No Fire without Wood? Some Reflections on Late Pleistocene Pyrotechnology in Northern Tundra Environments (East Siberia, Interior Alaska)

Summary

The use of alternate fuels such as grasses, bones or dung has often been interpreted as a typical response of Late Pleistocene (LP) hunter-gatherers to harsh environments, in which woody resources are scarce. In the context of early human dispersal from south-east Siberia into the Americas, the question of prehistoric migration and settlement is closely linked to the one of fuel availability, fire being considered, to the same extent as food, a vital element for survival. However, data regarding the modalities of LP fuel and fire use in Siberia/Beringia are still too scarce to integrate pyrotechnology into the reflection about ancient human behaviour and adaptation to cold climates. New multi-proxy fuel analyses (wood charcoal, phytoliths, burned bone remains) of two LP sites, Kovrizhka IV (Irkutsk region, Russian Federation) and McDonald Creek (Alaska, USA), allowed us to obtain first results on the neighbouring vegetation as well as on fuel management practices in the shrub-tundra zone. Hearth micromorphology is also planned at these sites and will provide valuable complementary data on feature formation and functioning. Our results will be discussed in light of the current hypotheses on prehistoric fuel use as well as ethnographic examples from eastern Siberia.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20032