Size matters: Preliminary results from an experimental approach to interpret Middle Stone Age hearths

This paper reports on ten fire experiments and their significance for interpreting hearths from the Middle Stone Age site, Sibudu, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The experiments were conducted on four different substrata and four wood taxa were used in the experiments. Four of the experiments consisted of a single fire, while the other experiments consisted of multiple fires on top of each other. The experimental fires produced hearth areas of ∼962.1–∼1661.9 cm² and hearth depths of 3–12 cm. Hearth size and depth do not correlate. Hearth area seems to correlate with the fuel load used in a hearth, and it is argued that this can be used in interpretations of fire use at an archaeological site. Nine hearths from the same layer at Sibudu are used as examples, and it is argued that variation in hearth area indicates variation in hearth use. Some hearths at Sibudu were possibly only used once, whereas others represent long-term use and/or repeated reloading of the same hearth.