Fire, Humans, and Landscape Evolution: Modeling Anthropogenic Fire and Neolithic Landscapes in the Western Mediterranean

Summary

Archaeological and paleoecological analyses demonstrate that human-caused fires have long-term influences on global terrestrial and atmospheric systems. For millennia, humans have intentionally burned landscapes to drive game, clear land, engage in warfare, and propagate beneficial plant and animal species. Around the world, Neolithic transitions to agriculture often coincided with increases in fire frequency and changes in vegetation community composition and distribution. Although this phenomenon is commonly identified in paleoecological studies, archaeological research has not fully incorporated the spatial and temporal dimensions of anthropogenic fire into discussions of the development of agricultural landscapes. Coupled agent based models (ABM) and geographic information systems (GIS) offer a new approach to anthropogenic fire that links social and biophysical processes in a virtual “laboratory” where long-term scenarios and outcomes can be tested. This paper outlines new, integrated ABM and GIS models that draw from ethnographic examples of agricultural burning in the Mediterranean, charcoal production and dispersion equations, and sedimentary charcoal records. Long-term dynamics of anthropogenic fire regimes are explored through a case study in the Western Mediterranean (Eastern Spain).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Human-Environmental Interactions in the Mediterranean Basin

Keywords

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