Douglas and Rebecca Bird are ethnographers who have spent many years researching hunter gatherer strategies in the Australian Western Desert. They note, as have anthropologists and scientists in other parts of the world, that aboriginals who manage their environments also stimulate them.
Ethnographers Hunting Giant Goannas, Varanus Giganteus
Over years, Rebecca has lived with and observed the Martu, who inherit ritual duties to their land, 'estates', particular tracts of desert. They learn vital knowledge of when and where to light smouldering brush fires with the intent of flushing out their prey, the giant monitor lizards, Varanus Giganteus. Martu are careful never to set fires where they are travelling through unknown territory or where there would be danger to the environment.
"You never burn unless you're with someone who has all of that knowledge about that estate," Douglas Bird says. "If your fire were to threaten one of those totemic spots where they keep all their religious paraphernalia associated with these rituals, it's technically punishable by death."
The middle-aged and elderly women who typically hunt for goanna can spot the animal's burrows and tracks better in burn scars than in thick spinifex grass, explained Rebecca Bird. The hunters make their grounds a patchwork quilt of recently burnt earth and recovering vegetation. This variable turf in the hunting grounds allows small mammals to find plenty of places to hide from predators, while areas free of human burning lack this patchwork quality and are home to fewer plants and animals.
"The thing that anthropogenic fire does is rearrange the landscape variation into smaller and smaller bits," said project collaborator James Holland Jones, an assistant professor of anthropology and a Woods Institute center fellow. "It happens to be the scale that animals, plants and people work at."
To determine the impact of Martu hunting practices over time, the research team is searching the geologic record for evidence of burning thousands of years into the past. The researchers also will recreate the diversity of historic plant communities using molecular clues hidden in animal remains. Similar research has formed part of historical studies in the Beaver Lake area.
Pyroculture at Central Willamette Valley and Beaver Lake
It is possible that the work of current anthropologists such as the Birds' Stanford team may assist understanding of the evidence found across America of fire being used as a strategy during the mid to late Holocene.
Evidence suggests at least a partial human explanation for the increased fire activity at Beaver Lake, Oregon, during the period, Walsh et al find. From their investigation of lattice charcoal found around Beaver Lake, they also note that "a shift from a period of highly variable fire-episode magnitude to a one of small-magnitude fires near Beaver Lake occurred ca 5000 cal yr BP and persisted until ca 1500 cal yr BP".
They even offer evidence of changes in climate and anthropogenic action on the environment in line with an increase in population in the Willamette Valley. "Population pressure and resource competition between neighboring groups may have decreased the amount of land available to each community, thus necessitating the use of fire as a management tool", they suggest.
Traditional Pyroculture v. Conservationist Environmental Management
While Martu families believe strongly in preserving their lands and know all the animals and plants that benefit from burning, their fires are primarily tools for hunting goanna meat. "Martu don't think of it as, 'We apply fire in order to promote the future long-term biodiversity,'" Douglas Bird said. "They can talk about all those effects, but that's not what maintains the system."
Further research among an extended group of funded academics engaged with the effect of the Martu on the environment is ongoing, unfortunately in an atmosphere of concern that the Martu continue to behave in traditional ways seen by some as humans disturbing natural habitat rather than having a natural role in the health of the environment.
"When you're drafting a fire-management program for a national park, if it's not done with respect to the actual practice of folks and the tradeoffs people face on a daily basis, then those prescriptions are disregarded," Douglas Bird said.
The Birds and Martu leaders will host an international conference for anthropologists and ecologists in Australia in 2011 on the role of fire in hunter-gatherer communities and ecosystems. A goal of the conference is to communicate that "indigenous knowledge is not different from scientific knowledge," Rebecca Bird said.
Sources
- Materials provided by Stanford University written by Daniel Strain, April 2010
- Australian Museum, Sydney, visit March 2009
- Megan K. Walsh, et al (2010) 'An 11,000-year-long record of fire and vegetation history at Beaver Lake, Oregon, central Willamette Valley', Quaternary Science Reviews Vol. 29, Issues 9-10, May , pp. 1093-1106
Other Ethnography Articles by Valerie Williamson: What Is Ethnography? and Greenland's Extinct Saqqaq Population
Valerie Williamson - Dr. Val Williamson is a freelance journalist and academic specialising in historical and popular culture topics.
