A Look at the Impact of Natural Grassland Fires on the Archaeological Record along the Eastern Escarpment of the Southern High Plains of Texas

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Fire-Cracked Rock: Research in Cooking and Noncooking Contexts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Fires are an essential aspect of the grassland ecosystem across the Great Plains. Natural fires often can transform surrounding rocks to look like hearths or individual hearthstones used by prehistoric people. Several experiments, however, have demonstrated that grassland fires may not fully discolor the rocks on all sides compared to what occurs in a cultural hearth feature. In the spring of 2008, a grassland fire swept through part of a historic ranch located along the eastern escarpment of the Southern High Plains of Texas. This fire created surface features that mimicked the appearance of hearths. This mimicry occurred in areas where a mesquite or juniper tree also burned, which created a higher sustained temperature and altered the local gravel rock more thoroughly. To further investigate the impacts of natural fires, 15 wildfire features resembling hearths were documented, and one was excavated. This research demonstrates that fires can create features resembling hearths on the surface. Excavation, however, demonstrated that a naturally produced thermal feature will contain larger pieces of charcoal (>5 cm) and will not have the same basin morphology typically found in cultural hearths. This study demonstrates the importance of investigating fire's natural impacts on the archaeological record.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)   •
• Fire-Cracked Rock: Research in Cooking and Noncooking Contexts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36258.0