During the years 2025 and 2026 Victor Klinkenberg and Giulia Albertazi (pictured below) will investigate why and how people in the prehistoric past set their houses on fire. The project is inspired by the discovery of many burnt buildings at Palloures, but will look more broadly at this phenomenon on an international scale. The project is funded by a Vision-ERC grant of the Research and Innovation foundation of the Republic of Cyprus, and is hosted at the University of Cyprus.

The IGNITE team: Victor Klinkenberg and Giulia Albertazi
The IGNITE team: Victor Klinkenberg and Giulia Albertazi

IGNITE explores the cultural significance of prehistoric house fires, a widespread practice that has persisted across various societies for millennia. These deliberate house conflagrations were acts of destruction but also symbolic expressions of personal, household, or societal identity. Interpretations of these events have largely remained static, often linked to the social negotiation of household dynamics, such as the death of a significant household member. These interpretations are grounded in a limited set of ethnographic studies and do not align with new excavation data that has recently emerged.

The project challenges the notion that house fires had uniform motivations across cultures by highlighting recent discoveries from Chalcolithic Cyprus. At the site of Palloures, houses were burned when already in disrepair, and after the fires, were often reused or repurposed, conflicting with the idea of the conflagration as a closure ritual. By applying advanced 3D documentation and analysis methods, IGNITE seeks to unravel the detailed stratigraphic sequences before, during, and after these fires, offering a more nuanced understanding of these events.

A burnt building at Palloures, with several storage jars in-situ.

Additionally, IGNITE undertakes a broad ethnographic study to uncover the diverse motivations behind domestic conflagrations across cultures. This research will draw on the extensive eHRAF databases to compile a comprehensive overview of house abandonment practices, particularly focusing on deliberate house destruction. The resulting database and research articles will provide new perspectives on interpreting burnt archaeological contexts, potentially reshaping the understanding of prehistoric behaviour and its material manifestation.

Through its innovative approach, combining cutting-edge technology and anthropological inquiry, IGNITE seeks to address the complex challenge of understanding prehistoric house fires. The project will lay the groundwork for extended research on the social constructs surrounding burnt buildings on a European scale.