed to yield any knowledge of this method, and a query to JeanAuel to date remains unanswered [April 26, 1995: received letterfrom Jean Auel, but no specific references as they are buried inher research notes, and she is hard at work ~ good news Earth'sChildren fans! ~ on book 5.]

Looking for information on construction of such a pot, I cameacross the book Plains Indian and Mountain Man Arts and Crafts:

An Illustrated Guide, by Charles W. Overstreet (1993). Herein Ifound information on the difference between rawhide and tannedleather, and several projects, none of which were a pot, butinteresting for construction methods.

I ordered two half hides of rawhide from Buckskin Fur and LeatherCompany in Calgary, Alberta. Overstreet's book had not preparedme for what I picked up at the Greyhound parcel depot ~ two rollsof a stiff material not unlike plastic! I had thought that I wouldessentially be making a couple of leather bags, and that rawhidewas simply a more robust form of leather.

CONSTRUCTION

Two pots were simply constructed from a single piece of skin each.The first step was cutting out circular pieces which wouldeventually be attached to metal rings purchased from TandyLeather in Vancouver. Had I chosen to go all the way with anaccurate reconstruction of a hypothetical Neanderthal pot, therings could possibly have been fashioned from green willow(Overstreet, 1993). However, my main concern was to testwhether this method of cooking was indeed possible.
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Due to the difference in size of the half-hides and their irregularities, one potwould have a diameter of 14", the otherof 18". There is a mathematicalcorrespondence between the diameter of the circle cut from the hide, and thediameter of the ring it is to be attachedto to form the mouth of the pot.Unfortunately, not being a

mathematician, I used trial and error, starting with roughly twicethe diameter of the ring and cut back from there, winding up withapproximately 24" for the 14" ring and 28" inches for the 18" ring.The 14" inch was the first made and the diameter I finally arrivedat made it a bit deeper than what I'd envisioned, and it had a

'scrunchier' (more pleats) rim than the 18" pot I createdsubsequently. Thus I called it 'the ugly pot', and the 18" one 'thegood pot'.

To construct them I first drew circles of the incorrect diameter(2X) on the rawhide, also taking care to mark points 1/3 of thecircumference apart around the edges for support thongs to beattached later, and then cut the circles out using Wiss MetalMaster tin snips ("Made from special molybdenum steel, the non-slip serrated jaws cut up to 18-gauge low carbon cold rolled

steel."). I marveled that anyone could have worked with thismaterial using only stone tools, but I also suspect that necessarycutting was either done prior to it drying, or else there was waterenough to spare nearby to soak it in. That's the next step. For mypurposes the bath tub served well enough for soaking the rawhidecircles.

I made rawhide strips for attaching the hide to the rings. Theseare easily made from scrap, starting from the edge of a piece andcutting around in a spiral pattern towards the center. This thenneeds to be soaked as well to make it pliable enough to work with.

spiral cut to make rawhidethongs from a piece of scrap

The next step was to make a dual set of holes around thecircumference, as well as three extra sets of two for the supportthongs at the points previously marked.

Then I pressed the circle into the ring and began attaching it.


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The long rawhide 'string' went throughone hole, under the ring, then throughthe corresponding hole in towards thecentre. From thence it went over to thenext hole, through and under the ring

to the corresponding hole and through towards the outside. Andso on, stopping only a moment at the support holes to attach athong ring, until the pot was complete and ready to hang-dry bythe three thong rings.

Unfortunately, I

lacked the witto take clearpictures of thepots prior totheir exposureto fire, but I didmake a small(5" diameter)trial pot, shownhere.

This has roughly the proportions of the good pot, perhaps a littleshallower. I wanted the potsto be wider than tall on thepremise that cooking would bemore efficient if a wider areawas exposed to the flames.

METHOD

The first trials took place onSunday the 10 th of March,1996 at Rosewood Gardens (agarden centre) in Hope, BritishColumbia, the proprietor of which is my sister Betty.

The pots were suspended overa fire from a tripodconstructed of bamboo. WhileAuel's Neandertals wouldn'thave had access to this


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material, it is strong and readily available when scavenging arounda garden centre, since such poles are used as supports for plants.The circular thongs on the pot were attached to leather thongswhich in turn were attached to a wire ring with a hook on it(another material Neandertals wouldn't have had access to, butsince the home of my sister and her partner is on the site of thegarden centre, coat hangers were easy to scavenge as well). Thepot could be hung from a ring attached to another long thong, thisalso of leather, which passed through a metal ring secured to thetop of the tripod. The tripod itself was held together with a strip of rawhide tied wet so that when it dried it bound everything quitesecurely. On one leg of the tripod was a metal loop (again coathanger) to which the long thong could be attached, and the heightof the pot could thereby be adjusted.

