The purpose of this project is to understand how performance characteristics and paste recipes of different cooking vessels changed as new cooking technologies developed. Excavation at the Turkish site Çatalhöyük has revealed evidence baskets thought to have used for cooking with heated clay balls, followed by a switch to fiber-tempered pots using heated clay balls, and culminating with mineral-tempered pots that were placed directly over the fire. Additional concerns surround the degree to which the naturally occurring clay of the area required alteration for use in pottery and/or specific cooking techniques. Through cooking experiments with replicated vessels we are tracing changes in heat transfer/insulation properties through time.