Incidental burning on bones by Neanderthals: the role of fire in the Qa level of Abric Romaní rock-shelter (Spain) - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences Année : 2022

Incidental burning on bones by Neanderthals: the role of fire in the Qa level of Abric Romaní rock-shelter (Spain)

Résumé

The Abric Romaní rock-shelter (Capellades, Barcelona) is a key site for studying the use of fire among Neanderthal communities. The evidence of its use, including the identification of heated faunal remains, has led to infer the practice of some domestic activities in the site, such as cooking, use of bones as fuel, or habitat surface cleaning throughout the entire sequence. In the Qa level, dated ca. 58 ky BP, heated bones are characterized by the predominance of brown homogeneous surfaces, a different pattern from those described for the abovementioned activities. Here, an experiment is presented to clarify the domestic activities at the Qa level. We built hearth replicas and heated defleshed shaft fragments in fresh and dry. The recovered fragments were described according to their coloration and spatial relationship in the hearth. Following these parameters, a new classification method of heated bones from archeological sites is proposed: color and its distribution on the bone surface. We detected differences in color depending on whether they were buried or not and whether they were from the center or the peripheral areas. The brown bones with the color homogeneously distributed on their surface were exclusively found on buried heated bones. Compared with the remains from the Qa level, the results suggest that the post-depositional burning of the faunal remains was habitual, which could be related to the overlapping occupations at this level.
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Dates et versions

hal-03992071 , version 1 (16-02-2023)

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Paternité - Pas d'utilisation commerciale - Partage selon les Conditions Initiales

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Edgar Téllez, Palmira Saladié, Antonio Pineda, Juan Marín, Josep Vallverdú, et al.. Incidental burning on bones by Neanderthals: the role of fire in the Qa level of Abric Romaní rock-shelter (Spain). Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 2022, 14 (6), pp.119. ⟨10.1007/s12520-022-01577-4⟩. ⟨hal-03992071⟩
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