Dr. Bill Schindler's Eat Like a Human

It’s not about WHAT we eat, but HOW we eat it.

Pot making over an open fire

Primitive Ceramics

Use fire and water to transform clay into useful containers using prehistoric methods Register
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Learn how to use water and fire to transform earth into an amazing array of containers for cooking, storage and even fermentation vessels.

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About Bill

Dr. Bill Schindler is a food archaeologist, primitive technologist and chef. He travels the world with his family documenting traditional food ways and works to draw inspiration from the deep archaeological record, rich and diverse ethnographic record and modern culinary world to create food solutions that are relevant, meaningful and accessible in our modern lives. He shares all these stories in his book, Eat Like a Human, and puts the recipes into practice at his family’s Modern Stone Age Kitchen in Chestertown, Maryland.

The First Vessel that transformed the way we ate food

In certain parts of the world prehistoric ceramic technology dates back to 10,000 years.  This technology allowed our ancestors to cook and process materials directly on the fire – a feat previously unattainable unless bowls were painstakingly carved out of stone.  The development of ceramic technology went hand in hand with the production of foods such as soups, stews, and teas and the production of materials such as glues and mastics and even poisons!

Students in this workshop will learn:

  1. How clays form and how to use this understanding to identify clays that posses the right properties for primitive ceramic production,
  2. How to quarry and process clay,
  3. The different properties of tempers, how to select the right temper, how to process temper,
  4. Different hand building methods including pinch, slab and coil,
  5. Surface treatment applications,
  6. How to fire hand built pots in an outdoor fire, and
  7. How to use your new pots!
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I had the opportunity to see the importance of ceramics for cooking in a survival situation when filming the Great Human Race in Mongolia. Check out the pot I hand built and then used to cook our meals.

You can see it all unfold in the clip below!

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