Reconstructing Anthropogenic Fire Regimes Using Multi-Disciplinary Methods: Preliminary Results from the Neolithic (7,700–4,500 cal. BP) in Eastern Spain

Summary

Charcoal is produced by the incomplete combustion of plant tissues and is used as an indicator of prehistoric fire activity in archaeological and paleoecological contexts. For millennia, humans have played an active role in shaping fire regimes, making the quantification and analysis of paleo-charcoal important for understanding long-term, social-ecological systems. Globally, prehistoric transitions to agriculture often coincide with increases in fire frequency and changes in vegetation community composition and distribution. Although this phenomenon is commonly identified in paleoecological studies, archaeological research has not yet fully incorporated the spatial and temporal dimensions of anthropogenic fire into discussions of the development of agricultural landscapes. This paper addresses these issues by presenting preliminary results from a multi-disciplinary research project combining an in-depth examination of sedimentary charcoal data, archaeological measures of agricultural land-use, a spatial models of prehistoric fire regimes during the Neolithic (7,700–4,500 cal. BP) in eastern Spain.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14927