The clay shards and pottery in TP What & Why?

[Essay]

I tend to think that TP was created with Humanure because of the lack of nutrients in the tropics.

...and that same logic can be used to advocate for de-desertification in areas with marginal soils!

Great links. Thanks again:

===

 

I assume Ag means silver in this case:

 

Broad-spectrum in vitro antibacterial activities of clay minerals against antibiotic-susceptible and antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens -- Haydel et al. 61 (2): 353 -- Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy

Results: One specific mineral, CsAg02, demonstrated bactericidal activity against pathogenic Escherichia coli, ... methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) ...and Mycobacterium smegmatis....

 

MRSA!

Hey! That's good news to spread around...

 

...and those other drug-resistant and common human strains too!

...and for folks with foreskins that last one would be relevant....

 

and speaking of Mycobacteria

The mycobacteria are unusual among bacteria in that they have an enormously thick, hydrophobic cell wall that prevents desiccation. Many mycobacteria are harmless and useful because they degrade organic matter in soil. Some are used industrially to help convert cheap plant sterols (sitosterol) into useful steroid hormones. ....

...hmmm, back to soil health: :doh:

 

googled: nano-silver

 

Synergistic antibacterial effects of beta-lactam antibiotic combined with silver nanoparticles

Informa Pharmaceutical Science - Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents - 15(2):125 - Summary

 

googled: nano-silver toxicity

 

Size Dependent and Reactive Oxygen Species Related Nanosilver Toxicity to Nitrifying Bacteria - Environmental Science & Technology (ACS Publications)

"The intrinsic slow growth of nitrifying bacteria and their high sensitivity to environmental perturbations often result in cell growth inhibition by toxicants. Nanoparticles are of great concern to the environment because of their small size and high catalytic properties."

===

 

Perhaps in "clay chamber pots" a high-silver clay would prevent biofilms from developing, but I'd think in the soil that it wouldn't inhibit too much activity, except on a very small scale or for certain (possibly many, but not all) microbes.

 

It's probably much wiser to have your silver bound up in shards, rather than having it dispersed in a dusting of nanoparticles, eh?

~ :hihi:

[dikken]

Interesting thoughts about the possible effects of the pottery adjuncts in the soil on diseases, especially the effect on the ammonia in urine. The effect of excess humanure in tropical climates usually results in nasty diseases such as cholera and diphtheria which can, and has, killed many people.

 

I wonder if the combined use of charcoal, pottery, and whatever other stuff help sterilize,or offset, the use of human excrement.

 

dikken

[Essay]

Interesting thoughts about the possible effects of the pottery adjuncts in the soil on diseases, especially the effect on the ammonia in urine. The effect of excess humanure in tropical climates usually results in nasty diseases such as cholera and diphtheria which can, and has, killed many people.

 

I wonder if the combined use of charcoal, pottery, and whatever other stuff help sterilize,or offset, the use of human excrement.

 

dikken

Yes, an important consideration!

 

Amazon.com: The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters: Rose George: Books http://www.amazon.com/Big-Necessity-Unmentionable-World-Matters/dp/0805082719

The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters

 

...talks about how 40% of the world's population has no bucket ...or better,

and how disease from unmanaged human waste kills more than any other cause,

and how modern sanitation "has added 20 years to the average human life."

& "90 percent of the globe’s sewage ends up untreated in oceans, rivers and lakes."

quotes from: Scientific American Reviews: Scroll down past "...the Great Pyramid:" review

===

 

Hey! Dikken: Welcome to the HyperOgraphy! Enjoy.... :doh:

 

~ :hihi:

[Michaelangelica]

