Hidden signatures of early fire at Evron Quarry (1.0 to 0.8 Mya)

Zane Stepka; Ido Azuri; Liora Kolska Horwitz; Michael Chazan; Filipe Andre Natalio

doi:10.1073/pnas.2123439119

Hidden signatures of early fire at Evron Quarry (1.0 to 0.8 Mya)

Zane Stepka, Ido Azuri, Liora Kolska Horwitz, Michael Chazan, Filipe Andre Natalio^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Pyrotechnology is a key element of hominin evolution. The identification of fire in early hominin sites relies primarily on an initial visual assessment of artifacts’ physical alterations, resulting in potential underestimation of the prevalence of fire in the archaeological record. Here, we used a suite of spectroscopic techniques to counter the absence of visual signatures for fire and demonstrate the presence of burnt fauna and lithics at the Lower Paleolithic (LP) open-air site of Evron Quarry (Israel), dated between 1.0 and 0.8 Mya and roughly contemporaneous to Gesher Benot Ya’aqov where early pyrotechnology has been documented. We propose reexamining finds from other LP sites lacking visual clues of pyrotechnology to yield a renewed perspective on the origin, evolution, and spatiotemporal dispersal of the relationship between early hominin behavior and fire use.

Original language	English
Article number	e2123439119
Number of pages	5
Journal	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Volume	119
Issue number	25
Early online date	13 Jun 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2123439119
Publication status	Published - 21 Jun 2022

Funding

We want to thank Prof. Mina Weinstein-Evron (Haifa University) for facilitating access to the Evron lithics collection and site archive; Dr. Iddo Pinkas, Dr. Anna-Eden Kossoy, and Dr. Yishay Feldman (Department of Chemical Research Support, Weizmann Institute of Science) for access to the Raman instrument and help in acquiring the XRD data, respectively. This work was financially supported by a research grant to F.N. from the Benoziyo Endowment Fund for the Advancement of Science, the estate of Raymond Lapon, the estate of Olga Klein Astrachan, the Braginsky Center for the Interface between Science and the Humanities, the Yeda-Sela Center for Basic Research, the Abramson Family Center for Young Scientists, the estate of Harriet Nahum, the Dora Yoachimowicz Endowed Fund for Research, the Minzer Family Fund Scholarship, Gideon J. Hamburger, and the estate of Robert Einzig (Weizmann Institute of Science). Publisher Copyright: © 2022 the Author(s).

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Cite this

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Hidden signatures of early fire at Evron Quarry (1.0 to 0.8 Mya)

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