Pyroculture

Quick meaning: Pyroculture is a noun meaning (anthropology) The culture and technology developed through the domestication of fire by early humans.

Meaning

(anthropology) The culture and technology developed through the domestication of fire by early humans.

More Meanings

1. (agriculture) Slash and burn.
2. (ecology, anthropology) The use of controlled burning, chiefly by hunter-gatherers, as a form of ecological engineering to manage plant and animal distribution in a habitat.

Example Sentences

The colonization by the British initially was a relief to the Shona in that it enabled them to resume their original management practices for farming (pyro-culture) and natural resource use (slash and burn).

Around 1.6 million years ago, the Homo erectus inhabitants there emerged as a “pyro-culture,” using high temperature fire to create stone and bone implements (Gheorghiou & Nash 2007:14; Karlin and Julien 1994:153).

Despite the absence of farmed crops (i.e., maize, beans, and squash) and agriculture, it is clear that the western North American landscape was highly managed through fire maintenance (or pyroculture) for thousands of years (e.g., articles in Blackburn and Anderson 1993).

Montanus (1671:22) however commented that: “Greenery would abound more if the natives did not burn the areas where they wander”, without at all appreciating the pyroculture that had been practiced by the Tasmanians for millennia as an innovative and successful environmental management strategy (Bird et al. 2008).

Word Forms

• pyrocultures
• pyro-culture

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