Lab Group Data: Ritual (Group 3)

This data is for Lab Group 3, which consists of Clark Glymph, Chance Tunnissen, Bruce Jones, and Lily Petersen. For Part 1 of this lab, we were assigned a deep above-ground firepit, and burned an unwrapped beef femur, four sheep tongues, and splanchna, which consisted of a heart, liver, and kidney.

Part 1 (Ritual Burning):

For this first part, we built a flat-topped stack of wood in our firepit that resembled the setup seen on ancient Greek vases. We did have a fair bit of trouble getting the fire actually lit, but once it was lit, we had a remarkably stable platform. It took fourteen minutes after starting the fire for the first platform (with the very thin wood) to be burnt away, but after that, the wood remained fairly stable until we doused the fire 50 minutes later.

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Cow Femur:

Before starting to burn the beef femur, we took the following measurements:

Length	43 cm
Circumference at Narrowest Point	8½ cm
Circumference at End 1	45 cm
Circumference at End 2	43 cm
Weight	291 g

At this point, we added the unwrapped femur to the fire. A couple of preliminary observations we made at this time were: a) that we needed to assign two people the role of  “designated meat handler” in order to not get raw meat juice on things like the notebook; b) that the fire smelled sharper than the one we made for the cheese, and c) that it didn’t feel particularly religious yet. 

25 minutes after we had placed it on the fire, the femur was completely charred. Three minutes after that, one of my groupmates commented that the bone “was starting to look like a log,” most likely referring to the pattern of cracks appearing on the outside. Only one minute after that, the bone broke in half. 

At the end, when we measured the weight of the bones, they added up to 1,109 grams, which likely means that we accidentally added a bunch of ash, or we didn’t properly weigh the meat at the beginning or end. We did observe at this point that the bones were very brittle, a mix of black and pale white, and snapped easily.

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Tongues:

After adding the beef femur to the fire, we turned to the tongues. We recorded the initial weight of the tongues as 422 grams, and their initial temperature at 45ºF, before adding our first tongue to the fire. We chose to add the four tongues in stages, so we could observe different things with each tongue. We chose to let Tongues 1 and 4 burn completely to ash, and we ate Tongues 2 and 3. Unfortunately, Tongue 4 fell beneath the pile, so we were unable to record any data on this tongue.

Time:	Observations:
1:42 PM	Tongue (45ºF) added to fire.
1:45 PM	Tongue blackened. We did see the tongue curl at this point, but it still seems unlikely that this is what was represented on vases, because it didn’t curl as dramatically as the ox tails of the groups around us.
1:51 PM	Temperature recorded at 152ºF. Left uncharred bits on wood below when moved.
1:55 PM	Tongue burnt away.

We added Tongues 2 and 3 (45ºF) at 1:45 PM, and noted that they were “half charred” by 1:50 PM. At 1:52 PM, we recorded their temperature at 203ºF, and pulled them off the fire to eat. People described the flavor of the tongues as “juicy,” and “gamey.” I then asked whoever was eating the tongue to rate the flavor out of ten, the results of which are shown below:

Participant Identifier:	Rating of Tongue Without Seasoning:	Rating of Tongue With Hot Sauce:
A	7	8
B	8	10
C	8	N/A
D	5.8	N/A
E	7	7.5
F	7	N/A

As is clear from this chart, participants were surprised by how much they enjoyed the flavor of the tongues, but preferred them with some seasoning.

