pyroculture

plural pyrocultures · alternative pyro-culture

1. countableuncountableanthropologyThe use of controlled burning, chiefly by hunter-gatherers, as a form of ecological engineering to manage plant and animal distribution in a habitat.

   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).

   2015, Shannon Tushingham, Jelmar W. Eerkens, “Hunter-Gatherer Tabacco Smoking in Ancient North America: Current Chemical Evidence and a Framework for Future Studies”, in Elizabeth Anne Bollwerk, Shannon Tushingham, editors, Perspectives on the Archaeology of Pipes, Tobacco and Other Smoke Plants in the Ancient Americas, page 216

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   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).

   2011, John Paull, “Environmental Management in Tasmania: Better Off Dead?”, in Daniel Niles, Godfrey Baldacchino, editors, Island Futures: Conservation and Development Across the Asia-Pacific Region, page 155

   In the words of a recent scientific review of the effects accomplished by the ‘ecological engineering’ of traditional fire practitioners, ‘pyrodiversity begets biodiversity’. This a conscious cultural economy of fire in stark contrast to the organised irresponsibility of industrial pyroculture toward the ecological consequences of its burnings, of enclosed fires hidden behind ignition switches and powerpoints.

   2020, Jeremy Walker, More Heat Then Life: The Tangled Roots of Ecology, Energy and Economics, page 60

2. countableuncountableanthropologyThe culture and technology developed through the domestication of fire by early humans.

   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).

   2014, Jordan Anthony Burich, "Catching Fire: Toward a Cognitive-Processual Analysis of Cypriot Pyrotechnics and Sacred Imagery During the Bronze Age", thesis submitted to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, page 23

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   The driving force of pyroculture was a flow of light-giving heat from burning firewood; thus converted solar energy. But for the first time in the history of life, the prime shaping force of an energy-dissipating structure sprang from human ingenuity. Fire masters created technological artefacts such as the torch and the fireplace to conduct their new energy economy, which soon established ecological dominancy. Pyroculture happened to be a very successful evolutionary strategy.

   2005, Frank Niele, Energy: Engine of Evolution, page 94

   Whatever the nature of the initial discovery, specialized 'pit-smelters' and larger free-standing furnaces were gradually developed. Colonizing descendants of migrating Copper and Bronze Age peoples, especially seafaring merchants and traders, would have spread the lore of copper-sourcing as they went; their cultural packages included pyroculture as well as agriculture. These twin skills spread together with their owners across the landscapes of Neolithic southern Europe over almost four millennia.

   2016, Mike Leeder, Joy Lawlor, GeoBritannica: Geological Landscapes and the British Peoples, unnumbered page

3. countableuncountableagricultureSlash and burn.

   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).

   1999, Wybe Van Halsema, "Endogenous Development of Natural Resource Management in Communal Areas of Southern Zimbabwe: A Case Study Approach", dissertation submitted to the University of South Africa, page 117

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   Furthermore, as pointed out earlier, traditional pyro-culture did not include the total destruction or removal of trees. Undisturbed tree roots served to bind soil particles together and to prevent sheet erosion. Traditional African farmers recognized that it is easier to restore nutrients to exhausted soils than to "rebuild" a soil after it has "collapsed" in physical terms (Lal & Greenland, 1979).

   1991, Sam L. J. Page & Helán E. Page, "Western Hegemony over African Agriculture in Southern Rhodesia and its Continuing Threat to Food Security in Independent Zimbabwe", Agriculture and Human Values, Fall 1991, page 12

   Success depended on technologies or innovations such as shifting cultivation and pyro-culture (slash and burn), both of which were characterised by minimum disturbance of the soil (Manyanga, 2006), which in contemporary language could be minimum or zero-tillage.

   2013, Collin Calvin Mabiza, "Integrated Water Resources Management, Institutions and Livelihoods Under Stress: Bottom-Up Perspectives from Zimbabwe", dissertation submitted to Delft University of Technology, page 99