Since the time William Henry Holmes looked into the quarrying of soapstone for making bowls in the mid-Atlantic region, archaeologists have assumed that stone bowls predate pottery. Although this may be true in some parts of the Eastern Woodlands, throughout most of the Southeast, soapstone vessels actually postdate the local use of pottery or appear at roughly the same time. Moreover, soapstone vessels were drafted into ritual uses and sometimes cached at places like Claiborne at the mouth of the Pearl River in Mississippi. That the greatest quantity of soapstone vessels anywhere in the Eastern Woodlands is at a site (Poverty Point) most distant from geological sources suggests that we consider how soapstone vessels were far more than exceptionally good cookware. Go to the project page to learn more.