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Splanchna:

Once we were done with the tongues, we moved on to roasting the splanchna, consisting of a heart, liver, and kidney. We first recorded their weights and temperature, shown below:

Heart	240 g	46.8ºF
Liver	200 g	52.4ºF
Kidney	260 g	48.0ºF

We then started roasting them over the fire with a stick at 2:02 PM. Unfortunately, due to the combined weight of the splanchna, this stick broke, so we had to replace it with another one. The heart started blackening quickly, and the liver was visibly browned by 2:04 PM. The kidney, however, had not changed much in appearance by 2:05 PM. We decided to rotate the splanchna at 2:10 PM to get a more even cook. Throughout the process, we noticed that the kidney was extremely juicy, and kept dripping. The heart and liver were juicy at the beginning, but had dried up a bit by the end. We also recorded the temperatures of the splanchna when we put it on the fire, 6 minutes in, 13 minutes in, and 19 minutes, as shown on this graph:

We pulled the heart off of the fire to eat 13 minutes in, which is why it has no data point for 19 minutes. We took the liver and kidneys off of the fire to eat after the 19 minute mark. I asked my group mates to give their opinions on the taste of each of these, which I have recorded below:

Heart	“Very gamey” “Weirdly smooth” “5/10” “Better than the tongue” “Tastes great”
Liver	“Looks like ground beef” “I hate the taste” “Weirdly sweet aftertaste”
Kidney	“Liquidy” Group mates refused to eat kidney

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Dousing:

Once we had completed our experiments with the fire, we extinguished it with wine at 2:25 PM. This created sizzling and a large amount of white smoke, and smelled like grapes and vinegar. At this point, I asked my groupmates to give me their thoughts on their experience so far. They said it was good, but tiring, because this experiment had a lot of moving parts.

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Part 2 (Ash Altar Making):

With the burning done, we moved on to part 2 of the lab: ash altar making! We ended up creating five different altars, labeled in the following graphic in the order that we made them:

For altars 2-5, we created mixtures that were too liquidy, and ended up having to add more bone ash. We did, however, use the liquidy initial mixture as plaster, as shown in the photo below:

Altar 1:

Ingredients:

• 8 parts bone ash (1 cup)
• 4 parts indoor fireplace ash (½ cup)
• 4 parts water (½ cup)
• 1 part wine (⅛ cup)

Observations:

• Bone ash was very soft
• Mixture had the texture of paper pulp
• Altar felt like it had skin
• Altar started cracking 10 minutes after its creation

Altar 2:

Ingredients:

• 8 parts fireplace ash (2 cups)
• 7 parts bone ash (1¾ cups)
• 4 parts water (1 cup)
• 1 part wine (¼ cup)

Observations:

• We initially started with only 1 cup of bone ash, but ended up having to add ¾ cup bone ash, as the original mixture was too liquidy.
• Final product was not as solid as #1
• Flattened out like a pancake when left to itself

Altar 3:

Ingredients:

• 12 parts bone ash (1½ cup)
• 4 parts outside fireplace ash (½ cup)
• 4 parts water (½ cup)
• 1 part wine (⅛ cup)

Observations:

• Much more liquidy than Altar 1, which could be due to the fact that we added the water all at once, instead of in stages.
• Initially added only one cup of bone ash, but we ended up adding another half cup of bone ash to make the mixture more solid.
• Similar final texture to Altar 1

Altar 4:

Ingredients:

• 10 parts bone ash (1¼ cup)
• 4 parts ash from fire pit (½ cup)
• 6 parts water (¾ cup)
• 1 part wine (⅛ cup)

Observations:

• Liquidy initially, but with a much thicker cement-like texture than Altar 2 or 3
• Started with only one cup bone ash, but ended up having to add another quarter cup to make mixture solid
• Altar started cracking while being mixed

Altar 5:

Ingredients:

• 1 part wine (1 cup)
• 2 parts bone ash (2 cups) – added in stages

Observations:

• Very soft

For Altar 5, our goal was to see what ratio of wine to bone ash, using only those two ingredients, was needed for a solid altar. We came to the conclusion that the actual ash altar at Olympia most likely solidified partially from the continuous burning happening on it, so we decided to place part of this final altar in the fire pit. Although the fire pit was unfortunately doused only a few minutes later, we were able to observe the chunk of our altar beginning to turn a much deeper pink around the edges.