Unearthing Cooking: A Study of Subterranean Hearths from Around the World (2025)

Throughout history and all around the world, people have constructed pit hearths to create unique, culturally specific meals. For all its ubiquity, little is known about this common cooking strategy, leading to widespread misidentification and unidentification in the archaeological record. Ethnography reports many different types of pit hearths across the world, but much related knowledge has been lost due to inventions in masonry, clay, cast iron, and gas stoves. To better understand and detect evidence of cooking in subterranean ovens, I created and cooked in several pit hearths using approximated techniques. Attention was given to the archaeological signature associated with these activities. This research provides insight into how past peoples cooked and sustained themselves, and how archaeologists can potentially recognize these activities in the archaeological record.