[Terrapreta] The Reason for Pottery Shards in Terra, Preta.

[Gary Rondeau]

I've always liked the "pottery as mulch" theory.  If you look at the picture
of the excavation here:
http://www.acresusa.com/toolbox/reprints/Feb07_TerraPreta.pdf
you will see that most of the sherds have little curvature, suggesting to me
that they were not made as "pots" but rather specifically for another
purpose.  I've also read that most of the sherds are unfired - again
suggesting a "low tech" requirement where the higher strength of a fired
object is not necessary.  If you consider the problems of weed and moisture
control, you can see the logic in laying sheets of sun-baked clay around
your seedlings.  But they break - get trampled into the dirt - and there you
have it!  The bigger pieces would get used year after year.  I believe I ran
across this hypothesis in some of Charles Mann's writings.

Gary

>The intense interest in, and speculation about, pottery has been amusing.
It
>keeps coming up as an element of interest. From my reading of Amazonian
Dark
>Earths and other references it may be a symbol of disposal practices but it
>is only one component of many, including food wastes and other sources of
>minerals and plant nutrients, that apparently went into terra preta. If
>someone has the time and patience it would be useful to cite specific
>archeological references and interpretations of the pottery issue.  I'm
sure
>that it wouldn't be nearly as entertaining as the current thread of
>speculation. 
>
> 
>
>Tom