TRIAL ONE

The first trial was with the ugly pot. The objective in all trials wasto get water to boil. I filled it half full (4 litres). After 38 minutesthe water was steaming hot, but not boiling. There was massiveshrinkage of the pot, until the level of the water was near thebrim.

TRIAL TWO

The good pot was filled initially with seven litres of water. As itshrank I bailed out water to keep it from spilling over onto thefire. The water became steaming hot after about 12 minutes, butfailed to boil over a trial time of one hour, thirty-seven minutes.Shrinkage left it seriously misshapen as one side moved up closeto the plane of the ring.


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Lopsided shrinkage in the 'good' pot

This may have been due to un-uniform thickness of the rawhidecircle the pot was made from. Hide varies in thickness, and on the

half hide this pot was made from it was impossible to find a circleof this area that was uniform in thickness throughout. Alsothickness varies from hide to hide. Since I didn't specify athickness grade when ordering, Buckskin Leather sent me the twobest they had available. The ugly pot was made from the thickerof the two, and that, coupled with its greater vertical proportion,may have contributed to its greater uniformity in shrinkage.

TRIAL THREE

The ugly pot again. 3.5 litres of water.Again, water became steaming hot inshort order, but failed to boil. We(myself, Betty, and friend Val) decidedthat it was hot enough to brew tea in,and created a tea bag from cheese clothand chamomile. Popped it in at onehour, five minutes.

Terminated trial at one hour, twenty-five minutes, still no boiling. The teatasted distinctly of rawhide. Not terriblyappetizing .

cheese cloth chamomile tea bag in'ugly' pot


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TRIAL FOUR

The method of cooking by putting hotrocks into a container (leather, or mudslaked basketry) has been popularamongst diverse groups of hunter-gatherers. The container can be assimple as a skin pressed into a hole

dug in the ground, or draped over a circle of rocks. The latter isthe method I chose to use for comparison purposes with the pot-over-fire method.

Sedimentary rocks should be avoided, since trapped moisture cancause the rocks to explode when heated (Wilson, 1996;McParland, 1977). The best rocks to use are igneous (thoughporous igneous can explode since it contains gas pockets whichexpand when heated (Wilson, 1996)). Then there are the rockswhich I used. A couple of them were fine, but most were nicelooking cobbles of the variety not shown below.

This is one of them after being heated and submerged. Unless onefancies a high mineral content in one's diet, this type of rockshould be avoided. It didn't explode or shatter (I wore safetygoggles just in case), it crumbled. With transportation and

handling it has crumbled even more and seems to have totallygiven up on continued existence as an integrated entity. It is themetamorphic equivalent of granodiorite, though only slightlymetamorphosed so that one almost has to use one's imaginationto detect oriented bands of hornblende (the dark mineral) visibleafter cracking, and it would be (was) a very tough call for a novicerock seeker without first cracking the cobble. The white portion issodium feldspar, and the off-white/grey mineral is quartz (Wilson,1996). Further adding to its fragility is the fact that it isweathered, and one can see the weathering rind on a broken

section. They, like so much of the material in this experiment,were scavenged from around Rosewood Gardens, some from thesurface of the ground, others from a dirt pile produced as a resultof recent digging. Better would have been cobbles protected fromweathering by a stream, though these are susceptible to tumblingwhich can create incipient fractures (small cones of percussiongoing into the material) in the surface, which might come apart if stressed (Wilson, 1996). Still, a cone fragment or two in the stewwould be better than a significant portion of crumbledmetamorphic equivalent of granodiorite.

In his experimenting with heating and cooling rocks, Pat


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McParland (1977) discovered that "in general a rock could beheated and submerged as many as seven times" before breaking,and his experiment involved cold water each time. He notes thatthe figure could be higher if the water in the trials had beenallowed to remain hot. This is an important factor in theconsideration of efficiency (how many trips to the stream bed) of the method. The rocks I was using did not conform to his generalrule.

