Fire as spatial organizer: reconstructing the ritual grammar of a late Longshan ceremonial landscape at Yuhuicun, China

This paper investigates the spatial organization of fire-related deposits at Yuhuicun, a late Longshan period ceremonial complex in the Huai River Valley, China. Archaeological research has explored the role of fire in human adaptation, but less attention has been paid to how ritual fire was organized in space. Yuhuicun’s burnt sacrificial surface (BSS, ca. 90 m2) lies at the centre of a purpose-built platform surrounded by sacrificial pits, a trench containing nearly 18,000 sherds and diverse activity features. Drawing on theories of ritual materialization, structured deposition and elemental ontology, this study constructs a 126-feature spatial database and applies four complementary approaches: spatial association analysis, compositional patterning, functional clustering and co-occurrence network analysis. The results suggest that the fire at Yuhuicun played a central role in the site’s spatial organization, with the BSS as the focus of a ritual landscape consisting of two main areas linked by built features. The BSS preserves intense burning but no accumulated ash, while the adjacent trench is saturated with combustion residues, indicating deliberate redistribution.