Burning the Record in Order to Save It: Cultural Fire as Archaeological Survey Method

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Global heating is increasing the size and frequency of catastrophic wildfires in the American West, with the 2020 wildfires burning nearly 2% of the area of Oregon. In the year following, hundreds of new archaeological sites within the Ceded Lands of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde (CTGR) were recorded. Despite decades of archaeological surveys of these areas, relatively few sites per acre were identified before the 2020 fires, in contrast to the site densities identified post-fire in smaller survey areas. This apparent difference in site visibility in pre- and post-fire landscapes has implications for the CTGR’s cultural resource responsibilities when implementing cultural burning and during consultation with federal and state agencies. This study was designed to characterize how fire application changes the visibility of archaeological sites during pedestrian survey by quantifying the detection rate of 250 identical small (<3cm) objects distributed over 80 acres in pre- and post-burn settings. Key successes and challenges in collaboration between tribal, federal, state, and academic participants are reflected upon and implications for future archaeological investigations and landscape level analysis and management are discussed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39874.0