[Terrapreta] More on clay/pottery etc

[rukurt at westnet.com.au]

Kevin Chisholm wrote:
> Dear Michael
>
> Heres an "outside the box" thought...
>
> Is it possible that people had large charcoaling operations, where they 
> retorted the biomass in pottery retorts, and simply discarded the fines 
> and broken retorts into a dumping area?
>
>   
I've been doing some charcoal experiments using a very simple variation 
of a TLUD.
It smoked a lot because I didn't have the air supply organised properly 
and this is an ongoing experiment.

It would be nice if a pottery expert actually looked at the shards found 
in terrapreta soil and came up with an idea of what the pottery items 
actually were. Were they pots, were they jugs, were they bowls?? Or just 
what were they.

Consider a deep vase like pottery device, with a long neck. Make some 
holes in the bottom for primary air. If you've seen a "chiminea" 
sometimes called a Mexican Fireplace, imagine it without the side 
opening and holes in the bottom, you've got what I mean. Fill it with 
wood chips, or their like. Light it at the top. It will slowly burn down 
and smoulder, making copious quantities of smoke and eventually, if you 
halt the process at the point where nothing but char is left in the 
vessel, you can choke off the air from the bottom, cover the top hole 
and leave it to cool off. When cold, pour out the charcoal.

Ah, you say: "But all that smoke--- how polluting!" So do the 
mosquitoes. I've spent some 17 years in New Guinea, most of it in the 
swamps and plains of the Sepik River. Smudge fires are one of the main 
means of keeping the critters off, in that area. Houses in some places 
are filled with smoke during the night, so that people can get some 
sleep. Women, in their small canoes, out fishing will usually have a 
little smudge fire on a pottery plate behind them in the stern of the 
canoe to keep the mossies off. Men sitting around to chat will sit 
around a small smudge fire. It helps to dry their tobacco leaves and to 
light their smokes and it keeps the mossies off.

It's possible that people in the amazonian area made smudge burners, 
perhaps quite small ones, initially and then discovered the properties 
of the resulting char, when mixed into their soil and developed larger 
ones in time. Perhaps they used larger ones, in their gardens to keep 
off the mozzies and possibly other pests and then discovered the 
beneficial effects of the charcoal. Perhaps these vessels broke and they 
smashed the shards reasonably small and scattered them around the 
garden, to avoid having them ruin their digging sticks if they were in 
large pockets. Perhaps they found them beneficial to their gardening 
efforts.

Perhaps someone will come up with what sort of pottery they were.
My own charcoal burner is made from an old garbage can and a stove pipe. 
Looks like a tin chiminea, with out the side hole. Makes charcoal and 
the smoke would keep the mossies off as well.


Kurt
who also likes to think out of the box