[Terrapreta] Pottery Shards and Terra Preta

[lou gold]

Kevin,

I don't know if you watched the BBC video, "The Secret of El Dorado"?
It shows the pottery dramatically, in layers deep into the soil.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2809044795781727003&q=secret+of+el+dorado&total=21&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

The pottery shards are suggestive to me. I speculate that the earth kilns
used for making the pottery (loaded with lots of broken pieces from pottery
making) became middens for human and organic wastes. Later as the whole
"stew" ripen into TP, it could have been transfered to the fields and also
be useful structurally for creating raised beds and preventing erosion under
the heavy rains.

What do you think?

lou





On Dec 10, 2007 5:09 PM, Kevin Chisholm <kchisholm at ca.inter.net> wrote:

> Some people hold that pottery shards are an important aspect to the
> working of Terra Preta, (TP) but others feel that the presence of
> pottery shards in Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE) is incidental to the
> performance of the TP.
>
> Is it possible that the Researchers looked for the presence of pottery
> shards as a way of proving human involvement, and did most of their work
> on TP soils that had a human involvement?
>
> Pottery was a big art of Brazilian Indian Culture, but other Ancient
> Cultures did not have, or made very little use, of pottery. Are tehre
> any "black earth" deposits outside "pottery cultures" that are
> acknowledged as being the equivalent to TP?
>
> Is it possible that there are many man made TP soils to which no shards
> were added?
>
> What is the nature of the shards found in TP? Are they like a crushed
> grog, where it is obvious that effort had been expended breaking the
> pottery to relatively small pieces, OR, is shard size and shape such
> that it suggests broken pottery items were simply discarded?
>
> Are the shards of a nature in size and completeness that they could be
> re-assembled to reveal the size and shape of the original pottery items?
>
> Is there any evidence to suggest that pottery shards were indeed added
> on purpose, in contrast to merely being disposed of an non-functional
> items?
>
> Is there any evidence to show that TP WITH pottery shards  works better
> than TP WITHOUT shards?
>
> Is there any evidence that shards of one range of sizes and composition
> and degree of firing give better results in TP than another?
>
> Can anyone think of other reasons why pottery shards would be a valuable
> addition to TP?
>
> Can anyone think of reasons why pottery shards would not make any
> difference?
>
> Any facts, comments and observations would be both enlightening and
> appreciated.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Kevin
>
>
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-- 
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