Credited to Colombia. The excavators call it the earliest fiber-tempered pottery in the western hemisphere but note that other sites in the region may yield earlier dates. Other scholars describe it as one of the earliest assemblages, and early pottery is also claimed for sites in Brazil and Ecuador.
How it began
San Jacinto 1 is an archaeological site near the modern town of San Jacinto, about 85 km southeast of Cartagena in northern Colombia. Excavations led by Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo uncovered early pottery tempered with plant fiber in layers left by Late Archaic foragers. The assemblage dates to roughly 5,900 radiocarbon years ago. The people who made it used the site as a seasonal camp at the start of the dry season.
Before it existed
Cooking at the site did not depend on pots. The excavations found numerous clay-lined earth ovens or fire pits and more than two tons of fire-cracked rock, along with stone tools. This equipment suggests that the main cooking activity was processing a wet mush or dry flour from wild grass seeds or rhizomes, with turtles and fish probably prepared in the same earth ovens.
How it works
The potters mixed plant fibers into the clay as temper, which helps a vessel hold together as it is shaped and fired. Most of the fragments come from globular and semi-globular pots, and many were elaborately decorated. According to the excavators, the pots were used mostly for serving fermented drinks and not for cooking over a fire.
What lasted
The site shows that pottery in this region was made by mobile foragers before settled farming villages. The pottery appears together with evidence for seasonal rounds, intensive plant processing and scheduled hunting and fishing, which makes San Jacinto a reference point for studying the origins of food production and early sedentism in the Caribbean lowlands. About 75 square meters of an estimated 346 were excavated.
