Exploring landscape burning as the earliest active use of fire

Fire is a key component of human technology, but when and how we first developed the ability to use and create fire remains heavily debated. Some argue that control of fire developed early and quickly became an essential tool for cooking food, based on morphological changes that first appeared in Homo erectus. Others emphasize the lack of widespread and consistent traces of fire in the early archaeological record, and argue that control of fire came relatively late, post 500ka. In looking for archaeological evidence for fire use, most studies focus on the co-occurence of fire traces and other signs of human activity (e.g., stone tools, cut-marked bones). This assumes that our ancestors first focused on the idea of the hearth, either bringing the fire back to the activity area, or performing activities near a spatially-constrained fire. However, recent research has highlighted the potential importance of intentional burning of landscapes as a tool that could similarly provide nutritional and energetic benefits to the earliest hominin fire users. If landscape burning was the first type of intentional fire use, then we should not expect the co-occurrence of fire traces and other signs of hominin activity. Inspired in part by Wil Roebroeks’ emphasis on off-site activities and longstanding interest in fire, here we provide a suggestion for a new approach to explore the archaeological record for evidence of intentional landscape burning. Future analyses using this approach may help us better understand the deep history of fire use and resolve the potential mismatch between the early appearance of morphological traits associated with the consumption of cooked food and the late co-occurrence of fire traces and hominin activity in the archaeological record.