Group F Lab Data, Week 6: Cremation

Group E and F worked on the same fire. It was originally intended to be smothered with greenery, but given the current time of year we were unable to do so. Therefore, we didn’t smother it with anything, and just let it burn unsmothered. Groups A and B smothered their fire with turf, so I suppose ours is the control group.

I did not record temperature data once the pots were in the fire, although I believe that Elie’s Group E lab data post might have that information. We put the pots in the fire around 3:00 and removed them between an hour and an hour and a half later.

While the pots were warming up, they were rotated fairly consistently, around every five minutes. Sometimes we measured before rotation, sometimes after, which may account for some of the variation in temperature. Additionally, sometimes the temperature gun gave us wildly different readings depending on where on the pot we were pointing it, which may account for further variation. We were not using the same temperature gun every time, for various reasons including the temperature gun malfunctioning. However, the vast majority of temperature readings were taken by Elie, so that removes at least one potential confounding variable.

Time of Day	Relative Time	Pot temperature (C)	Notes
1:37 pm	0:00	75	Initial temperature
1:43	0:06	63, 57, 76	Regular pot, loom weight, arb clay
1:47	0:10	73, 63, 82	Above pattern of measurement continues
1:57	0:20	63, 44, 72, 97	Fourth measurement from opposite side of fire
2:02	0:25	84, 74, 89, 113
2:07	0:30	97, 67, 66, 129
2:17	0:40	87, 138, 84, 122
2:27	0:50	150, 151, 97, 191
2:37	1:00	183, 164, 160, 212
2:42	1:05	130, 219, 103	Opposite side pot removed for cremation pyre
2:52	1:15	179, 192, 210

The opposite side of the fire was where the wind was blowing, making it hotter on that side of the fire. We measured a pot on that side of the fire that was removed by groups C and D to be part of the cremation pyre, thus its disappearance from the list for the final two measurements.