One of he links I found on this site led me to some research that is being done in India. The web site said that they were charging the Charcoal with nitrogen using pee as a source. Got me to thinking and wondering if the creators of TP also used urine as a priming source for their charcoal. Where would you conduct this operation but in a pottery container if you were a Amazon Indian. I filled about a 1/3 of a quart jar with charcoal and then urinated in the jar checking each time looking for the order of ammonia. I've filled it twice and strained out the liquid residue left over so far the ammonia smell has been absorbed by the charcoal. When does this stuff finally load up. I'm starting the experiment all over with a measured amount of charcoal in a terra cotta pot with a cork plugging the hole. I'll measure the urine input until I smell the ammonia order. Basically I'm thinking they used many of those pots as chamber pots in their homes in the fields and other places where they conducted frequent activities. I wonder how many times a pot could be used until it would absorb enough urine till it could no longer be used for this function? I hope to get some answers with my experiment. I'll keep you posted but I think it will take some time.

 

Interesting post. Let us all know what happens. It may take awhile?

 

I am one of the few who believes the clay is important in TP soils

[Michaelangelica]

Yes, an important consideration!

 

Amazon.com: The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters: Rose George: Books

The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters

 

...talks about how 40% of the world's population has no bucket ...or better,

and how disease from unmanaged human waste kills more than any other cause,

and how modern sanitation "has added 20 years to the average human life."

& "90 percent of the globe’s sewage ends up untreated in oceans, rivers and lakes."

quotes from: Scientific American Reviews: Scroll down past "...the Great Pyramid:" review

===

 

Hey! Dikken: Welcome to the HyperOgraphy! Enjoy....

 

~

A bloody awful situation

 

I read recently that the reason China has such a large population now is Tea.

2,000 years ago Chinese drank boiled water for their tea; while Europeans were popping off with all sorts of water-borne diseases.

[J Bean]

Hello, I've been lurking here for a while.

 

On the container gardening forum at Gardenweb, there are many threads about soilless container mixes using a calcined clay product called "Turface". It has a high CEC ratio and a size and irregular shape that promotes both good drainage and good moisture retention to make an ideal container medium. Roots like to grow in the interface between air and water, so a highly porous medium supports root growth better than a compacted medium. I've never been much of a container gardener, but I've been impressed with what I've tried so far. It seems to me that Turface or one of several similar products would be an interesting addition to some of the charcoal and terra preta experiments.

 

I live in southern California so I buy a product called "Dry Stall Horse Bedding" which is quite similar although locally produced. I'm going to try adding it to my raised vegetable beds this spring.

 

Anyway, I just thought that I would throw that out there for consideration. I'm not able to post a link, but look for the "Water Movement and Retention" threads to start.

[Essay]

I buy a product called "Dry Stall Horse Bedding" which is quite similar although locally produced. I'm going to try adding it to my raised vegetable beds this spring.

...similar to what--the Turface?

===

 

Hi, J Bean.... Welcome & ...looking forward to the water percolation links. :D

 

The carbon sequestring properties of TP are what interest me about this side of soil science, but these soil-free high-tech materials may find a use too.

 

~ :)

[Essay]

Re:

http://hypography.com/forums/terra-preta/18346-more-on-pot-sherds.html

...and welcome Gaudencio....

However it was built, one thing was clear in my head after seeing that picture and the documentary last night: the terracotta was laid flat, in layers, intentionally. So why? Well, it's plausible it does nothing, despite being laid on purpose. Equally, the other theory I read about is possible, that it harbours certain micro organisms. However, I think it more likely that the intent and the effect was mechanical. This is where it gets a bit hypothetical, since I'm no soil scientist, but the obvious problem with soils in areas of extreme weather (including my own soil) is that when it rains all the nutrients get flushed straight out. As is well established, the charcoal counteracts this on a chemical and biological level. I think that the pot sherds may counteract it on a mechanical level.

I'm with you on the mulch effect. It seems obvious that the shards protects the soil, as you say, mechanically.

===

 

But I don't know about how the layers are constructed. I would think slowly over the years and not all at once.

I've always pictured a surface almost completely covered, like paving, with a mosaic of shards. It'd also make it possible to encourage the drainage to run nearer to the base of plants, before soaking in.

