FIRE AS AN AGENT IN HUMAN CULTUBE 21 



The iron gridiron of ancient antecedents was a most valued utensil 

 and was employed so long as the open fireplace survived. Examples 

 are now preserved in museums, where they are interesting especially 

 for the skill displayed in their artistic ironwork. The gridiron being 

 an essentially indispensable device in cooking, has taken its place in 

 the elaborated cooking stoves and has its latest use in the electric 

 toaster. 



GRATE 



There is little information available on the antiquity of the grate. 

 The grate as such, with bars, does not appear till quite late, with the 

 stationary fireplace. It is necessary to look for its earlier forms in 

 the heating appliances where draught is utihzed. Here it occurs 

 in the bars to prevent the fire falhng below into the draught chamber 

 of braziers and simple stoves. A suggestion of the grate is seen in 

 the gridirons which appear in the Iron Age. In the necropohs of La 

 Quenique, Court-Saint-Etienne, Belgium, of the Hallstadt period, 

 early Iron Age, were found "a curious group of household utensils, 

 all of iron, composed of the following pieces: A large fork with a 

 douille, dowell, a kind of fire shovel with hollow rod, and part of a 

 grate made of a single piece of bifurcated iron bent many times. A 

 similar grate, but complete, was found in 1909 in the course of the 

 excavations of Alise. It measures 1 foot 5 inches long and about 7 

 inches in width. It was accompanied by a fire shovel similar to that 

 of La Quenique."^* 



CRANE 



The necessity for suspending vessels over the fire is expressed in 

 various inventions, the simplest of which appear to be rod spits 

 and the gridiron grate. The rod spits, holding meat to be roasted, 

 stuck in the ground and inchned over the fire, precede the crane. 

 The iron rod of the Gypsy, which is used as the wooden spit, is a 

 curious survival which serves now for suspending the cooldng pot. 

 The tripod, which is attributed to the Gypsy, appears not to be a 

 characteristic device of this people. Another form suggesting the 

 crane consists of a wooden rod laid in two crotch sticks set in the 

 ground at the sides of the fire. The needs of any period are met in 

 much the same way. When the fire is placed in a built-in structure 

 and the fireplace properly so-called has been developed, the need for 

 the crane is present. It is a horizontal iron bar with a brace more or 

 less elaborated by the blacksmith's skill, swinging on two pins anchored 

 in the wall of the fireplace. This crane, common in the early part of 

 the nineteenth century and probably going back into the Iron Age, has 

 now become an antique. With the crane came an assortment of 

 pothooks and occasionally folk invention produced an extensible 

 ratchet or plug and hole pothook. 



'< Records of the Past, vol. 11, September-October, 1912, pt. 5, p. 123. 



