Lithic Artifacts and Fire: Relearning and Preserving Ancient Technological Knowledge

This lecture will examine whether ancient technologies, such as stone tools and fire-making methods, can be considered cultural heritage. It will explore the criteria that define these technologies as cultural heritage and how we can measure them. The discussion will highlight how these technologies—both tangible artifacts and intangible knowledge—reflect human adaptation, innovation, and resilience across generations. By integrating archaeological data, experiments, machine learning, and collaboration with descendant communities, the lecture will showcase how preserving ancient knowledge can offer valuable insights into past societies' strategies for adapting to environmental challenges. These lessons are especially relevant in addressing modern issues like climate change. Aylar Abdolahzadeh is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in the prehistoric and historical significance of ancient technologies, including stone tools and pyrotechnology, in human adaptation, resilience, and environmental sustainability. She earned her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2022 and is currently a postdoctoral research scholar at the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University. Her research examines the use of fire-making technology in human living spaces and land management, exploring the variation in pyrotechnology from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene across diverse climatic and geographic contexts worldwide.

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