Time to revive this thread, starting with an official announcement. No finds of leather are known from the Early Neolithic wells, all containers found in them have been made from thinned bark or bast. Due to the alkaline conditions in the fills, no animal fibre has survived, neither leather, nor horn, hooves, hair or wool.
The birch-bark container from Friesack is indeed a scoop in a water-hole and there are similar finds from northern Russia, referred to in the original publication on the container from Friesack (B. Gramsch, Ein mesolithischer Birkenrindenbehälter von Friesack, Veröffentlichungen des brandenburgischen Museum für Ur- und Frühgeschichte 27, 1993, 7-15).
Much less known and only published as a small photo is a very similar container from the LBK well in Brodau near Leipzig (H. Stäuble & M. Fröhlich, Zwei Ferkel im bandkeramischen Brunnen, Archæo 3, 2006, 16-21, birch-bark container in fig. 8). It comes from the construction pit and not from the fill of the well, and therefore doesn’t belong to the active phase of the well as a source of water.
As I was sitting behind my keyboard over most of the weekend to write a contribution on the finds from the Early Neolithic wells for a catalogue, I had to take a closer look at some photos of the container. It really is of the same general type a what is often called a “trail kettle”, best known from northern New England, as Lassie rightly pointed out above, but with a slight difference. The American containers follow the scheme in the drawing above with simple sides.
In Friesack apparently the narrow sides were folded over before the container itself was folded together. In the original description from Gramsch 1993, 10: „Der durch Erddruck deformierte Birkenrindenbehälter hatte ursprünglich eine Länge von 16 cm und eine Breite von 6 cm; die Höhe läßt sich wegen Beschädigung der Ränder nicht so genau bestimmen, dürfte aber nur wenig über 6 cm betragen haben. Er ist aus einem rechteckigen, ca. 32 X 18 cm messenden Birkenrindenstück gefaltet worden, wobei die größere Ausdehnung - nach den typischen Merkmalen der Birkenrindenoberfläche - auf den Umfang des Stammes entfiel. Zunächst sind an den Schmalseiten jeweils etwa 2 cm umgelegt worden, wohl um die Kanten der Schmalseiten zu verstärken. Zur Auffaltung des Behälters wurden die Schmalseiten bis zur vorgesehenen Höhe des Behälters hochgebogen. Dann wurden die Ecken der Schmalseiten diagonal geknifft und übereinandergelegt, wodurch sich zugleich die Längsseiten des Rindenstücks hochzogen.“
With the vessel from Brodau it’s just the other way around: here the long edges were folded over before the further folding was done. How the resulting triangular flaps were fastened is not completely clear, I have to take a look in our conservation department to try and find any further information on that, as well as the exact dimensions. The way it is depicted here
http://www.nativetech.org/brchbark/barkseam.html seems illogical, as you would be puncturing your container. Also the holes shown in the folding instruction are not consistent with the sketch of where and how the handle is attached. My best guess is that the flaps were just pinned together, and that might be the reason why the sides were doubled.
No need to say that, after finishing the first draft of the article late at night, I tried to reconstruct the container by folding a few different sizes of paper with very acceptable results. Next day I took some sheets of birch bark I still had lying around and gave it a try. For a first prototype it’s not too bad, but clearly needs more practice. And yes, the are perfectly watertight, up to the very rim.
I’ll post a few pictures in the next days.
Greetings,
Rengert
