Fires of a House—Burning Events in a Middle Bronze Age Vatya House as Evidenced by Soil Micromorphological Analysis of Anthropogenic Sediments

Abstract

The investigation of fires and burning within the archaeological record has a long history, and the applied methods are diverse. There have been several investigations of prehistoric archaeological sites, but Middle Bronze Age contexts (2000–1450 BC) of the Carpathian Basin have not been widely studied beyond studies of ritual burning or warfare. In this paper, we aimed to add further details to this topic in the household context via thin-section soil micromorphology and related phytolith and charred plant matter analysis. The combination of these techniques has been proven to be advantageous due to their high-resolution quality, but phytolith analysis of soil/sediment via thin sections (i.e., in fixed environment) has not been largely explored yet. In this study, these methods were used to investigate various burning events that affected a Middle Bronze Age Vatya house within the tell site of Százhalombatta-Földvár, Hungary. Three types of fire/burning events were investigated. One was related to hearth activity, another one to a presumed ‘cleaning’ of the house, and the last one to the termination of the building. In the first two cases, everyday life was under the microscope; the latter was more enigmatic, and probable intentional destruction was demonstrated.