Relative Heating Effectiveness and the Decline of the Soapstone Cooking Vessel in Eastern North America

ABSTRACT During the North American Late Archaic Period, people produced ceramic vessels from clay and stone vessels from soapstone. While both ceramic and soapstone vessels proliferated across eastern North America, the former evolved and endured into the subsequent periods, while the latter declined. Here, we conducted an experiment to assess heating effectiveness between soapstone and ceramic vessels. We examined heating rate, ability to boil, heat retention, and thermal shock resistance. We predicted that if cooking performance contributed to the decline of soapstone vessels, then they would perform poorly relative to ceramic vessels. Our results did not support that hypothesis and revealed soapstone vessels were significantly more likely to reach a boil. We consider three other related factors: (1) sourcing and production costs; (2) subsistence change; and (3) exchange and mobility, which may have contributed to the decline of the soapstone cooking vessel and the continued investment in ceramic technology.