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Figure 6. Paradise Ranch Knoll earth oven, central feature profile.

indeterminate thickness, corresponding with the sterile C horizon, characterized as parent material
overlying bedrock. It also forms the outlying surface deposits in the saddle landform (which has been
graded for the road), and is comingled with the ashy oven soils where the mechanical impacts have taken
place. It has a yellowish-brown color (Munsell 10YR 5/6), although where it had been thermally altered,
it has oxidized to a mottled red (2.5YR 6/6). Within the oven feature, the surface undulates and is clearly
culturally modified, having been dug into during creation of the oven. It surrounds the central rock feature
(which was inset into it), and distinctly defined the margins of the entire oven feature. Although the basal
stratum is relatively flat outside the extent of the feature, the road surface has been graded, so the
prehistoric landform topography remains unclear.
The FAR matrix is composed of relatively small (approximately 5- to 20-cm-diameter) rocks and
dark, ashy soil. It has a very dark brown color (Munsell 10YR 2/2), although in its comingled context at
surface it grades into a lighter shade (10YR 3/3). The layer, which is the hallmark of a thermal feature,
has been markedly displaced. It represents a combination of the cooking platform of the oven and perhaps
post-cooking debitage -- the delineation of the two has been lost, due to the surface grading.
The central rock feature is also entirely cultural, and appears as an excavated concavity in the
basal stratum, which was then arranged with large rocks (Figure 7). The resulting structure was then used
as the primary firing platform of the oven, and the ashy FAR matrix has settled in between the larger

SCA Proceedings, Volume 22 (2009) Vance, p. 9