2022/08/18 by Óscar Fuente-Fernández
Social Sciences · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Archaeological and Geological Studies
paper · doi:10.1016/j.jasrep.2022.103590
Aspects of the effects produced by Paleolithic hearths inside caves, apart from the known beneficial uses, are beginning to arouse the interest of archaeological research. For professional firefighters, a fire in a confined space is synonymous with dense smoke, which is the main cause of death in fires. Human exposure to combustion in a cave implies a series of risks, some of them ‘invisible’, with immediate or future consequences produced by the gases and particles that make up the smoke, against which our organism has no defenses unless there is a mechanism for rapid ventilation. Although the finds of remains of hearths in Paleolithic strata in many caves shows that they were used, we do not know the conditions in which they occurred, their productive utility and whether there was active continuous human presence. This is the case of Tito Bustillo Cave (Ribadesella, Asturias, Spain), a site with a long Paleolithic occupation where several hearths have been documented in the living area, which is now separated from the exterior by a collapse and where researchers have proposed that other entrances existed originally. The present study demonstrates through the results of atmospheric/aerodynamic sampling, chemical analysis and experimentation, that continuous active human presence in the area with those hearths corresponded to a seasonal occupation, whatever was their use, and that only one of the proposed entrances was possible.