Session: #661

Content:

Fire is a natural element that is the product of an oxidation reaction at high temperatures. With fire hominids started to interface as part of the exploitation of a seasonal natural resource and since the then has become a quintessential part of human life. Moreover, the interaction between man and fire is sensorial: heat and light become elements linked to the life of man, who at the end of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic endowed himself with a technology that guarantees the possibility of transforming elements, primarily food. Fire therefore acquires hybrid characteristics: extremely functional to life, it becomes a cultural element, created by man to satisfy the needs of lighting, heat, defence, cooking, production. Far from a purely physical and natural conceptualization, fire is an agency that intervenes and participates in the construction of the cultural world, a prerogative of the human species alone. The creation of the fire-artifact places its conceptualization within a cultural field, which arises from the creative intent of man in his social context to which he belongs. The monopoly acquired on planet Earth thanks to the long process of domestication of fire results in the creation of pyro-centric cultures capable of synthesizing foods and raw materials for the construction of objects. Indeed, with fire and by the means of fire, the species homo has become properly and metaphorically faber, not only as a creator, but also by developing ever new ways of processing raw foodstuffs, not only by cooking it, but above all by transforming it and producing new aliments.
It is within these premises that the session aims at investigating the use of fire for both productive and ritual purposes in a wide geographical area (i.e., the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East) from prehistoric times until the first millennium BCE.

Session: #661

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