Cultural Burning

This Element addresses a burning question - how can archaeologists best identify and interpret cultural burning, the controlled use of fire by people to shape and curate their physical and social landscapes? This Element describes what cultural burning is and presents current methods by which it can be identified in historical and archaeological records, applying internationally relevant methods to Australian landscapes. It clarifies how the transdisciplinary study of cultural burning by Quaternary scientists, historians, archaeologists and Indigenous community members is informing interpretations of cultural practices, ecological change, land use and the making of place. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

List of contents

1. Introduction; 2. What is cultural burning? Caring for country with fire; 3. Reading past cultural burning through colonial art; 4. Cultural burning in the quaternary record-Scientific approaches, methods and applications; 5. Historicising cultural burning through buried charcoal: amount of burned vegetation and recurrence rates of fire episodes in the Furneaux Islands, Bass Strait, Australia; 6. Conclusion: implications for the investigation of past cultural burning practices globally; References.

Product details

• Authors: Jessie Birkett-Rees, Birkett-Rees Jessie, Simon Connor, Connor Simon, Bruno David, David Bruno, Jean-Jacques Delannoy, Michael-Shawn Fletcher, S Yoshi Maezumi, S. Yoshi Maezumi, Michela Mariani, Virginia Ruth Pullin, Anthony Romano
• Publisher: Cambridge Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.05.2024
• EAN: 9781009485302
• ISBN: 978-1-009-48530-2
• Dimensions: 158 mm x 235 mm x 9 mm
• Weight: 250 g
• Illustrations: Worked examples or Exercises
• Series: Elements in Current Archaeological Tools and Techniques
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Pre and early history; Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); Landscape art & architecture, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Archaeology, Landscape architecture and design, Landscape Archaeology, Environmental archaeology