Ethnoarchaeology of Fuel Use in Northern Forests: Towards a Better Characterization of Prehistoric Fire-Related Activities

ABSTRACT Prehistoric fuel management and hearth functions are key research issues that have benefitted from the development of experimental and ethnoarchaeogical approaches aimed at providing interpretative models for archaeological fire and fuel studies. In this paper, we present a selection of ethnographic, ethnoarchaeological and ethnohistorical data mostly collected among Evenks and Athabascans of East Siberia and North America. Our aim is to question and discuss the relationship between fuel and hearth functions from an ethnoarchaeobotanical perspective: what are the criteria for selecting plant fuels? How archaeologically visible can these diverse fuel types be and what do they tell us about past fire-related activities? Our data shows that the contents of combustion structures result from multiple people-environment interactions at different levels, few of which are accessible to the archaeologist. Nevertheless, ethnoarchaeology, by fostering a reflection on taphonomy issues in the broad sense, actively contributes to methodological developments leading to a better understanding of complex technical fire-related processes.