Numic Fire: Modeling the Effects of Anthropogenic Fire on Foraging Decisions in the Great Basin

Summary

Ethnohistoric accounts suggest that fire played a significant role in Great Basin foraging strategies; however, there is little quantitative data on why, where, or when people burned. To begin to fill this gap, we develop a behavioral ecological model designed to test predictions about the impact of anthropogenic fires on hunter-gatherer diet breadth. We conduct an ethnographic test of the model using historic band-level variation in prey choice coupled with ecological data on variation in the abundance of high ranking resources across the region. The results of our study will help to explain the evolution of anthropogenic landscapes and lay the foundations for future archaeological studies examining the dynamics of anthropogenic fire regimes in the Great Basin.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage