The ethnography of prehistoric forest fires

Hunter-gatherers and their impact on the environment has been debated since the second half of the 20th century. Due to the low-impact nature of their inferred activities, such as hunting, fishing and gathering, it is assumed that in Northwestern Europe humans only started asserting influence on their environment when farming was introduced in the Neolithic period. However, ethno-graphic research on (sub)modern Native American and Aboriginal groups has shown that hunter-gatherers can alter their environment, particularly through the regular use of controlled burning of vegetation. Archaeologists have been studying and debating for many decades the possible use of controlled forest fires by prehistoric hunter-gatherers, with a main focus on the Mesolithic. Most of these studies apply to Britain and southern Scandinavia and are based on detailed palynological and microcharcoal analyses. Recently similar research has been applied in other areas of NW Europe, in particular in the sandy lowland of Belgium and the Netherlands. The first results seem to indicate that during the Late Glacial (mainly Allerod) and Early Holocene (Preboreal and Boreal) forest fires were predominantly of natural origin, while the role of hunter-gatherers in this process likely increased during the Atlantic, when coniferous forests were replaced by deciduous forests.

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