dc.contributor.author | Pryor, AJE | |
dc.contributor.author | Pullen, A | |
dc.contributor.author | Beresford-Jones, DG | |
dc.contributor.author | Svoboda, JA | |
dc.contributor.author | Gamble, CS | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2018-09-06T09:00:08Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2016-05-31 | |
dc.description.abstract | This paper draws attention to firewood as a natural resource that was gathered, processed and consumed on a daily basis by Palaeolithic groups. Using Gravettian occupation of the Pavlovsk� Hills as a case study (dated to around 30,000 years BP), we investigate firewood availability using archaeological, palaeoenvironmental and ecological data, including making inferences from charcoal in Pavlovian hearths. The collated evidence suggests that while dead wood was likely readily available in woodland areas where humans had not recently foraged, longer term occupations - or repeated occupation of the same area by different groups - would have quickly exhausted naturally occurring supplies. Once depleted, the deadwood pool may have taken several generations (~40-120 years) to recover enough to provide fuel for another base camp occupation. Such exhaustion of deadwood supplies is well attested ethnographically. Thus, we argue that Pavlovian groups likely managed firewood supplies using methods similar to those used by recent hunter-gatherers: through planned geographic mobility and by deliberately killing trees years in advance of when wood was required, so leaving time for the wood to dry out. Such management of fuel resources was, we argue, critical to human expansion into these cold, hitherto marginal, ecologies of the Upper Palaeolithic. | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | AJEP is grateful to The Leverhulme Trust that funded this research, which was undertaken as part of the project Seasonality, Mobility and Storage in Palaeolithic hunting societies (RPG-2013-318). | en_GB |
dc.identifier.citation | Vol. 43, pp. 1 - 12 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1016/j.jaa.2016.05.003 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/33932 | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_GB |
dc.publisher | Elsevier | en_GB |
dc.rights | © 2016. This version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ | en_GB |
dc.subject | Gravettian | en_GB |
dc.subject | Firewood | en_GB |
dc.subject | Fire | en_GB |
dc.subject | Charcoal | en_GB |
dc.subject | Resource management | en_GB |
dc.subject | Upper Paleolithic | en_GB |
dc.title | Reflections on Gravettian firewood procurement near the Pavlov Hills, Czech Republic | en_GB |
dc.type | Article | en_GB |
dc.date.available | 2018-09-06T09:00:08Z | |
dc.identifier.issn | 0278-4165 | |
dc.description | This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record | en_GB |
dc.identifier.journal | Journal of Anthropological Archaeology | en_GB |