I resisted writing yet another anthropology blogpost for awhile because I guess I was gathering up some stuff that I think of on occasion. This post takes me back to a class in non-verbal communications I took as a graduate student in anthropology. We had an interesting discussion one afternoon which somehow foreshadowed work I would be doing in Mojave Desert archeology. Our professor asked us if we had ever considered how people were arranged around a fire pit and the space which each person demanded or needed. It dawned on me there was some measurement and as I went through many more fires in the middle of nowhere; it dawned on me slowly but surely that people expect a spatial dynamic. Proxemics is therefore defined as,
The study of the cultural, behavioral, and sociological aspects of spatial distances between individuals.
Interesting few words of description and definition. Well, as I moved onward and in different directions, I ended up studying prehistoric hearth systems over on Edwards AFB, CA. At the time I got interested, I had not yet tied the cosmic knot between that class in proxemics and what I was seeing in the desert firepits. Then one interesting day, I happened to be talking with a friend that was a Physical Anthropologist. Theo was telling me about how other cultures order themselves spatially in burial pits. Whammo! The idea of dual recognition hit me. Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to measure the distance people observed in modern human behavior around firepits, add more people and see how much the hearth had to grow. My working hypothesis then was that the firepits were dynamics of use over time and they simply grew because the old rocks lining them became busted up. What if instead I was seeing a concomitant rise in use instead? What if more people were gathering at one time over a shorter period of time instead of long-term chronological use? What could I imply then about prehistoric population dynamics in the desert? The thought propelled me to suggest that we do some testing. I wanted to dig more hearths on larger prehistoric sites and then measure the differences and perhaps not even dig but get some measurements of the size of firepits across a range of sites in the so-called desert bottom.
Unfortunately, I did not get to finish due to changes in employment. I shelved the ideas and traveled to work all over the Southwest and the Plains and the American west doing archeological work with an engineering company for the next years.
Finally, today I was thinking about writing a blog entry and it dawned on me that the final connection was made. I was observing in the office how people position themselves when talking. The full connection was made and thus a blogpost was made. Fires are social, technological, physical, and other phenomena; but I think now that we build them to bond ourselves and have either growth over time or more popularity over space. People grow the hearths to respect those proxemics.
I’ve never gone back but the ideas still flow of the connections of things. As I’ve noted before, my wife tends to think the archeologist in me will never get removed even if I have been removed from it. There is still too much to wonder about and wander through and blog about. Fires are inter-dimensional social, ideological, and technological marvels. How we use them, how we position ourselves to use them, what they mean; are still intriguing to me. Enough to build my ritual fire downstairs this evening with a fireplace and watch the yellow and red lick against the fireplace grate.
