Statistical Evidence For a New Method of Identifying Anthropogenic Fire in the Archaeological Record

Author(s): Ross Campbell; Russell Cutts; David Braun; Jack Harris

Year: 2017

Summary

Clarifying evidence for anthropogenic fire in the archaeological record

has been subject to contention and vagueness. This uncertainty centers

not on evidence for fire, rather what constitutes it being

human-controlled. New research pursuing this question suggests that a

peculiar angular fragment, termed thermal curved-fractures (TCF), are

the byproduct of knapped materials (flakes, cores, bifaces) exposed at

length to high heat. We present here results of experiments expanding

our TCF database designed to test hypotheses A) are TCFs significantly,

statistically, distinct from unfired debitage and B) are there potential

TCFs residing in archaeological collections from sites purported to have

evidence of (early) hominin-controlled fire? These results strongly

indicate support for both hypotheses.

Cite this Record

Statistical Evidence For a New Method of Identifying Anthropogenic Fire in the Archaeological Record. Ross Campbell, Russell Cutts, David Braun, Jack Harris. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Vancouver, British Columbia. 2017 ( tDAR id: 429146)

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

Keywords

General
Anthropogenic Fire • Thermal-Curved Fracture

Geographic Keywords
AFRICA

Spatial Coverage

min long: -18.809; min lat: -38.823 ; max long: 53.262; max lat: 38.823 ;

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16361