The 'container' held 16 litres of water. I removed hot rocks fromthe fire one at a time and deposited them into the container usinga shovel. After about twenty five minutes the water was steaminghot, but not boiling. It was clear that my fire was too small, that Ididn't have enough cobbles to boil that much water, and that the

number I did have was diminishing due to crumbling.

We decided to halt for dinner. We had hoped to cook it in themanner described in Clan of the Cave Bear (Auel, 1980), but, alas,it was not to be. The stew was cooked in the kitchen (recipe atend of this document) , and desert was marshmallows roasted onsticks of maple.

Trials continued on March 23, 1996, focusing primarily on the hotrock method. Betty had the fire going prior to my arrival in the

morning and reported hearing a loud bang. One of the rocks thatformed the circle, a sedimentary, had split suddenly. Thus welearned that rock selection is important for ring stones as well, not

just rocks directly in the fire.

TRIAL FIVE

Hot rock method using the ugly pot containing 3.5 litres of water.Again, I transferred the rock with a shovel, taking care not tobring along too much ash or coals. The ugly pot attachment

thongs were connected to the ring with a single long thong woundthrough and amongst them and the ring with the intention of making the horizontal level of the pot more adjustable. While thisworked for the most part, when I dropped in the rock, the wholepot shifted spilling much of the water. However, the water thatwas left boiled throughout (as opposed to bubbling in theimmediate vicinity of the rock) with one rock in about a minute.This would be a fast method for making a quick cup of tea.

TRIAL SIX

I decided to give the good pot, now ugly and misshapen, another
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trial with 4 litresof water. It took 2rocks to getboiling throughoutin six minutes,boiling peteringout for fourminutes after thatto a completenon-boil.

TRIAL SEVEN

The ugly pot, 3.5litres of water. Three rocks to boiling throughout in four and half minutes. Four minutes after that to a non-boil.

TRIAL EIGHT

I decided I was going to get the over-the-fire method to workeven if I had to destroy the pot in the process. Showing it nomercy, I lowered it directly into the flames. Twelve minutes laterone of the support thongs burned through and the contents spilled

onto the fire without it having achieved a boil.

In The Clan of the Cave Bear , Auel's Neandertals make sure thelevel of the water remains above the flames (Auel, 1980, page81). Clearly I had not been as careful as they.

I considered repairing it and trying again, this time keeping acloser eye on the flames, perhaps pouring water on any area indanger of burning, but even in so considering it was already clearthat, in comparison with the hot rock method, the leather pot-

over-fire approach is a real non-method, or, at best, a grosslyinefficient one. I could have boiled water twice in the time it hadtaken just to lose a support thong.

CONCLUSION

Cooking using the hot rock method would be more efficient thanusing leather pots over a fire.

REFINEMENTS FOR FUTURE ATTEMPTS

If this experiment were to be done again, the first thing I would


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require would be more time. Ideal would be about a week in thesummer when it could reasonably be expected not to rain in thispart of the world. Two of three days of the first weekend atRosewood Gardens in Hope were lost to rain. The second weekendI could only spend the Saturday (thankfully weather cooperated)due to the demands of school and end of semester crunch.

With more time, I would explore the optimum method of hot rockcooking. I find it interesting that in trial six two rocks got thewater to boiling in six minutes, while in trial seven, three rockshad it boiling in four and a half. It raises the question of what isthe optimum time to number of rocks to volume relationship. Isuccessfully demonstrated that hot rock cooking is faster thancooking in a leather pot over the fire, but have yet to determine

just how fast the hot rock method can be. Should people with firepits put away their microwaves?

[Feb 21, 1997: Received an email from Bonnie (Dakona) Farner whichcalls into question my assumption that cooking by this method is'quick'. While she is sceptical of the skin-pot-over-fire method,she notes from experience that cooking a stew with the hot rock

method takes hours. She also includes the ingredients for a tried and tested hot rock stew! Full text of her message is included here. ]

It would also be a good idea to make a special trip to a stream tocollect unweathered igneous cobbles which could be reused overmany trials without disintegrating. Better yet, send a geologist orsomeone experienced with construction and operation of sweatlodges, since exploding sedimentary rock is unwelcome in thatsituation as well.

