Fire-Cracked Rock in the Mesolithic Shell Midden of Cabeço da Amoreira (Muge, Central Portugal)

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.

The Muge Mesolithic shell mounds (Central Portugal) are known worldwide for their monumentality and extremely rich archaeological and paleoanthropological records. Although these sites have been studied for over 150 years, one (particularly numerous) category of artifacts has been repeatedly ignored: fire-cracked rock (FCR). Here we present new data on the presence and characteristics of quartzite FCR at the Cabeço da Amoreira shell midden, from where more than 90,000 of these artifacts were recorded during our recent excavations. Following previous experimental studies, we explore the presence of different patterns of use-alteration and heat fracturing of quartzite cobbles across the stratigraphic sequence. Given the diversity of functions that the site was used for (including burial ground, habitat, and shell midden), from ca. 8000 to ca. 7500 cal BP, information on FCR variability allows for a better understanding of the activities associated with the formation of the different features and midden accumulation episodes.

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35974.0