A new archaeobotanical protocol for collecting concentrated wood charcoal from archaeological bonfire sites

Wood charcoal is the most commonly found bioarchaeological testimony at archaeological sites. In addition to dating sites, charcoal provides insights into the way of life of past populations and paleoenvironment reconstruction. Concentrated charcoal is usually recovered from archaeological bonfires. This paper proposes a new field protocol for standardized collection and registration of archaeological charcoal recovered from combustion structures, and which can be applied to different types of archaeological sites. The protocol was developed from field experiments involving excavation of archaeological sites in central Brazil. The systematization of information acquisition provided by this tool assures more effective sampling of concentrated charcoal and, therefore, the optimization of data for deeper paleoethnological interpretations.