Toward a Long Prehistory of Fire

@article{Chazan2017TowardAL,
  title={Toward a Long Prehistory of Fire},
  author={Michael Chazan},
  journal={Current Anthropology},
  year={2017},
  volume={58},
  pages={S351 - S359}
}
  • M. Chazan
  • Published 17 May 2017
  • Environmental Science
  • Current Anthropology
This article explores a conception of the origins of fire as a process of shifting human interactions with fire, a process that, in a sense, still continues today. This is a counterpoint to the dominant narrative that envisions a point of “discovery” or “invention” for fire. Following a discussion about what fire is and how it articulates with human society, I propose a potential scenario for the prehistory of fire, consisting of three major stages of development. From this perspective… 
View on U Chicago Press
36 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
4
Background Citations
14
Methods Citations
1
Results Citations
1

36 Citations

Towards an understanding of the costs of fire

Identifying and Describing Pattern and Process in the Evolution of Hominin Use of Fire

Although research relating to Paleolithic fire use has a long history, it has seen a particular resurgence in the last decade. This has been fueled in part by improved analytical techniques, improved…

Fire for a Reason

Qesem Cave is a Middle Pleistocene site in Israel occupied between 420 and 200 ka. Excavations have revealed a wealth of innovative behaviors most likely practiced by a new hominin lineage. These…

Fire in the round: A holistic approach to the Lower Palaeolithic record

Fire and the Genus Homo

Employing fire as an adaptive aid represents one of the most important technological developments in the course of hominin evolution, and, not surprisingly, research into the prehistoric use of fire…

Middle Pleistocene fire use: The first signal of widespread cultural diffusion in human evolution

This work interprets the archaeological signal of fire use from around 400,000 y ago as representing the earliest clear-cut case of widespread cultural change resulting from diffusion in human evolution, and suggests a form of cultural behavior significantly more similar to that of extant Homo sapiens than to the authors' great ape relatives.

Geochemical Evidence for the Control of Fire by Middle Palaeolithic Hominins

The results suggest that the ability of hominins to manipulate fire independent of exploitation of wildfires was spatially variable in the MP and may have developed multiple times in the genus Homo.

The ripples of modernity: How we can extend paleoanthropology with the extended evolutionary synthesis

It is suggested that incorporating key elements of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) into the authors' endeavors offers a better and more integrative toolkit for modeling and assessing the evolution of the genus Homo.

‘Behavioral modernity’ as a process, not an event, in the human niche

ABSTRACT The search for ‘firsts’ is a common trope in the study of human evolution. Both popular books and scientific articles attempt to discern the key moments in evolutionary history that indicate…

Philosophical Urbanism of Walter Benjamin

This chapter is an overall introduction to the topic of this monograph, namely, the relationship between the urban environment and consciousness. Walter Benjamin had introduced the notion of ongoing…

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 84 REFERENCES

On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire in Europe

The review of the European evidence suggests that early hominins moved into northern latitudes without the habitual use of fire, and the increase in the number of sites with good evidence of fire throughout the Late Pleistocene shows that European Neandertals had fire management not unlike that documented for Upper Paleolithic groups.

Timing of the appearance of habitual fire use

It is argued that the available evidence better supports a significantly later appearance for the habitual use of fire (sometime near the end of the Late Pleistocene) and that before this fire, use was always sporadic and opportunistic.

Fire for a Reason

Qesem Cave is a Middle Pleistocene site in Israel occupied between 420 and 200 ka. Excavations have revealed a wealth of innovative behaviors most likely practiced by a new hominin lineage. These…

Origins and Revolutions: Human Identity in Earliest Prehistory

In this study Clive Gamble presents and questions two of the most famous descriptions of change in prehistory. The first is the 'human revolution', when evidence for art, music, religion and language…

Control of Fire in the Paleolithic

According to current evidence, Homo sapiens was unable to survive on a diet of raw wild foods. Because cooked diets have large physiological and behavioral consequences, a critical question for…

Traces of fire in the archaeological record, before one million years ago?

Was the Emergence of Home Bases and Domestic Fire a Punctuated Event? A Review of the Middle Pleistocene Record in Eurasia

The concept of a home-based land use strategy is fundamental for studying recent and prehistoric foraging populations. A proposed datum for the emergence of this behavior is set during later Middle…

On the evidence for human use and control of fire at Schöningen.

Evidence for the repeated use of a central hearth at Middle Pleistocene (300 ky ago) Qesem Cave, Israel

Fire production in the deep past? The expedient strike-a-light model

...