Cooking was done over hearths and in earth ovens. The earth oven was an ingenious Poverty Point invention. Nothing more than a hole in the ground to which hot baked clay objects were added, the earth oven was an efficient heat-regulating and energy-conserving facility. Small objects of baked clay were used to heat these baking pits (Figure 10). These little objects were hand molded. Fingers, palms, and sometimes tools were used to fashion dozens of different styles. These objects are a distinguishing hallmark of Poverty Point culture. So common are they that archaeologists refer to them as Poverty Point objects. [Illustration: Figure 10. Baked Clay Heating Objects. a, Cylindrical; b-c, Cross-Grooved; d, Biconical Grooved; e, Biconical Plain; f, Melon-Shaped. Photographs courtesy of Brian Cockerham.] Modern experiments in earth oven cooking have been conducted (Hunter 1975; Gibson 1975). It was discovered through these experiments that the shapes of clay objects used determined the intensity and duration of temperatures inside the pits. This might have been a way of regulating cooking conditions, just like setting the time and power level in modern microwave ovens. Another important aspect of earth oven cooking is that it would have conserved firewood, which must have been a precious commodity around long-occupied villages. Like modern Americans, Poverty Point peoples had a variety of vessels and contraptions for cooking, storage, and simple containment. They used vessels—pots and bowls—made of stone and baked clay. Stone vessels were chiseled out of soft sandstone and steatite (a dense, soft rock). Most stone vessels were plain but a few had decorations. Holes drilled near cracks show that these vessels were often repaired. Steatite was imported by the tons to the Poverty Point site from quarries in northern Georgia and Alabama (Webb 1944, 1977). The Poverty Point pottery vessels mark the initial appearance of this kind of container in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Although not abundant, their presence has been accorded great historical significance by archaeologists. One archaeologist even argued that the art of making pottery was learned from Indians in South or Central America or through intermediaries along the Atlantic and eastern Gulf coasts. This view is very controversial. Other archaeologists prefer to think that ceramics, whatever their origin, were made by later people and that their appearance in Poverty Point garbage deposits was due to subsequent disturbances which churned and mixed earlier and later remains. And then there are other archaeologists who contend that Poverty Point people developed and made pottery largely on their own.