Heating histories and taphonomy of ancient fireplaces: A multi-proxy case study from the Upper Palaeolithic sequence of Abri Pataud (Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, France)

• Published in: Journal of archaeological science, reports reports, 2020-10, Vol.33, p.102468, Article 102468
• Main Authors: Braadbaart, F., Reidsma, F.H., Roebroeks, W., Chiotti, L., Slon, V., Meyer, M., Théry-Parisot, I., van Hoesel, A., Nierop, K.G.J., Kaal, J., van Os, B., Marquer, L.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Archaeology and Prehistory; Diagenesis; Fire use; Fireplaces; Fuel; Humanities and Social Sciences; Upper Palaeolithic
• ISSN: 2352-409X; 2352-4103
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2020.102468

•Demonstrates value of multi-proxy and multi-scale analyses of ancient fire use.•Emphasises the need to account for diagenesis in fire proxy studies.•Presents the first reported use of dung as fuel in the Palaeolithic.•Questions use of bone as fuel at the Abri Pataud and in general in the Pleistocene.•Reports the first sedimentary mtDNA traces of ancient modern humans. While the use of fire has long been recognised as a crucial innovation in the cultural evolution of humankind, much research has focused on the (debated) chronology of its earliest use and control, and less on the ways in which fire was used in the deep past. At its latest by the Upper Palaeolithic, hunter-gatherers routinely used fire to heat a wide range of materials, adjusting parameters like temperature, exposure time and fuel type to the specific requirements of the treated materials, for instance in food preparation or tool production. Comparing analyses of the chemical and physical properties of modern materials, heated under a range of controlled conditions in a laboratory, to archaeological ones might allow the reconstruction of the “heating history” of excavated materials and hence to infer the function of particular fires in the past - provided changes affecting the properties of the heated archaeological material during burial time are taken into consideration. To investigate the feasibility of such an approach, heated materials sampled from ~40,000 to 25,000 year old fireplaces (hearths) and their sedimentary matrices from the Upper Palaeolithic Abri Pataud rock shelter in South-Western France are used here to study (1) the fuel type(s) used by the site’s occupants, (2) the temperatures reached in fireplaces and (3) the potential changes in human activities related to fireplaces over time, with the influence of post-depositional processes taken into explicit consideration throughout. For this purpose, we used a range of methods to analyse macroscopically visible as well as “invisible” (microscopic and molecular) heat-altered materials. The results suggest that charred organic materials (COM) encountered in the samples predominantly result from the fuel used in fireplaces, including the earliest reported use of dung as fuel. Earlier suggestions about the use of bone as fuel at the Abri Pataud are not supported by this study. The heating temperature of COM increased gradually from 350 °C in the Aurignacian to 450 °C in Gravettian levels. Py-GC–MS studies identified a range of orga