The Laurel Culture from northern Minnesota during the Woodland Period (1000B.C.- 1700A.D.) were known for two major components: their burial mounds and their pottery. Their distinctive pottery is coevered here.
Their fireproof ceramic cooking pots indicated a change from cooking food in baskets, and/or skin bags with heated stones, to cooking over open fires in pots that could withstand the heat. The pots were thin-walled, conduced heat better, and kept the vessel from breaking due to expansion and contraction. They were thought to be hand-thrown and fired to a very hard consistency that made the pot more durable and easy to travel with. The pots were smooth-surfaced and decorated with a dentate stamp to give them individual looks. A dentate stamp is a comb-like instrument used to stamp pottery. Variations in the form of the stamp and how the stamp was used made distinctive decorations that made it easier to tell one pot from another.