 

Even if they used no-till agriculture, I find it hard to believe that over the course of a growing season - after cropping and 6 months worth of general movement - it could remain flat.

But they'd be walking around on these all thru the growing season, pushing them flat into the soil... and any sharp points or curves sticking up would be broken off--to create a walkable surface.

 

Moreover, it seems obvious that the top layer in that photo HAS been tilled, due to the random angles of the pieces.

Maybe this recent activity was not in keeping with the traditional way of tending those "mounds." These days don't the locals harvest the TP, rather than grow stuff on it?

===

 

But I think the prevention of leaching is the most important function of the shards in that harsh driving-rain environment.

 

hmmm...

Imagining an old, post-harvest, "paved" mound... I'm wondering if all the season's waste biomass (combined with village wastes) might be burned in place, over the old paving.

 

The old "paving" might protect the soil underneath from sterilization.

 

The burning pile above would probably just be smoldering ...to produce the char.

Could even have been new shards (and dirt) covering the burning biomass to help maintain a smoldering level.

Could possibly have put clay sheets over the burning biomass, to encourage a smolder (turning the clay into large pottery "lids"). These could later be broken into mulch as the charred mass was crushed down, covering the old layer of shards.

 

Wet clay sheets... (hmmm)... could be not much more than a clay paste, painted thickly on large leaves--and then layered on top of a burning pile of bio-detritus and human wastes... to encourage smoldering and charring.

 

~ :)

[gaudencio]

Originally Posted by gaudencio

>>Moreover, it seems obvious that the top layer in that photo HAS been tilled, due to the random angles of the pieces.

>Maybe this recent activity was not in keeping with the traditional way of tending those "mounds." These days don't the locals harvest the TP, rather than grow stuff on it?

Agreed - I actually deleted a sentence where I wrote exactly that because it confused the message I was trying to get across, and I was worried it was sounding a bit incoherent anyway

===

 

>But I think the prevention of leaching is the most important function of the shards in that harsh driving-rain environment.

Is there any kind of consensus on this? Have any experiments been done?

 

As for the theory about using the sherds/shards as a mulch, it's convincing, but there are a few issues. Firstly, for mulch to be effective it would have to be a complete covering - as you said, a kind of pot-sherd pavement. This is not what's shown in the photo; there is not a succession of dense, evenly spaced layers. There is only one dense "base" layer (with a few intriguing little shards underneath it which we'll ignore for now). Of course, it's possible they also used organic material with the sherds, but it seems unlikely to me.

Secondly, if I understand correctly, the charcoal and organic content are only a fairly small (if prominent) part of the soil. The rest is actual soil - identical to other soil in the area. If they were simply piling organic material, charcoal and potshards in successive layers, the soil would not contain soil - if you catch my meaning. Of course, over time the beasties would certainly mix it all up, but I find it hard to imagine they would do so to such an extent. What I'm trying to say is that they must have been piling soil on top as the layers progressed - whether it was all done in one go, or over a period of years. If we agree on this, then where would they have got the soil from if the ground were covered in sherds? It's not feasible that they farmed it from the surrounding area for all sorts of reasons.

Finally, as an (admittedly poor) amateur gardener, I find the prospect of direct sowing of seed into the proposed top layer rather unlikely. For the scenario which you suggest to be true, they would be sowing seed into a mix of sterile charcoal and bits of old pot, which I don't think would be conducive to good growth, though I may be mistaken on that since I've never tried.

 

I do still tend toward the idea that they built the soil as it is pretty much from scratch. Another good reason for this that's just occurred is that the original soil is so poor that during the early years they would not have been able to support the kind of size of population we suspect they did. I'm inclined to think terra preta only becomes that fertile when it reaches such a large depth. Therefore, we're left with the idea of people going out from one village and "colonising" another area by turning barren soil into terra preta. They could have gone out, a few men, subsisting on native vegetation and wild animals, and spent a year or two preparing the earth in the way I've suggested: digging down, laying the charcoal and the pot sherds loosely in layers. Though I admit this is my imagination running away with itself, and the idea of a natural evolution of the land over time is certainly more in keeping with "peasant" methods. If nothing else, it seems unlikely they would have transported the enormous amounts of pot sherds required rather than making them on site - and if they were made on site solely to dig in the earth, they wouldn't have been decorated. By the way, I think the fact that they are decorated precludes your idea of a "clay paste" spread over the burning organic matter.

