“Salt Pans“ at the Kincaid Site

Extract

In Vol. VI, No. 1, of American Antiquity is a communication by Charles Fairbanks discussing the occurrence of the “salt pan” type of vessel in his early Middle Mississippi horizon (Macon Plateau) at the Ocmulgee National Monument. These specimens show some variety of manufacture and surface treatment, namely, coiling, fabric marking, leaf marking, and complicated stamping. Fairbanks contrasts this variety of handling with the relatively consistent fabric marking and distinct “clubbed” lip in the salt pans of southern Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee, where the type seems to have met a definite functional need, i.e. the evaporation of salt at salt springs. Fairbanks accordingly postulates: “The variation of decoration and possibly construction in peripheral areas suggests an acculturation process in which the basic form was retained but the function may have been lost.”