Woodland Pottery Function, Cooking, and Diet in the Upper Great Lakes of North America

Abstract

A multidimensional approach to functional analysis was employed to examine pottery use, cooking, and subsistence in pre-European North American contexts. A variety of analytic techniques were applied to ceramic assemblages from two sites on the south shore of Lake Superior: the Middle Woodland Naomikong Point site and the Late Woodland Sand Point site. The analyses of both technical attributes and use-alteration traces suggest that a majority of pottery vessels from these sites were used for cooking throughout the Woodland period. Lipid residue analysis corroborates traditional subsistence information but specifies which foods were cooked in pottery vessels. Vessel size varies according to context rather than by time or by function, with larger vessels associated with ritual areas and smaller vessels originating from domestic spheres, a trend potentially related to feasting behavior. Interior carbonization patterns change in frequency between the Middle and Late Woodland periods, suggesting a shift in cooking and possibly subsistence practices.keywords ceramics, pottery function, cooking practices, great lakes A recent trend in ceramic analysis has been the increased use of proxy observations to understand archaeological vessel functions (Braun 1983;Blitz 1993;Kobayashi 1994;Skibo and Blinman 1999;Arthur 2002Arthur , 2003Skibo et al. 2009). This approach stands in contrast to the more traditional analyses that have largely focused on the social and spatiotemporal implications of stylistic attributes (i.e., Wheat et al. 1958;McPherron 1967;Janzen 1968;Sabloff and Smith 1969;Brose 1970;Dorothy 1978Dorothy , 1980. Functional analyses can be used to infer culinary practices and the role of pottery in everyday life, both in relation to subsistence and nonculinary functions, as well as its use in special contexts, thereby expanding the midcontinental journal of archaeology, Vol. 41 No. 3, Fall, 2016, 207- breadth of information that can be gleaned from ceramic assemblages. Building on this premise, a multidimensional analytic approach was developed and used to investigate the diet and cooking practices of inhabitants of and the function of pottery vessels from two Woodland sites on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Physical characteristics, the presence and locations of use-alteration traces, depositional contexts, lipid residue analysis, and ethnographic sources were all examined or employed to reconstruct ancient pottery use in the Upper Great Lakes region (Kooiman 2012).This study explores the functions of Upper Great Lakes pottery through assemblages from two coastal sites on the south shore of Lake Superior: the Naomikong Point (20CH2) site and the Sand Point (20BG14) site. Both are multicomponent sites, but analysis focused on pottery from the Laurel Middle Woodland component of Naomikong Point (Janzen 1968) and the Late Woodland component of Sand Point (Dorothy 1978(Dorothy , 1980). Skibo's (2013) model of pottery function analysis entails the evaluation of both technical properties and use-alteration traces to infer...

Shifting priorities apparent in Middle and Late Woodland ceramics from Nova Scotia

“… 7 Size is measured here by neck size, which has been shown to be an acceptable proxy measurement for vessel capacity (Kooiman, 2016: 211–212).…”

Earliest Microbotanical Evidence for Maize in the Northern Lake Michigan Basin

“…Winter ceramic vessels overall were well tempered, low fired, and thin walled, with vertical or everted (open) rims (Kooiman 2015)—ideal traits for cooking vessels as they allow access to contents and increase both thermal shock resistance and heat conductivity (Rice 1987; Skibo 2013). Adhered interior carbonized food residue indicates that vessels were involved in cooking over fire (Skibo 2013).…”

“…Interior carbonization patterns on ceramic vessels from the Middle Woodland Naomikong Point site (20CH2) and the Late Woodland Sand Point site (20BG14), both located in the Upper Peninsula, suggest a diachronic shift in cooking techniques (Kooiman 2012, 2016). Partially reconstructed vessels and sherds from Naomikong Point exhibited evidence of stewing (a long-term liquid reduction process) by the presence of interior carbonization on most of the interior surfaces.…”

“…The Garden Peninsula is one of the few locations in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with a growing season sufficient to support maize cultivation. Moreover, the Winter site was the subject of several prior analyses of lithic and ceramic assemblages (Bianchi 1974; Richner 1973), as well as more recent geoarchaeological (Lovis et al 2012) and ceramic functional analyses (Kooiman 2015). Most importantly, the ceramic assemblage has abundant adhering carbonized residues on rim interiors that have survived almost half a century of laboratory processing and storage.…”