'Mayans cooked food with clay balls'

The excavation of a kitchen at Escalera al Cielo in Yucatan, revealed 77 complete balls and 912 smaller fragments.

About 1-2 inches in diameter and more than 1,000 years old, the clay balls contained microscopic pieces of maize, beans, squash and other root crops, the 'Discovery News' reported.

The finding supports the hypothesis that the balls "were involved in kitchen activities related to food processing," archaeologists wrote in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

"This is the first time fired clay balls have been studied in the Maya area and, to my knowledge, no one has documented the use of clay balls in modern Maya cooking," Simms said.

"We know much about the nature of ancient Maya kings and queens, but this type of study helps see how the Maya worked in the kitchen, what kinds of tools they used and the ways they might have prepared their cuisine," George Bey from the Millsaps College, said.

To better understand the meaning of the fired clay balls, the researchers used a suite of microscopic techniques and experimental replication. The tests revealed that the balls were produced from local clay in a standardised set of sizes.

"They were fired at a fairly low temperature and were used repeatedly in the kitchen," Bey said.

Most likely, the fired clay balls were either placed directly into pots of food to cook or heat it, or used in pit (pib in Mayan) oven cooking installations.

"This cooking method involves digging a shallow pit, lining it with stones or clay balls, building a fire on top and waiting until it is reduced to embers," Stephanie Simms from Boston University said.

The process continued by placing whole roots, squash fruits or packets of food wrapped in maize on the hot stones. Everything was then covered with earth and leaves to seal in heat. Cooking took from one hour to up to a day or more.