When smoke is in the air: An experimental approach to characterise fuel emissions on past humans dwellings

Abstract

Fire, since it became a feature of daily life, had a great significance for humans in the past. When reconstructing fire use and maintenance it is important to know what kinds of fuels were being used as energetic resources and how these were managed. We present the first results of a project that aims to investigate how important was the use of fire and how was the awareness or knowledge about the health effects on people. The objective is to study wellbeing (health and habitability) in prehistoric communities from Palaeolithic occupations in Iberian Península. Our research focuses on the identification of patterns that could refer to the decision making regarding the type of dwelling, as well as the size, ventilation, location of hearths and type of fuel used. Fire experiments were made in the cave Cova Manena (Tarragona, Spain) and in open air locations: Paleolítico Vivo and CAREX (Burgos, Spain) and Molí del Salt (Tarragona, Spain) archaeological site surroundings. The main fuel used was Pinus sylvestris in order to evaluate fuel management and combustion practices. In the experiments we have registered meteorological conditions, hearth temperatures, radiative heat and fine particles emissions using different tools. Results showed smoke emissions and hearth temperature are related to firewood state (dry, semi-decayed and decayed) and environmental conditions (rain, wind direction and speed). This has allowed us to monitor several data in order to analyse air quality as well as habitability conditions in the different dwelling scenarios regarding health and wellbeing of the prehistoric communities.