The roles of coastlines, people and fire in the development of heathlands in northeast Tasmania

Thomas, Ian; Kirkpatrick, J. B.

doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.1996.tb00032.x

Cited by 23 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…There is evidence that hunter -gatherers in a range of environments did not restrict the use of fire to burning fuel wood for cooking and heating (Bush et al 1992;Thomas & Kirkpatrick 1996;Moore 2000;Van der Kaars et al 2000;Boyd 2002;Brockway et al 2002;Carcaillet et al 2002;Kirch 2005). Relatively well studied in this context are Aboriginal huntergatherers in Australia.…”

Section: Estimate Of Energy Utilization Linked With Purposeful Burninmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…This practice was probably current amongst hunter -gatherers in a range of environments (Kabo 1985;Thomas & Kirkpatrick 1996;Moore 2000;Van der Kaars et al 2000;Boyd 2002;Brockway et al 2002;Kirch 2005). There is, for instance, evidence suggesting purposeful vegetation burning by Mesolithic hunter -gatherers in Europe, presumably to facilitate hunting and favouring preferred plant species (Mason 2000;Innes & Blackford 2003).…”

Section: How Far In the Past Can Fire Regimes Be Inferred?mentioning

confidence: 93%

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Is increased energy utilization linked to greater cultural complexity? Energy utilization by Australian Aboriginals and traditional swidden agriculturalists

Reijnders

2006

Environmental Sciences

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Theories have been proposed that link increases in energy utilization to increases in cultural complexity. Indeed, available estimates of per capita non-food energy utilization by hunter -gatherers and by people practising swidden agriculture in wooded areas, focusing on fuel wood use, are roughly 1 -2 orders of magnitude lower than for industrial societies. The latter are in the range of 0.8 -3.4 6 10 5 MJ year 71 . However, apart from the use of fuel wood, the former estimates have not included work performed by burning vegetation. Here quantitative estimates are given of recent energy utilization linked to burning biomass by Australian Aboriginals and people practising traditional swidden agriculture. Per capita energy utilization linked to biomass burning by Australian Aboriginals is estimated at 1.6 6 10 6 to 4.0 6 10 7 MJ year 71 . Estimated per capita energy utilization associated with burning biomass in traditional swidden agriculture in the tropical rainforests of Kalimantan and Venezuela, the dry forest of north-eastern Brazil and the miombo woodland of Zambia is in the range of 1.0 6 10 5 to 6.3 6 10 5 MJ year 71 . The values for non-food energy utilization reported here are at variance with theories that link increases in energy utilization to increases in cultural complexity.

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Section: Estimate Of Energy Utilization Linked With Purposeful Burninmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: How Far In the Past Can Fire Regimes Be Inferred?mentioning

confidence: 93%

Is increased energy utilization linked to greater cultural complexity? Energy utilization by Australian Aboriginals and traditional swidden agriculturalists

Reijnders

2006

Environmental Sciences

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“…Thomas (1993), Thomas and Hope (1994), and Thomas and Kirkpatrick (1996) have studied the first Holocene records from the region and identified the importance of fire, nutrient dynamics and prehistoric human impacts on vegetation change in the northern coastal heathlands and upland eucalypt formations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Dynamics of temperate rainforest from fine resolution pollen analysis, Upper Ringarooma River, northeastern Tasmania

Dodson

Mitchell

Bogeholz

et al. 1998

Australian Journal of Ecology

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The relationship between sclerophyll forest and temperate rainforest in Tasmania is believed to be driven by climate, soils and fire regime; however, this has been tested infrequently on time frames relevant to the longevity ofthe major forest trees involved. This study uses sediments in four small hollows from within a rainforest stand in the Upper Ringarooma valley in northeastern Tasmania, Australia, to analyse vegetation dynamics and disturbance over the last 1000 years. Pollen-vegetation relationships were investigated by comparing pollen rain and current vegetation, and the chronology was established by radiocarbon and lead-210 dates. The lead-210 data indicate that the two Sphagnum humus profiles were not always closed systems for inorganic inwash; however, the pollen and charcoal records are generally consistent indicating that a mixed Eucalyptus-Nothofagus forest shifted to a Nothofagus dominated rainforest as fire became a less prominent component of the environment. About 400 years ago Lcptospermum laiiigcrum invaded the community as canopy gaps developed, possibly as the older Nothofagus cuiintnghamit trees died. There is no strong evidence of invasion hy Atherosperma moscliatum as suggested by some models of forest dynamics in these forests in Tasmania. In this stand of forest, fire and erosion following flooding have been the major causes of disturbance.

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“…Key issues include the extent to which Tasmanian Aboriginal hunting, gathering and fire use influenced the structure, function and distribution of modern plant and animal communities (Bowman, Wood, Neyland, Sanders, & Prior, ; Folco & Kirkpatrick, ; Fletcher & Thomas, ; Jackson, ; Mariani et al, ; Thomas & Kirkpatrick, ). Indeed, where and how Aboriginal people burned the landscape, and the extent to which this had landscape‐scale impacts on the island's biota, has long placed Tasmania at the centre of global archaeological and fire ecology debates (Bowman, Perry, & Marston, 2015; Jackson, ; Jones, ; McWethy et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping Tasmania's cultural landscapes: Using habitat suitability modelling of archaeological sites as a landscape history tool

Jones

Williamson

Bowman

et al. 2019

Journal of Biogeography

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Aim Understanding past distributions of people across the landscape is key to understanding how people used, affected and related to the natural environment. Here, we use habitat suitability modelling to represent the landscape distribution of Tasmanian Aboriginal archaeological sites and assess the implications for patterns of past human activity. Location Tasmania, Australia. Methods We developed a RandomForest ‘habitat suitability' model of site records in the Tasmanian Aboriginal Heritage Register. We applied a best‐effort bias correction, considered 31 predictor variables relating to climate, topography and resource proximity, and used a variable selection procedure to optimize the final model. Model uncertainty was assessed via bootstrapping and we ran an analogous MaxEnt model as a cross‐validation exercise. Results The results from the RandomForest and MaxEnt models are highly congruent. The strongest environmental predictors of site occurrence include distance to coast, elevation, soil clay content, topographic roughness and distance to inland water. The highest habitat suitability scores are distributed across a wide range of environments in central, northern and eastern Tasmania, including coastal areas, inland water body margins and forests and savannas in the drier parts of Tasmania. With the exception of coastal areas much of western Tasmania has low habitat suitability scores, consistent with theories of low‐density Holocene Tasmanian Aboriginal settlement in this region. Main conclusions Our modelling suggests Tasmanian Aboriginal people occupied a heterogeneity of habitats but targeted coastal areas around the whole island, and drier, less steep and/or open forest and savanna environments in the central lowlands. The western interior was identified as being rarely used by Aboriginal people in the Holocene, with the exception of isolated pockets of habitat; yet whether this is a true reflection of Aboriginal‐resourceuse demands increased archaeological surveys, particularly in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

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The roles of coastlines, people and fire in the development of heathlands in northeast Tasmania

Cited by 23 publications

References 29 publications

Is increased energy utilization linked to greater cultural complexity? Energy utilization by Australian Aboriginals and traditional swidden agriculturalists

Is increased energy utilization linked to greater cultural complexity? Energy utilization by Australian Aboriginals and traditional swidden agriculturalists

Dynamics of temperate rainforest from fine resolution pollen analysis, Upper Ringarooma River, northeastern Tasmania

Mapping Tasmania's cultural landscapes: Using habitat suitability modelling of archaeological sites as a landscape history tool

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