Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
tracks a map of human migrations. To coax fire from wood or flint must
have seemed like the deepest conjuring. Certainly, the ability to call fire
forth on command signaled a revolution in fire history.
Over time, certain fire-starters triumphed, almost to the point of becom-
ing universal. Conquerors and colonizers imposed their own devices; trade
bolstered others; Europeans, in particular, promoted the strike-a-light,
favored since Neolithic times. (Even the 5,000-year-old “ice man” recov-
ered from a glacier in the Ötztaler Alps had one, along with a pouch for
tinder.) Eventually pyrite and flint gave way to steel and flint and joined
European traders, missionaries, soldiers, and colonists as they tramped
around the world.The technics were, after all, the same as that exploited for
flintlock rifles. Then a chemical revolution replaced the awkward strike of
steel with the smooth friction of the match. The first (the sulfur-reeking
“lucifer”) appeared in 1827, succeeded by a phosphorus version in 1830,
and the safety match in 1852. No longer did fire-starting require either cost
or skill.Anyone could carry it, anyone could call it forth.The ancient bonds
of fire-tending and codes of fire-related behavior disappeared into pants
pockets. But by then, other than smoking tobacco, there was little reason to
haul it on one's person.
FUELS: THE GREAT CHAIN OF FIRE'S BEING
Spark was only a start, as easy to carry as an idea. What mattered was not
ignition but preservation.What mattered were the fuels necessary to keep a
fire aglow: a spark was only as robust as its tinder. One solution was to store
kindling in pouches to ensure it was ready. Another was to combine fuel
and flame in a slow match or a firestick. When one torch burned out,
another would be kindled from it.The firestick could then transfer flame to
a campfire, perhaps sheltered, from which another firestick could be
wrested when the time came to move on.The flame became constant.The
role of fire keeper was essentially that of fuel provider.
Whether closed or open, a tended fire was really a fire well fed.The fire-
keeper might equally be called a fuel-keeper. The search for combustibles
was endless and often time consuming. It frequently extended broadly over
the countryside, and was a consideration in the periodic relocation of vil-
lages. Most settled, agricultural places had to grow their fuels, which they
did by coppice or the use of stubble or by reliance on the dried dung of
their livestock. Regardless of where they got it, they had to stockpile it,
