Pot Boiler stone

Many of the pits on settlement sites have been used for cooking, with the meat placed on a layer of stones and covered with moss or leaves. Birch bark containers may have been set into pits and used as boiling troughs. Stones heated in fires could be thrown into these troughs to boil water for cooking, or for the rehydration of food. The sudden cooling often made these stones crack.   Fire and Food: cooking in the Mesolithic Mesolithic peoples have left no trace of their cooking techniques, but food did not need to be eaten raw. Fire could be made in two ways, either by striking together lumps of iron pyrites and flint to produce sparks, or by setting an upright stick into a hole in a horizontal piece of timber and spinning it rapidly, perhaps with a bow drill. Smouldering embers were transferred to dry grassess, kindling, and finally a fire. It is likely that once alight, fires were carefully transferred from hearth to hearth rather than allowed to go out.