The Possibility of the First Cultural Artefact : A Dartmoor Imagining, a story to connect with “Reclaim” at Stonelane Sculpture Show, Chagford, Summer 2022

Kate Lyons-Miller, with thanks to Ursula K Le Guin

Sitting by the fire, not too far from the stream, peaceful, days end. Children had been playing with handfuls of mud, making little creatures, and tiny representations of boulder built houses, roofed with an exquisite thatch of fern and grasses. Sleepy now, huddled up, grubby and content.

She wanted to sleep too, but the fire was hot, too hot to leave unwatched. She took handfuls of the children’s mud and dropped it onto the glowing embers, hiss and spit.

Now all would be safe.

Dawn. A soft glow peeping through the smoke hole. The round hut still sleepy and quiet. The fire a warm presence still, encased in a hot cloak of mud.

The mud was different now, hardened and cracked, but in the same shape it had made when it dropped on the round river stones. A child’s little creature was there too, still intact and somehow stronger.

The mud shape was pleasing, so she kept it carefully, with the little creature, placing it in a crevice in the wall.

Some time later, the same sequence, and perhaps again and again.

The family moved on, up to the high pastures where the summer gathering was easy. Here on the south facing hills the mud the children found was white and slippery; they made more little animals.

It was interesting to see, that if they left them in the fire pit at night, they became hard, and could be played with, and passed around without breaking.

One evening, watching them playing around the fire, she took some of the mud and fashioned a round shape, cradled in her palm.

It felt comfortable there, and something more, it had an inner void, but it need not be empty, it could be a place to put things perhaps, a small container.

What would happen if she put it in the embers too?

Time passes; she makes many of the little dishes, containers, things. They don’t have a name yet.

She makes beads too, and bowls, which are taller and narrower, some have necks, lids. Many break in the fire, she doesn’t know why, but suspects that the fire needs to be very hot, and that the mud from the river bank, although rougher, is stronger. She tries different ways to make her vessels.

People from outside her family begin to hear about her pastime. She knows another woman who is making things with fibres she winds together, tying and weaving, creating a flexible fabric. They exchange; beads for strings.

A tiny baby has died. Cremated as usual, to keep wild animals from the flesh. The distraught mother can’t relinquish the bones, the father can’t find a way to reassure and comfort her.

She gives them a clay container. A safe holding place for the bone and ash. The container is buried in a special place. Somewhere to mark and re-visit.

On a hot sunny day the container she is making is drying fast. She has become good at making these things, the surface is smooth and even, now, as she works at it, she notices that it begins to shine, and become even smoother. By her feet is a small round river stone, smooth and hand sized, she rubs it against the sides of her pot, the mud changes, becomes silky to touch.

When this one comes out of the fire in the morning it’s seen to be a special one, to be kept aside to hold and enjoy.

A child has found a glorious flower, a marsh orchid, petals like butterflies. She knows that without water it will wilt.

She dips the shiny pot in the stream, fills it with water and  puts the flower in.

The next day the flower is still beautiful and upright in the pot, its stem in the water…still there…held…

Kate Lyons-Miller      www.katelyonsmiller.com