Andreu Ollé Cañellas
Researcher at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA), associate professor at Rovira i Virgili University, and co-director of the Atapuerca project
The study presents various lines of evidence regarding the presence of fire at the site, along with multidisciplinary and complementary analyses.
Firstly, the study fits in well with information we already had for Western Europe. There are other sites with similar chronologies (such as Menez-Dregan or Terra Amata in France, the Aroeira cave in Portugal, or Cansaladeta in Tarragona) where we have evidence of the use of fire around 400,000 years ago. However, this contrasts with the lack of evidence at other well-documented sites of similar chronology, such as Atapuerca.
The main novelty of the article is the proposal that the pyrite fragments found at Barnham are related to the intentional production of fire. This had not been observed at other sites with evidence of fire. Therefore, based on this discovery, the idea that around this date we already had a “structural use of fire” is reinforced.
It is therefore very likely, as the article suggests, that the Barnham discovery shows us the beginning of the socialisation of fire, its controlled and widespread use.
On a personal level, based on what I have learned from experimental archaeology and ethnographic observations, I believe that producing fire by friction with plant materials is easier than that involving interaction with iron oxide, but the evidence presented in the article is solid and should be taken into account.
I do not see any significant limitations to consider.
This is a relevant study because it provides solid evidence of a crucial aspect of human evolution, namely the control of fire. At the methodological level, for Palaeolithic archaeology, it proposes a solid set of analyses to be reproduced in other contexts where evidence of the presence of fire has been detected.