Igniting Life

Abstract

Evidences of the use of fire are almost omnipresent in archaeological sites. However, few are the cases in which fire is the main study object of researches. With this contradiction in mind, this paper presents part of the results of an archaeology of fire conducted amongst the Asurini of the Xingu River. The objective of the research was to document technical and symbolic aspects of fire use in the daily life of the Asurini, identifying and classifying types of combustion structure and the employment of fire in domestic activities. Temperature data collected in the field with an infrared thermometer was compared with analyses of FTIR spectroscopy conducted on hearth and oven sediments. Lastly, the research intended to demonstrate how the understanding of fire as material culture can amplify the possibilities of its investigation in the present, also serving as an interpretative source of fire in the archaeological record.