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Title
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Earth-Oven Technology in the Mississippi Pine Hills: An Experimental Approach to Archaeological Investigations and Method Development
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Date
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2009
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Bibliographic Citation
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Fedoroff, Michael Peter. 2009. Earth-Oven Technology in the Mississippi Pine Hills: An Experimental Approach to Archaeological Investigations and Method Development. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg.
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annotates
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● Work based on features in the Tiak Faya (Pine Hills) region of Mississippi from Camp Shelby.
● Rare example of middle range theory, experimental archaeology, in the geographic area, regardless of modern state boundaries. In other words, it is rare to examine data for the dynamism of human behavior versus being limited to questions of culture history.
● Provides an argument for better understanding of hearths, albeit cooking ovens or hearths, in relation to foodways (e.g., greenbrier) which admittedly evidence in the acidic sediments of the region is often lacking.
● Experiments of cooking in excavated pits, clay lined, and half with added sandstone, of bundles of Smilax root, perch fish, and squirrel, found a total time investment of 6.5 hours.
o Interesting to note that when the food was “excavated” from the pits, little charcoal and ash was left (Federoff 2009:45-46).
● A second set of experiments conducted to determine the effects of rock inclusions, and reuse of the features over time. Resulting in the conclusion that 15 lbs of sandstone was ideal, and 5 lbs of sandstone increased the over temperature by 100 degrees F, and adding more rock does not increase temperature necessarily. There are lines of data that indicate various levels of degradation of rock, length of heating capabilities, etc.
● Provides avenues for future research, and of particular interest to the field archaeologist, how recovery and methods should be oriented to recover these pertinent data.