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6.b. Other Rare Finds (Part of "Birth of the Samovar")

Though not about the samovar per se, I included this bit of information for its historical value:

"We found a number of other interesting items in the burial mound, including several three-legged pots. Their legs imitated the shape of human legs -- you can even distinguish knees and ankle bones. This design may have made the legs stronger and less likely to be chipped off or broken.

Among the other items in the mound, we were surprised to find three double pots -- designed to be used like our double boilers of today. At first we thought they were separate pots that had become stuck to each other in the ground. But after cleaning them, we discovered that they had been designed to fit together - one on top of the other. Also they were more delicate than the other cooking vessels, indicating that they probably were used for special ceremonies -- not for everyday use.

A three-handled pot shaped like a wineglass also caught our attention. Its clay had been hand-decorated with a four-toothed stone comb, and its handles had flat clay buttons. In the Caucasus, it was once said that a devil could not get into a pot with handles. People believed that the spirits of the dead would come and sit on the buttons and eat and drink from the pot. Perhaps this belief also circulated during ancient times, which would mean that the handles were put there to protect against evil spirits. In any case, they are still a mystery to us.

The largest pot in the mound, set next to the skeleton, was made of very dense clay and had a 1 cm hole in a bottom corner. We suspect that this vessel was used to store wheat; the hole would have helped ventilate the grain so that moisture didn't collect and spoil it. It's also possible that the pot was used to hold water or wine. In such a case, something must have been stuck in the hole to keep the liquid from leaking out."

Go back to read the beginning of the article
6.a. The Discovery
or continue to the conclusion of the discovery:
6.c. Piecing it All Together


Or go back to revisit:

1. About the Samovar
2. Samovar Through History
3. Types of Samovars
4. Abbreviated history
5. Sbiten or Russian brew
6. Birth of the Samovar