Punk’s not dead. Fungi for tinder at the Neolithic site of La Draga (NE Iberia)

Abstract

This paper presents the study of the fungi remains preserved in the waterlogged deposits of the Neolithic site of La Draga. These resources had the potential of being used as food and medicine, but also as tinder. Fire was without a doubt one of the most important resources for past people. It was used for lighting, heating, processing food and other materials, cooking and protection, and also possessed social and ritual significance. Hearths are one of the most common features at archaeological sites, but very often little attention is paid to the question of how these fires were lit, and they are seldom reflected in the archaeological record. In order to produce fire by percussion, an intermediate material is required between the sparks and the fuel. Fruiting bodies of fungi are a potential form of tinder, but are less inclined to be well-preserved than other materials. This paper presents the fungal fruiting bodies found at the Neolithic site of La Draga and discusses the meaning of their presence within the archaeological context of the site and European Prehistory.

Flexible Fungal Materials: Shaping the Future

“…The importance of fungal materials to primitive human societies is well established [63][64][65]: Ötzi, the 5000-year-old iceman found in the Tyrolean Alps in 1991, carried some of the earliest functional fungal materials [28,66]. F. fomentarius (tinder mushroom) basidiocarp tissue, was used by indigenous peoples in Europe and North America as tinder or touchwood, and Fomitopsis betulina (birch polypore, formerly Piptoporus betulinus) in first aid [27,63,66,67].…”

“…The use of other 'bracket' polypore fungi such as Phellinus igniarius, Inonotus hispidus, and Ganoderma spp. for tinder and soft material purposes has also been reported [25,65,68,69,74], although F. fomentarius is still preferred [24]. As a popular material in the central European regions of Bavaria, Thuringia, and historical Bohemia, it was produced in quantities as high as 50 tons per year until as late as 1890 [29] and is still manufactured in rural areas of Bohemia and Transylvania [23,24,27,29,73].…”

Hymenophore configuration of the oak mazegill (Daedalea quercina)

“…The basidiocarp of the oak mazegill (Daedalea quercina) has been a source of tinder since the stone ages (Berihuete-Azorín et al 2018), and its hymenophore has such an aesthetic configuration that it invokes the appearance of the maze of Daedalus, which hosted the Minotaur (FIG. 1).…”