In presentation of this project in tutorial, Michael Wilson observedthat perhaps the reason the pots failed to boil over the flames isthat the energy being released by steam was equivalent to thatcoming in from the flames, and that if the diameter of pot the

were less this might be somewhat mitigated. TA Bob Muir wrylynoted that perhaps it would be simpler to just put a lid on it, apoint which was made again by Lloyd Bogart (and Bert Kamphuis)by email, along with other insightful comments [Aug 30, 1996,

personal correspondence ~ Jean Auel as well thinks a lid would be agood idea].
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If I were to construct another leather pot,I would fold the edge of the leather overthe rim towards the inside of the pot, so

that they would be less exposed toflame. Overall the pots took the directheat well, with the exception of thefinal trial where not only edge damagewas a concern, but the flames charredoff a thin bit off the bottom of the pot.Further trials with a better designed

pot, carefully watched (never mind theproverb), could also determine how wellthe pot could stand up to direct flamebefore it was destroyed. Given the

damage to the bottom of the pot from onetrial of limited duration, I suspect that thepot overall would not last many trials.

(left) Damage to bottom of ugly pot: charred layer flaking off

(below) Edge damage to ugly pot: Had the ring been made of willowrather than metal it is likely that the structural integrity wouldhave been compromised (though once shrinkage has occurred therawhide, while becoming softer, does keep its shape even whencontaining boiling water)

FINAL THOUGHTS

Rawhide is an amazing material. I even created a blade from itwith a serrated edge and used it to cut a tomato. It can be used inthe construction of shields, armor, boats, masks, drums, and allmanner of things (not forgetting that it can also be tanned andmade into leather ), and as a binding is very strong and useful inboth construction and repair.

However, most fascinating from an archaeological perspective isthat it is virtually invisible in the archaeological record. Not onlytime and decay play a role here in consideration of humanartifacts. Rawhide is so irresistible to dogs that anything discarded

(and some things no doubt even before they were willinglydiscarded) would have been made short work of by camp or wild
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dogs.

But even if rawhide artifacts shone forth from the archaeologicalrecord as brightly as stone, I doubt, based on the results of thisexperiment, that we would find skin pots that had been used forcooking over a fire. Neandertals and other hunter-gatherers hadbetter things to do with their time.

REFERENCES

Auel, Jean M. (1980) The Clan of the Cave Bear , Bantam Books

McParland, Pat (1977) Experiments in the firing and breaking of rocks. The Calgary Archaeologist v.5 , pages 31-33

Overstreet, Charles (1993) Plains Indian and Mountain Man Artsand Crafts , Eagle's View Publishing.

Wilson, Michael (1996) in conversation

NEANDERTAL STEW (a la The Clan of the Cave Bear , pages 81,82)

[ Back to trial4 ]

Ingredients:

bison (we substituted cow)wild onion (substituted domestic)unspecified herbs (chose marjoram, cloves, garlic, and bay leaf)thistle stalks (we omitted)mushroomswatercress (substituted bamboo shoots)small immature yams (substituted grocery store yam)cranberries (substituted canned cranberry sauce with wholecranberries)

"wilted flowers from previous days growth of day lilies forthickening" (substituted potatoes)

Note on other substitutions from Elizabeth B. Naime (Feb, 1998)

Add meat first, then potatoes (if used), then softer ingredientswhich don't take as long to cook. You might want to have salt andpepper on hand as well. Auel used the adjective "salty" forcoltsfoot (omitted, see below), and this may be what thatingredient was intended for [August 30, 1996, personalcorrespondence ~ Auel notes that the saltiness may actually befrom a source where the coltsfoot was flavoured with ash.]
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Some ingredients were omitted and not substituted for as mysister Betty, wise in plant-lore herself, expressed skepticism aboutsome of them and looked them up. The roots of milkweed shouldbe avoided, and the other parts "must be boiled in three or fourdifferent batches of water to remove toxic substances and makethem safe to eat." The cooking water should be discarded ( Magic and Medicine of Plants, senior editors James Dwyre & DavidRattray, 1986, published by Readers Digest Association CanadaLtd.). The tome also mentioned that "coltsfoot may cause cancer if taken in large doses or repeated small doses." Betty alsoexpressed some reservations about lilies, noting that somevarieties are poisonous. I should add that the mushrooms we usedwere from the grocery store, and that anyone using wildmushrooms they've picked themselves does so at their own risk.

[August 30, 1996 ~ further info from Jean Auel .]

THANKS are especially due to Betty and Kari of RosewoodGardens in Hope, and to Val Little for reading through the entiretext of Clan of the Cave Bear and noting for me the pages withreferences to cooking and food.

Thoughts or Comments (?)

1996 Eric Pettifor
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