Ecologies of Space and Time: The Shared History of Humans and Fire in the Jemez Mountains, NM

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ann F. Ramenofsky: Papers in Honor of a Non-Normative Career" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the southwestern US humans and ecosystems share a history of fire. An integrated archaeo-ecological framework offers an important interpretive lens for both archaeologists and ecologists. Contemporary ecological patterns and processes that are thought to be ‘native’ or ‘natural’ may in fact be highly influenced by past human land use legacies, and profound and persistent, human-driven landscape transformations may affect subsequent land use and settlement practices (i.e., the archaeological record of human-landscape interactions). The Jemez Mountains of central New Mexico provide a landscape laboratory rich in archaeological, ethnographic, and ecological data sets, within which to study the reciprocal, long-term interactions of humans and fire. Evidence from tree-rings, fire scars, and charcoal sediments suggests that prior to the 20th century, southwestern pine forests sustained frequent, low-severity surface fires. During a period of dense occupation in the 13th and 14th centuries, prehistoric land use may have significantly influenced forest structure, fuel properties, ignitions, and thus landscape fire dynamics. Coupled natural-human systems process modeling, used to simulate ecological responses to prehistoric land and resource use, highlights the complexity and extent of prehistoric landscape modifications, and the degree to which contemporary landscapes are shaped by legacies of the past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Ann F. Ramenofsky: Papers in Honor of a Non-Normative Career

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25038