Fire-Cracked Rock as Archaeological Evidence of Cooking and Cuisine: Case Study from North America

This chapter provides a case study of fire-cracked rock (FCR) employed in cooking and cuisine in North America. Three hunter-gatherer Late Archaic (c. 5000–2000 BP) sites from Grand Island in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula are investigated, which contained evidence of cooking via earth oven, stone boiling, and rock griddle facilities based on contextual, spatial, and FCR analyses. Although the case study focuses on FCR, the author’s analysis of all 29,221 lithics from the studied sites are briefly presented, as well as the background information for the sites, and the island’s environmental settings and geological formation. Nut processing and lipid residue analysis from FCR samples are also discussed in Chap. 5 , as well as the concepts of cooking and cuisine in archaeology.