Humans and fire: Changing relations in early agricultural and built environments in the Zagros, Iran, Iraq

Wendy Matthews

doi:10.1177/2053019616636134

Abstract

Fire-centred studies have recently been highlighted as powerful avenues for investigation of energy flows and relations between humans, materials, environments and other species. The aim in this paper is to evaluate this potential first by reviewing the diverse theories and methods that can be applied to investigate the ecological and social significance of anthropogenic fire, and second by applying these to new and existing data sets in archaeology. This paper examines how fire-centred approaches can inform on one of the most significant step-changes in human lifeways and inter-relations with environment and other species – the transition from mobile hunting-gathering to more sedentary agriculture in a key heartland of change, the Zagros region of Iraq and Iran, c. 12,000–8,000 BP. In the review and case studies multiple links are investigated between human fire use and environment, ecology, energy use, technology, the built environment, health, social roles and relations, cultural practices and catastrophic events.

Highlights

Some of the greatest impacts of humans on Earth’s ecosystems stem from the use of fire
This paper investigates how fire use was impacted by and impacted on unprecedented changes in ecosystem management, built environments, material technology, social relations and cultural practices
Indicators of fire on archaeological sites examined here include: fire installations and fire-spots to study in situ combustion and the socio-economic context and use of fire; fire-rake-out and discard to study the range of discarded burnt materials on sites and their depositional pathways; artefacts and materials such as pottery and fired-lime plasters transformed by fire to study increasing use of pyrotechnology; and buildings/areas destroyed by fire to examine the nature and context of their burning

Summary

Introduction

Some of the greatest impacts of humans on Earth’s ecosystems stem from the use of fire. This paper examines new and existing data from the eastern Fertile Crescent to study the impact and use of fire in early agricultural environments and communities in another key heartland of change, as recent studies suggest that there was considerable regional and local variation in environment and ecological strategies and multiple centres of domestication (Riehl et al, 2015; Willcox, 2005; Zeder, 2009) It focuses in particular on the Central Zagros in Iraq and Iran to study highland–lowland variation in human– fire relations, with selective comparison with examples from Anatolia that have been examined in similar ways (Asouti and Austin, 2005; Asouti and Kabukcu, 2014; W Matthews, 2005a, 2005b, 2010; Mentzer, 2014). The original new research examined in this paper is from the sites of Sheikh-e Abad and Jani in Iran at 1400 and 1200 m a.s.l. c. 11,800–9000 BP (R Matthews et al, 2013) and Bestansur and Shimshara in Iraqi Kurdistan at 553 and 493 m a.s.l. c. 7660–7000 BP (R Matthews et al, in preparation; W Matthews et al, 2014)

Methods

Conclusions