Light islands in a sea of dark rainforest: Human influence on fire, climate and biodiversity in the Australian tropics

Summary

The use of fire in Australian Aboriginal society has been well documented and has been pivotal to arguments about human impact on the Australian biota. Continuous and well-dated palaeoecological sequences from the humid rainforests of NE Queensland are beginning to reveal detailed records of vegetation transformation and shifting fire regimes within rainforest environments. The archaeological record is also providing new insights into plant exploitation and adaptation strategies to enable people to live within a rainforest environment. In this presentation we combine archaeological and palaeoecological approaches to investigate the interaction between Aboriginal people, rainforest and fire. The relationship between the intensity of human occupation, climate variability and, the onset of burning builds a better understanding the primacy of natural and anthropogenic firing events and the Aboriginal maintenance of economically important plants within fire managed mosaics. It has also provided a greater understanding of role of fire in the maintenance of biodiversity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Forests of Plenty: Ethnographic and Archaeological Rainforests as Hotspots of Human Activity

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