Articles | Volume 20, issue 15
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-20-3249-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-20-3249-2023
Research article
 | 
08 Aug 2023
Research article |  | 08 Aug 2023

Past fire dynamics inferred from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and monosaccharide anhydrides in a stalagmite from the archaeological site of Mayapan, Mexico

Julia Homann, Niklas Karbach, Stacy A. Carolin, Daniel H. James, David Hodell, Sebastian F. M. Breitenbach, Ola Kwiecien, Mark Brenner, Carlos Peraza Lope, and Thorsten Hoffmann

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Cited articles

Argiriadis, E., Battistel, D., McWethy, D. B., Vecchiato, M., Kirchgeorg, T., Kehrwald, N. M., Whitlock, C., Wilmshurst, J. M., and Barbante, C.: Lake sediment fecal and biomass burning biomarkers provide direct evidence for prehistoric human-lit fires in New Zealand, Sci. Rep.​​​​​​​, 8, 12113, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-30606-3, 2018. 
Argiriadis, E., Denniston, R. F., and Barbante, C.: Improved Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon and n-Alkane Determination in Speleothems through Cleanroom Sample Processing, Anal. Chem., 91, 7007–7011, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.9b00767, 2019. 
Bai, J., Sun, X., Zhang, C., Xu, Y., and Qi, C.: The OH-initiated atmospheric reaction mechanism and kinetics for levoglucosan emitted in biomass burning, Chemosphere, 93, 2004–2010, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2013.07.021, 2013. 
Baker, A., Blyth, A. J., Jex, C. N., Mcdonald, J. A., Woltering, M., and Khan, S. J.: Glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (GDGT) distributions from soil to cave: Refining the speleothem paleothermometer, Org. Geochem., 136, 103890, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orggeochem.2019.06.011, 2019. 
Battistel, D., Argiriadis, E., Kehrwald, N., Spigariol, M., Russell, J. M., and Barbante, C.: Fire and human record at Lake Victoria, East Africa, during the Early Iron Age: Did humans or climate cause massive ecosystem changes?, Holocene, 27, 997–1007, https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683616678466, 2017. 
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Short summary
Cave stalagmites contain substances that can be used to reconstruct past changes in local and regional environmental conditions. We used two classes of biomarkers (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and monosaccharide anhydrides) to detect the presence of fire and to also explore changes in fire regime (e.g. fire frequency, intensity, and fuel source). We tested our new method on a stalagmite from Mayapan, a large Maya city on the Yucatán Peninsula.
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