 

OK....time for a breather. Sorry if that seems a little incomprehensible. This terra preta mystery has the potential to set off all sorts of ideas. And yes, any moderator who chooses to can incorporate the thread I started into this one if they want.

 

Gaudencio

[gaudencio]

another thought that's just occurred while lying in bed - in your proposed system of build up over many years, it would have been impossible to cultivate trees because, among other problems, they would likely get root rot due to all the extra material piled up around the base (unless they were initially planted on enormous mounds, which seems unlikely).

[Essay]

another thought that's just occurred while lying in bed - in your proposed system of build up over many years, it would have been impossible to cultivate trees because, among other problems, they would likely get root rot due to all the extra material piled up around the base (unless they were initially planted on enormous mounds, which seems unlikely).

 

Yep, all very good points, counter-points, and qualifications....

 

I had thought about the problem of "sinking" trees too, ...and the decorations on the pots (reminding me of the "chamber pot" theory above -post #14-).

 

I recall in 1491 they mention what a large volume of pottery (and associated labor and resources) they found in the TP.

But I've never heard about if there were corners, necks, lips, handles, etc., or if it's all just large flat (or slightly concave) pieces.

 

It is fun to travel back in time and try to see what these folks were doing... and we don't even know if it was designed or accidental--a midden/trash heap, or a compost pile/worm farm as a source for fertilizer, or a stable source of arable land.

[Jkirk3279]

:doh:

 

I have my own theory about the invention of Terra Preta.

 

Once upon a time there was a young genius who was tired of eating raw fish, and was tired of being cold and wet...

 

 

It rains a lot in the Amazon during the rainy season.

 

Hoard wood in your hut if you like: you'll run out long before the rain passes.

 

With every bit of burnable wood soaked, folks eventually ended up eating their fish and veggies raw, until the rains ended and the fuel supply dried out.

 

Now, pottery kilns had been invented long before. The first kilns were probably hollow logs.

 

Set the pottery in the hollow, set the log on fire and you get a fairly even heat. When the log is burnt away, you have your fired pottery.

 

Someone no doubt invented a shortcut, MAKING a hollow "log".

 

They built a large basket from green reeds, and set it over a firepit. They put the pottery inside, coated the basket with clay and kept the fire going until the basket self-destructed.

 

The bits left over from the basket would be charcoal by then...

 

And it's not a leap to assume that people would know that charcoal makes a good fire, if you only have enough of it.

 

 

So our young genius already knew how to make a kiln, and knew that charcoal would be valuable.

 

So he invented a kiln to do just one thing: to make charcoal.

 

He built a stack of wood, and covered it with green reeds. He slathered the reeds with clay, leaving a hole at the top and a hole at the side.

 

He lit the stack on fire through the side hole and watched. The fire climbed up through the stack, hardening the clay as it baked the water out of it.

 

Finally the color of the smoke changed from yellow to blue. He blocked up the holes and waited.

 

Eventually the kiln cooled. He broke it open with a stone and voila´! It was full of charcoal.

 

He then realized one thing: he was going to be rich.

 

He built more kilns, refining the technique as he learned. Finally, the rainy season returned.

 

He broke open a kiln and started selling charcoal, trading for fish and fruit.

 

His idea was a smashing success !

 

People came from all around, to buy charcoal so they could have a cooked meal.

 

Franchises popped up everywhere, of course.

 

Not all of the charcoal was salable, though.

 

When large pieces were broken up for sale, some little chunks and charcoal dust fell to the ground, mixing with the broken pottery shards everywhere.

