Fire as an agent in human culture / by Walter Hough.

  • Walter Hough
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fire as an agent in human culture / by Walter Hough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    cense, where a few holes pierce the sides of the primitive pottery censers. It was customary to put in the vessels coals and throw upon them the incense. In many cases the gums used have a tend¬ ency to smother the coals, and this exigency was met by air holes to keep the coals alive. The rudest censers in America, employed by the Lacandone Indians of Mexico, figured by Dr. Alfred M. Toz- zer, had no provision for draught.55 A slight draught was induced in many of the simple fire basins, especially those with projections on the rim, when a vessel was set on the projecting supports. There would be a slight current of heated gases and returning air through the openings caused by the holding of the vessel away from the wall of the stove by the projections. This draught evidently would not be sufficient to cause the installation of vessel and stove to be of more than limited utility, and side draught holes and under draught would follow. In a censer from Carmen, on the coast of Honduras, of the goblet type, with mask on the edge of the rim, there is a small hole in the center of the bottom and two holes on opposed sides of the bowl. These orifices are small and they would appear to be of limited value in furnishing draught, but that is evidently the design. The small pottery fire pots of the Tule Indians of the San Bias coast, Panama, have a number of draught holes in the bottom. These are figured in the chapter on stoves. The circular underground rooms called kivas, used by the ancient Pueblo tribes for ceremonial purposes, required some method of ventila¬ tion. 56 The fire built in the fireplace on the floor of the kiva and the presence of numbers of celebrants would vitiate the air to a dangerous degree at times. As pointed out, the tipi or lodge has a smoke hole at the apex and a door in the side, thus functioning as a stove. The circular kiva of the ancient peoples of the northern part of the Pueblo region had a flue running under the floor from near the fireplace to the wall, where it connected with an upright flue on the exterior (Bonito and other Chaco Canyon ruins); or the outside flue opened into the kiva at the floor level (San Juan region). Another feature of this installation is a deflector or screen of stone, wattle, or adobe in front of the fire, whose function appears to be the diversion of the draught. In the history of ventilation this feature of the ancient circular kivas may be considered a great advance. Such kivas have been uncovered in prehistoric sites and they show the use of draught ventilation in America at an indefinite time before 1540. Modern kivas have no such device, and for this reason it must be concluded that the knowledge of the ventilating flue passed out with the people 65 Alfred M. Tozzer. A Comparative Study of the Maya and Lacandones, Arch. Inst. Amer., New York, 1907. 66 J. Walter Fewkes. Ventilators in Ceremonial Rooms, Amer. Anthrop.,new ser., July—September. 1908, pp. 387—398.