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Scale in the study of Indigenous burning

Nature Sustainability volume 3, pages 898–899 (2020)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 20 July 2020

The Original Article was published on 20 January 2020

arising from W. W. Oswald et al. Nature Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0466-0 (2020)

All future environmental challenges are human–environmental challenges, so it behoves us all to learn from long-term successes (and failures) of coupled human–natural systems both in the past and today to inform contemporary management, ecological restoration and conservation1. On this point, I agree with a paper by Oswald et al.2. The authors assemble an impressive volume of charcoal, pollen and archaeological data from southern New England to evaluate a longstanding hypothesis that Native Americans managed New England landscapes with fire, thereby creating landscape heterogeneity, including open forests and meadows. However, because of the regional scale of their analysis, their synthesis is predisposed to reject this hypothesis irrespective of evidence within their records of human impact and fire management.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA

    Christopher I. Roos

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Correspondence to Christopher I. Roos.

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Roos, C.I. Scale in the study of Indigenous burning. Nat Sustain 3, 898–899 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0579-5

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