An Evaluation of the Timing, Development, and Scale of Anthropogenic Burning in Central California

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Understanding how indigenous people employed management practices to increase the diversity and productivity of plants and animals is an important issue for researchers, tribes, and stewards of public land. Human induced or "anthropogenic" burning was one of the most effective tools indigenous people used to enhance the vigor and health of plant and animal communities at the landscape scale. By igniting frequent, low-intensity fires, indigenous groups were able to create patchworks of biotic communities at different stages of succession, which in some cases maintained higher than natural levels of heterogeneity and biodiversity. Archaeology offers the necessary long-term perspective for examining how people used fire to enhance landscape productivity at local and regional scales and for evaluating the outcomes of these practices over many centuries. This project employs an innovative eco-archaeological approach to address how the landscape burning practices of ancient and historic hunter-gatherer societies in California may have augmented the yields, biodiversity, and sustainability of local ecosystems. The research will provide new information that can be used to improve stewardship of open spaces, enhance the biodiversity and the vitality of local habitats, mediate the effects of massive firestorms in the face of global warming, and educate students and members of the public about traditional land use practices of indigenous people.The project examines the timing, evolution, and scale of anthropogenic burning using a methodology that brings together multiple types of evidence to reconstruct ancient vegetation conditions and to understand how humans used biological resources and modified landscape biota over the last several thousand years. To explore these topics, researchers will synthesize new data from the analysis of microscopic plant remains from soils and archaeological sites; artifacts, faunal remains, and charred macroscopic plant remains from dated archaeological contexts; along with previously published data on fire ecology, paleo-ecology, ethnohistory, vegetation history, and climate. Investigators will also develop novel ways to integrate cutting-edge genetic research into the study of long-term management practices through ancient DNA and phylogeographic research on biotic resources used by humans. Long-term patterns in the cultural practices of hunter-gatherer groups will be evaluated in two study areas along the central California coast - Point Reyes National Seashore and Año Nuevo State Park. Researchers include archaeologists, environmental scientists, and geneticists from the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Cruz. They will work in close collaboration with native scholars from the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, along with land stewards and archaeologists from the National Park Service and California State Parks. The project will contribute to the current management of public lands in California by providing long-term data on historical ecological processes that will guide stewardship decisions by land managers; deliver relevant information to tribal partners who are re-instituting traditional management practices as part of their on-going cultural revitalization efforts; and create and enhance educational and training opportunities for both students and tribal scholars.