Steatite Bowls
Many surface collectors of American Indian artifacts in the Southeast have found one or more broken sherds of steatite bowls. Usually they either discard the damaged artifacts or they are brought home and dropped in a box without any thought about the rare vessels from which they came.
Steatite, or soapstone as it is commonly called, is a soft metamorphic rock composed mostly of talc. Outcroppings of this stone are found, though sparsely, throughout the Southeast mountains and Piedmont and northward into New England and also along the west coastal region. When a chunk of this lithic material is cut from the mother rock at the outcropping, it is pliant enough to be worked and carved with sharp tools – sharp stone tools in the case of the prehistoric natives. American Indians from at least the Middle Archaic Period through the Historic Period used steatite to form many utensils, tools, and ornaments such as bowls, pipes and pendants.
Exactly when prehistoric people began using soapstone for cooking and storage vessels is much debated. Certainly they were in use by 6,000 years ago for the cooking of meats and plants in soups and stews but that is about as good a guess as can be made today. The manufacturing of a steatite bowl was relatively simple if the artisan had the necessary tools. An appropriately sized piece of soapstone was chopped or dislodged at the quarry site using stone axes, large chipped blades and hammer stones. Hollowing and initial thinning was probably started at the quarry so as to minimize weight before the crudely formed bowl was carried to a camp site. At this point, the craftsman probably used narrow chisels to further thin the bowl walls and the vessel was given an overall polish using sand and water or animal fat. Not all finished steatite bowls, though, were given a thinning and smoothing polish since some crude and thick walled ones have been found that clearly show evidence of being over a cooking fire. These vessel shapes vary from rounded to oval to rectangular with depths ranging from only a few inches to a foot or more. Some have plain exterior walls while others have large lug handles carved into the outside rims presumably to aid in moving the hot cooking pot. Bowl blanks have been and occasionally can be found at ancient steatite quarries that, for whatever reason, were never finished but they are still authentic artifacts and can add to your collection if you wish to carry the often heavy vessel preforms to your home. A steatite bowl could have been used for many years or even centuries unless it was accidentally or purposefully broken. Daily use and heat from cooking fires hardened the soft stone until it was tough and durable but like any stone, it could be and at times was broken. The sherds that we find were possibly damaged by some prehistoric person and further broken over time by natural soil contraction and upheaval as well as by modern agricultural implements. Steatite bowls were certainly used for thousands of years in the Piedmont and southern mountains until supplanted by the new technology, ceramic bowls, beginning around three thousand years ago.
On rare occasions, an intact or mostly intact steatite bowl is found. If you are successful enough to find or to have found one of these rare whole vessels, consider yourself very lucky indeed. Usually we only find the broken remains of these prehistoric vessels. But if you are fortunate enough to even find a steatite bowl sherd, study it and marvel at its uniqueness. And consider that thousands of years ago some family, perhaps similar to your family, prepared their meals in what was at one time a necessary food cooking tool, the steatite bowl.
REFERENCES:
Coe, Joffre L.
“The Formative Cultures of the Carolina Piedmont”,
TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
1964
Fowler, William S.
“The Wilbraham Stone Bowl Quarry”,
BULLETIN of the MASSACHUSETTS ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY
1969
Maus, James E.
“The Chisel Site”,
THE CENTRAL STATES ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL Vol. 36, No. 2
1989
Maus, Jim
“Steatite Bowls and Artifacts”,
THE CENTRAL STATES ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL, Vol. 51, No.1
2004