Abstract
MR. WILFRED L. BULLOWS, of Streetly, Warwickshire, adverting to a reference to flint pot-boilers by Sir Arthur Smith Woodward in his article on fossil man in China (see NATURE, May 28, p. 784), writes to point out the unsuitability of flint for this purpose. In the course of an investigation of a prehistoric cooking site in Sutton Park, Warwickshire, in 1926, Mr. Bullows carried out a number of experiments with the view of ascertaining the methods probably employed in making use of several cooking pits which had been discovered on the site under mounds of broken stone of an undoubted antiquity. On a considerable area of ground laid bare by a fire which had taken place a few years previously, there were found not only a number of cooking pot-holes, oval in shape and of an original depth of about 1½ ft., but also hearths for heating the stones, as well as ridges of stone, which probably represented the clearings of the cooking pots. The pot-holes had not been lined with clay; but evidently undressed skins had been used as a lining, the shape of the hide probably being responsible for the oval shape of the pit. In a trial in a small pit lined with a sheepskin, it was found that four gallons of water could be raised to boiling point with heated stones in about forty minutes. Fifty pounds of stones, each weighing from two to three pounds, were required. The stones used here by prehistoric man were quartzite pebbles from the Bunter pebble beds, and the same kind of stone was used in the experiment. Flints were found to be useless, as not only did they split alarmingly in the fire, but sudden contraction in cold water reduced them almost to powder. A report by Mr. Bullows on his investigation of this interesting site in Sutton Park and its bearing on methods of cooking by the use of heated stones appeared in Trans. Birmingham Archol. Soc., vol. 52, pt. 2, 1927.
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Prehistoric Pot-Boilers. Nature 130, 55 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130055b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130055b0