Opportunistic fire in the Early Palaeolithic: evidence of small mammal incidental burning at Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Rio Quípar ( Murcia, Spain).

Summary

Cueva Negra, an upland rock-shelter in southeastern Spain, has revealed a delineated ash feature containing burnt macrofauna and chert within Early Pleistocene deposits (>0.78 Ma). This paper details a novel methodology utilizing heat-altered micromammal remains to identify opportunistic fire-use by the inhabitants of this site. We hypothesize that micromammal bones deposited in the by non-human predators were unintentionally modified by anthropogenic fire, and may be used as proxy evidence of human behaviour in the past.

Taphonomic analysis of 2290 rodent remains indentified discolouration indicating exposure to temperatures exceeding those common in natural fires (>600oC). SEM – EDS confirms this modification is not due to post-depositional mineral staining. Charred/calcined micromammal remains constitute 32% of specimens within the ash feature, or 97% of all heavily burnt bone examined. This is a statistically significant pattern in the distribution of burnt bone (x2 – 169.7, p < 0.001). Digestive corrosion and skeletal representation suggest the assemblage was deposited by non-human predators. As such, the thermal alteration of these remains represents unintentional anthropogenic modification. This represents another type of taphonomic bias rarely considered in small mammal studies, as well as a novel line of evidence in identifying hominin pyrotechnological capabilities at early Pleistocene sites.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

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