Pedro García, Kiernan Award Winner 2025, Progresses on Experimental Ash Analysis of Tenerife’s Native Species

Pedro García, Ph.D. student at Universidad de La Laguna (Spain) and recent Kiernan Award winner, continues to make strong progress on his project!

Pedro García, Ph.D. student at Universidad de La Laguna (Spain) and 2025 Kiernan Award winner.

His research aims to create the first reference collection of ash obtained from Tenerife’s main native woody species. The study will be an important resource, as it will help identify which activities took place in archaeological sites across the Canary Islands, as evidence of burning can provide valuable information about past human behaviour and site use.

Following the successful sampling of all ten target plants at La Tahonilla, Pedro has now moved into the experimental phase of his work.

Over the past weeks, he prepared all samples for burning by cleaning them with purified water and drying them at 40ºC for 48 hours. The burning experiments are now underway. Due to the limited size of the muffle oven, the process will be carried out in four to five rounds to accommodate all samples.

Plants sampling at La Tahonilla, Canary Islands.

Plant samples before burning.

Pedro has already progressed to the next stage of the experiment and is currently analysing the resulting material and collecting data. Among his observations are several ash pseudomorphs.

Ash pseudomorphs are particularly significant, as they preserve the anatomical structure of the original plant material after burning. This allows for the identification of fuel species even in the absence of charcoal, improving the interpretation of combustion features in archaeological contexts.

Example of ash pseudomorphs from Pedro’s research.

All images are courtesy of Pedro García.