 

Traffic ground this detritus into the soil. Our genius left it there: it's not as if anyone would pay for little bits and powdered charcoal anyway.

 

Eventually, though, our entrepreneur had a problem. He'd used up all the available wood in the area.

 

Los Indios didn't have metal tools to chop down trees, saws to cut them up, nor the horsepower to drag the trees very far.

 

It was easier to move his operation to a new source of wood and transport the lightweight charcoal to his customers.

 

His fire-pit was abandoned. It became used as a rubbish tip and soon was overflowing with garbage, fish bones, manure, etc.

 

The garbage became compost, and turned into organic mulch.

 

Earthworms came along, and slurped up the mulch to get at the bacteria living in it. They actually ATE the charcoal powder in doing do and ... spread it around as they moved on.

 

Eventually someone planted a garden there. It was an old trick, and always got a couple of years of good harvests... until the rains washed the nutrients away.

 

 

So it was nothing new. Until the plants in the new patch took off like skyrockets ! Year after year, the harvests were amazing. And the harvests didn't fail, as they always had.

 

It must have been like magic to Los Indios.

 

The thin clay in the Amazon is poor soil, even weeds don't grow well.

 

But the invention of Terra Preta changed all that.

 

The new soil had different cation exchange rates, moisture retention abilities, and rather than vital nutrients being washed away by the rains, the biochar retained them.

 

The soil bacteria had colonized the voids in the charcoal, just as the ancestor to our DNA molecule may have colonized the layers between mica in watery environments in the primordial oceans.

 

That soil bacteria helped maintain the fertility, by breaking down minerals trapped in the soil into forms plants can use. Silica, calcium, and iron.

 

 

Other people tried to copy the success of that first patch. Maybe some succeeded; maybe not, if their charcoal wasn't "inoculated".

 

Until someone snuck into the first Terra Preta patch and stole some of the "magic" dirt.

 

They mixed this into their own fire-pit/garbage tip/garden patch soil and voila´!

 

It worked ! Hurray !

 

***************

 

So that's how it happened. Once people figured out how to repeat the process they went commercial with it.

 

Terra Mulatta is that commercial version: wood and weeds charred in the fields JUST before the rainy season, to prevent the fires from spreading, and to extinguish the biochar before it burned to ash.

 

But do the pottery shards in Terra Preta actually DO anything?

 

Probably not. The soil base is already clay: the pottery shards are just fired clay stained by woodsmoke.

 

Woodsmoke has been shown to stimulate some seed germination, but it would have washed away after a few years.

 

Unless someone does a controlled experiment and proves that soil fungi colonize the pottery shards, I'm guessing they're not necessary to Terra Preta Nova.

[erich]

Dear List,

This dating technique sounds perfect to draw an exact time line of TP development.

At an accuracy of years we could see the speed at which the system built on itself once initiated.

 

Archaeological dating by re-firing ancient pots - physicsworld.com

 

 

Erich

[Michaelangelica]

What is the relationship between pottery and CO2?

 

Some radom quotes from the web; interesting?

Toshiba Group Announces Breakthrough in CO2 Absorbing Ceramics -

 

CO2 Absorbing Ceramics

Tokyo, June 24, 2003 - (JCN Newswire) - Toshiba Corporation (TSE: 6502) and Toshiba Ceramics Co., Ltd. (TSE: 5213), a leading producer of ceramic materials, today announced a major step forward in the environmental protection, a lithium-silicate based ceramic material with exceptional carbon dioxide (CO2) absorption characteristics.

The new material can absorb 400 times its own volume of CO2 at an unmatched rate of absorption, and can do so at room temperature.

Toshiba Group Announces Breakthrough in CO2 Absorbing Ceramics

 

Fabrication of Microcellular Ceramics Using Gaseous Carbon Dioxide

Young-Wook Kim, et al

 

Supported by the Center for Advanced Materials Processing (21C Frontier R&D Program of Korean Ministry of Science and Technology) under Grant No. PM003-00-01 and the Korea Research Foundation under Grant No. KRF-2002-013-E00094.

