Palaeolithic fire at Cueva Negra

The oldest evidence for fire at any European Palaeolithic site comes from a very deep layer at Cueva Negra (indicated by the yellow arrow) which has provided thermally-altered chert splintered by “thermal shock” (shown at lower left), chert with typical “pot-lid” fractures of heated flint and chert, and calcined bone with longitudinal splintering typical of exposure to great heat (shown at lower right). Preliminary analyses of chert and bone indicate that the temperature of the fire reached 550-600ºC, according to ongoing research by electron spin resonance spectrometry and Fourier transform infra-red spectrometry, being undertaken, respectively, by Dr Anne Skinner at Williams College Boston and Dr Francesco Berna at Simon Fraser University.