*Member, American Ceramic Society.

KEYWORDS

fabrication • polycarbosilane • pyrolysis

ABSTRACT

A microcellular ceramic with cell densities >109 cells/cm3 and cells <10 μm was made with a preceramic mixture of polycarbosilane and polysiloxane.

The preceramic compact was saturated with gaseous CO2, a large number of cells were nucleated and grown by using a thermodynamic instability induced by a rapid pressure drop, and the microcellular preceramic was transformed into a microcellular ceramic by pyrolysis.

Wiley InterScience :: Session Cookies

 

A site all about pottery & clay

Pottery and Ceramics Magic

 

 

This gas (CO2) is utilized by many types of industry including breweries, mining ore, and manufacturing of carbonated drinks, drugs, disinfectants, pottery, and baking powder (NIOSH 1976).

http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/wy/information/NEPA/cfodocs/howell.Par.2800.File.dat/25apxC.pdf

How is CO2 used in pottery? Is it in the pottery/clay?

 

Is this relvant or from too far left-field? Some bacteria like clay??. A chemist to translate please?

Clay - prion protein interactions

L. CHARLET, C. HUREAU AND Y. CHAPRON

Environmental Geochemistry Group, LGIT-OSUG, University

of Grenoble, BP 53, F-38041 Grenoble, Cedex 9, France

 

The prion protein (PrP) is the key protein implicated in the development of scrapie, a sheep- and goat-specific

transmissible spongiform encephalopathy. The N-terminal tail of the protein includes five copper chelating sites as well as numerous positively charged amino acids, which all may induce a binding of the protein to clay minerals, as shown,

e.g., by molecular dynamics (MD) calculations and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy.

 

The C-terminal part of the protein has a hydrophobic core that may also interact with low-charge clay surfaces as well as organic matter.

 

The speciation of Cu-PrP chelates changes upon

adsorption on clay minerals. Cu coordination at a given pH in the adsorbed state is similar to Cu coordination in a solution of lower pH.

This, together with high available Mn2+ concentrations, favors the exchange of Mn2+ for Cu2+, which is shown by MD to occur in three steps, and may lead to the PrPc to the pathogenic PrPSc transformation.

[mavrickjohn]

Interesting stuff there. Does any one have a chemical breakdown of the clay shards found in Terra Preta? Or does any one have some actual shards that could be analyzed by a ceramic chemist?

The other part of your post is very interesting about Prions. I did a search on Prions and found this. Prion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Jump to: navigation, search

For the bird, see Prion (bird). For the theoretical subatomic particle, see Preon.

Prion Diseases (TSEs)

Classification and external resources

ICD-10

A81

ICD-9

046

A prion (pronounced /ˈpriː.ɒn/*( listen)[1]) is an infectious agent that is composed of protein. To date, all such agents that have been discovered propagate by transmitting a mis-folded protein state; the protein itself does not self-replicate and the process is dependent on the presence of the polypeptide in the host organism.[2] The mis-folded form of the prion protein has been implicated in a number of diseases in a variety of mammals, including bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, also known as "mad cow disease") in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans. All known prion diseases affect the structure of the brain or other neural tissue, and all are currently untreatable and are always fatal.[3] In general usage, prion refers to the theoretical unit of infection. In scientific notation, PrPC refers to the endogenous form of prion protein (PrP), which is found in a multitude of tissues, while PrPSC refers to the misfolded form of PrP, that is responsible for the formation of amyloid plaques that lead to neurodegeneration.

Prions are hypothesized to infect and propagate by refolding abnormally into a structure which is able to convert normal molecules of the protein into the abnormally structured form. All known prions induce the formation of an amyloid fold, in which the protein polymerises into an aggregate consisting of tightly packed beta sheets. This altered structure is extremely stable and accumulates in infected tissue, causing tissue damage and cell death.[4] This stability means that prions are resistant to denaturation by chemical and physical agents, making disposal and containment of these particles difficult.

Proteins showing prion-type behavior are also found in some fungi and this has been important in helping to understand mammalian prions. However, fungal prions do not appear to cause disease in their hosts and may even confer an evolutionary advantage through a form of protein-based inheritance.[5]

The word prion is a compound word derived from the initial letters of the words proteinaceous and infectious, with -on added by analogy to the word virion.[6]

 

 

What I find interesting is the proteins showing prion-type behavior found in some fungi. Perhaps the clay shards helped the fungi that are unique to Terra preta exist in the charcoal environment and might explain why the fungi present are so wide spread through out the range of know TP sites. It might also explain why these fungi are unique to TP.

[Michaelangelica]

Interesting stuff there. Does any one have a chemical breakdown of the clay shards found in Terra Preta? Or does any one have some actual shards that could be analyzed by a ceramic chemist?

. . .

Proteins showing prion-type behavior are also found in some fungi and this has been important in helping to understand mammalian prions. However, fungal prions do not appear to cause disease in their hosts and may even confer an evolutionary advantage through a form of protein-based inheritance.[5]

. . .

 

 

What I find interesting is the proteins showing prion-type behavior found in some fungi. Perhaps the clay shards helped the fungi that are unique to Terra preta exist in the charcoal environment and might explain why the fungi present are so wide spread through out the range of know TP sites. It might also explain why these fungi are unique to TP.

I met a guy from Cornell Uni who was looking at the possibility of a unique set of micro/flora/fauna from Brazillian Terra preta soils. Apparently reserach on this is very difficult as so many 'wee beasties' are interdependent, refuse to grow on petrie dishes in labs, and in other ways refuse to co-operate. This combined with the Brazillian's fear that the Yanks will discover something in their soils and patent it -and so are reluctant to see TP soils leave the country-- makes this a hard area of research. However i think it is the one that will give most joy in the end. Already there has been a marked shift of emphasis in agriculture to looking at soil microflora. For example the discovery of glomalin is recent.

You might like to browse though the Cornell Uni site to see if anything new has ben done/ posted/ written in this area.

 

I have not seen any chemical analysis of the TP pottery. (If i have i have forgotten it)!

 

There is likely to be something going on here isn't there?

It seems tantalisingly out of reach at the moment

[SaxonViolence]

Looking at this from the hypothetical viewpoint of someone who would like to turn two or three acres on a subsistence farm into Terra Preta.....

 

I've heard the figure 7 Tons of Charcoal per acre.

 

That would be quite an expense I believe--{Though I haven't got around to looking up the price.....)

 

But if Coal will do almost as well--A ton of Coal ought to be reasonably affordable. If I remember right, people used to order a ton or two of Coal for the old Coal Furnaces, quite regularly.

 

That Coal needs to be finely ground.

 

Has no one been to a Coal-Fired Power Plant and seen the huge Tumbleyezers? (Can't seem to make that word look right. Say "Tumble" then tack "Izer"--long "I" onto it.) They use them to turn Coal into Coal Dust.

 

Something like a home made Concrete Mixer with some good hard Stones in it (Or if you have access to a Power Plant, liberate some of those fist sized Ball Bearings that they use).....

 

And you should be all set to powder your Coal.

 

But on to the main point of this post--Unless there is a Pottery near by, to turn you on to all the Scrap Pottery that you can carry in the bed of a Pick-Up Truck.....

 

(Don't they regrind a lot of that stuff to use later, as Grog? When I worked at Peerless Potless, they made Crappers and Sinks, and they hauled the scrap to the Dump.)

 

But anyway, aren't Red Clay Bricks pretty much the same as Terra Cotta Pottery?

 

Yes.....

 

And used bricks can be had fairly cheaply. If you'll settle for broken bricks, you might be able to haul them away from a demolition site just for the asking.....

 

And the Tumbleizer can take your Bricks and turn them to shard-sized pieces.....

 

Saxon Violence